It happens each year without fail. Despite this my knitting skills have not really improved very much.

I tend to knit simple things like scarves that require no pattern and I don’t have to worry about tension – other than my tension if I drop a stitch!

This winter I am trying a baby blanket for the impending birth of my second grand-child. I am using cotton yarn so that itching the wee baby’s delicate skin won’t be a problem.

I found a great free website for baby blanket patterns. In fact there are lots of wonderful free knitting patterns out there on the internet, just google free knitting pattern followed by your chosen project – for example free knitting pattern baby blanket.

I decided to see if I could improve my knitting technique so I went to the vast storage library of all skills – YouTube.

I found an amazing video of what looked like a very simple and fast technique for knitting.

I have tried this continental knitting method for a whole evening and although I am able to do it I find that I am still very slow and that I feel stressed so I have gone back to my own method for the moment.

There is at least one knitting group in the Leitrim/Roscommon area that meets in Carrick On Shannon every few weeks. I will try to go along to the next meeting.

Meanwhile, I will keep on knitting, one stitch at time…

From Feb 2009 it will be illegal in America to sell hand-crafted toys or clothing for children.

I have to read that sentence a few times and I am still having trouble with it – don’t take my word for it! There are a couple of good blogs with the story detailed in them.

This site has some ideas on what we can do to try to prevent this from happening. This site sells cute kiddy things and is understandable upset about this news while this site is a business blog with a clear and succinct article on this madness.

I am guessing that affects a lot of the sellers on Etsy, a lovely website which allows craftspeople to sell their own beautiful goods and leave out the middle men. Its really hard to make a living from making and selling crafts. When you consider that the crafts person has to design, source materials and create the items they sell you can imagine that they probably never really make the sort of money they deserve for the time it takes to do all that.

What worries me is that our esteemed (can you smell the sarcasm?) government often follow the ways of America, which coincidently suits the big business guy. Most business people in Ireland will admit that it is not an easy country for the really small business and not getting any easier. Quite often new regulations seems to favour the big guys.

Support handmade as long as you can – wherever you live…