Happy New Year!

Since not everyone does the NYE Mystery SAL I am also making a separate post to wish everyone a happy New Year! I wish for all of you the best health possible, with many good days. I also hope that you can find happiness in small things and not get thwarted by the old mean frog that makes you rip your stitches out. And most of all I hope the world becomes calmer without so much hate and selfishness — peace and love are much better for everyone! Let the world become a place where people don't discriminate based on skin colour, gender, who they love, how much stash they have, and how many hobbies! There is space for everyone, especially if you can be kind to one another — life is difficult enough already. Yes I did mention stash size as I've noticed that some people feel lesser because they have fewer materials to hand compared to others, who may have been stitching longer. This is why I always encourage you to use what you have, not to look at the colours I have designed with. If it's really important I'll say so but otherwise have fun with what you have!

I want to thank everyone for supporting me with my creativity — both by giving me the finances to be able to create via Ko-fi and PayPal, and by sharing links to my posts, stitching my patterns, and being supportive of others in my Facebook groups — all these things help and are much appreciated! Without all this I wouldn't be doing as much as I have been doing.

Last year I had a micro stroke, struggled with the side effects of that, had a couple of bad reactions to blood pressure meds and I kept going knowing that you were as keen as ever to get the next bit of pattern for something, and that by doing so I was helping myself as the stitching and writing were a form of PT — one of those cases where everyone wins!

Last year was the tenth anniversary for the blog during which I wrote 509 blog posts, with the most posts being posted in December (63) and April (61). The least posts were posted in February (11) — not a surprise at all as this was after the NYE Mystery SAL and before I started with the Mini Magical Mystery SALs, it was the one month when all was as it was planned to be.

I had 351 thousand page views and 537 comments (including my replies). The busiest month was December with 43046 page views closely followed by January with 42824 page views. The quietest month was September with 19955 page views, it still was busier than most of the months in 2019!

All in all it was a busy and productive year on my blog despite the hardships of the year.

One thing I didn't have time for was moving the older patterns that I'd only posted on Deviant Art over to this blog so that you don't have to go there (and possibly sign up) to stitch any of my patterns. I hope that 2021 will be the year I achieve this goal.

I wouldn't be me if I didn't have a pattern for you to enjoy after reading all the above! It is the pattern that goes with the beach picture at the top, something I made while thinking of summer and going away — not something many of us could do last year.

You can download the pattern here.

I'll be back later today with at least three more posts — If I can squeeze it in there will be four more! In no particular order (as I don't know yet) the Temperature and Ornament of the Month SALs both start today, so those posts will happen later. There is still one more post to go for the NYE Mystery SAL, and finally there is the wrap up post for the 2020 Temperature SAL.

Have a great day!