Quoted on the BBC again

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12045774

BBC Wales asked me to do a little bit for them this morning (7a.m.!) Rotten phone line at this end, apparently OK there.

It's for events like this that quilters make sure they have plenty of fabric in their stash...

I have been waiting for longer than usual for several items on order, including fabric for a new book proposal that I've submitted. The idea was for me to send in swatches of fabrics to the commissioning editor before Christmas... but the last of them didn't arrive till yesterday. The Christmas post has been slower than ever due to the weather. I have resorted to sending photos of the swatches by e mail instead.

In some ways, I am lucky because I can switch over to work that needs to be done in my workroom when needed, but I did have to cancel three bookings earlier in the month due to the travel chaos in the first lot of snow and a day workshop at the end of last month near Shaftesbury turned into a three day trip - it took me seven and a half hours to drive 250 miles to get there and, at one point, traffic ground to a halt on the M4. The cancelled events (hopefully) will be rescheduled for the spring.

But there's only so much work I can do like this before I need to get out! It's all "futures" too.

I've also got extra copies of books that were ordered for the cancelled events (that have to be paid for), charm packs for the "99 Treasures" quilts in stock and prepared for these events (haven't had time to do these for other shows all year!) and extra tsumugi cotton bolts to replenish the kits. Having extra stock in hand but being unable to get to the booked events is not good for cashflow for small businesses - as outlined in the BBC article.

As we have had two very snowy sessions in the space of one month, I wonder what the New Year holds. I really hope that either we won't have more big snow events soon or that (somehow) the transport network will get sorted out. My diary for the second half of January is very busy, with the patchwork workshops at Bridlington, the Nantwich fabric sale on January 23rd (more information about this later), Crafts 4 Crafters at Exeter at the end of the month and then a residential sashiko course at Denman College starting on January 31st.