Preparing for the new year

 We often use the time between Christmas and New Year to set and print our New Years cards. It's a thing we started doing because when we were super busy work-working in a previous life, there was no way on Earth we would find time to make, write and post Christmas cards, so we went with New Year. And in the end, it has worked our fine for us, as so many of our wishes and hopes for folk are about the year ahead...

This year I thought I would just do some numbers, and maybe turn them this way and that.

Sounded so easy, but took me quite the while to sort. I have 'flipped' the photos here so you can see what they might print like; rather than try to work out by reading the numbers back to front, if it might work.

At first, I thought that numbers could be read clockwise as you moved around the square. But I got 25 wrong on the bottom and in the end wasn't sure that they looked nicest that way.

Then I thought maybe all the numbers would face inwards, but then when you put the big number inside, I wasn't sure that that worked either. And again, I had stuffed up the bottom numbers!

By now, I can't even work out what I might have been trying to do here! The numbers are wonky every which way.

But for whatever reason I was feeling confident enough to pop the big numbers back in!

Then I thought maybe all the ones you could read horizontally should be easily read, and the two R and L could face inwards. 

But then I went back to all the base lines being towards the centre...

And honestly, this seemed like a good enough place to stop. So I went and set up and inked up.

Before we went to Scotland back in August, a neighbour had given me one of her favourite rocks and asked if I could wrap it for her like I had done with some cement ones for our Pebbles exhibition. I said I would and it went onto the "Before the end of the year" list.

Which seemed to arrive with a rush and a roar this week! So on Boxing Day, I managed to collect the thread and some twigs and happily wrapped the rock just in time.

The before the end of the year list is getting done!