The boxes are here.. We move in Friday and I’m not sure you’d know it to see our house, I managed to convince D that we should get in packers as well as removal men. So for now we have just two boxes packed – Christmas in one and my sewing/ quilting magazines and sketch books in the other..

I’ve been busy sorting through and tidying things ready for the packers, so bizarrely I’ve rearranged the kitchen cupboards and we have switched around the living room furniture with just days in the house.. This morning I’ve packed us an over night bag and put aside some cleaning stuff. I think the next thing to do is try to make sure things are in the right room – I know that Little Ted’s toys will be packed into boxes from every room!

So now I regret my 2 weeks radio silence on the blog as we’ll be without TV, telephone and more importantly broadband for 2 weeks at the new place! Hard enough for me to cope without broadband, but we’ll have to explain to Little Ted why he can’t watch the advert for Stick Man on YouTube again.

On a craft front, I have finally finished my MillaMia cushion – in red (one of the few packed things so no photo yet) just in time to move to a house with orange living room curtains – I’m hoping I can still use it in there!

I’ve also started a new quilt using a jelly roll I’ve had in my stash for a while..

Until now I have just taken it out to look at now and then, I haven’t had a plan for the quilt, I’ve just been playing with the fabric. First I unrolled it – with a bit of help from a friend.

Then I sewed strips together into fours and played with some layouts.

For some reSon I decided that triangles were the way to go..

I’ve sewn up a block, but the triangles are hard to line up. I’m going to unpick the whole thing and use some chunky sashings to hide behind.. This is a real learning curve, but I’m loving the challenge.

See you in a few weeks when we’re in a new home..

People have started to ask how I’m enjoying not working anymore and what I do with my time when Little Ted’s at nursery… I know it’s a cliche, but I can’t imagine fitting a job into my day anymore, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m not working – by the time I’ve dropped Ted at nursery, walked the dog and put a load of washing on it’s twenty past ten and I’ve not even started!!

So what will I do with the rest of my day, I’ll write this post, check over twitter – add a couple more blogs to Sewing blogs, then set to work on some sewing – I’m making an advent calendar for Ted, I’ve cut out the pieces for bags..

And am now decorating them.. The idea is that I will put in an activity for each day in advent.. So any ideas would be good – so far i have:

buy Christmas tree,
decorate tree,
go to toddler group party,
go to nativity at church,
go look at lights in london,
visit Santa,
put on christmas music and dance round living room,
get out Christmas books
make: decoration for tree,
card,
calendar,
mince pies ..

I’m sure a few more Christmas parties and visits will crop up.. But I’m still in need of a few more ideas – I have a few for older kids, but Ted’s only 19 months!

I’m also finishing the back of the MillaMia Elk cushion. I bought the kit a while ago and am quite proud of my first attempt at knitting with 2 colours.. Photo to follow when I’ve figured out blocking!

Between Little Ted being I’ll, me catching it and a trip to Yorkshire my little adventure has hit the back burner…

Today Ted is in nursery, pup has been walked, laundry is on and I’ve got time to sit down with a coffee and actually think!

My time until 3:45 is my own, before we were brought down with sickness Duncan started me off revamping sewing-blogs.com, so I have more work to do on that and for my birthday recently I got some amazon vouchers.. I went a bit mad, but have some new books to flick through for inspiration/ and a stack of novels to attack..

I just had all sorts of problems uploading those photos – I’m using WordPress on an iPad.. In the end I have resurrected my Flickr account and am sharing my photos from there.. Probably not a bad thing, I’m sure using Flickr is a good way of attracting traffic…

I love autumn, especially in Surrey, it’s called leafy for a reason! – the onset of cooler weather, stews, falling leaves – kicking up leaves ( i know I’m 5!), getting out warmer clothes – especially boots! I wear a lot more skirts in the autumn and winter than in the summer!

One of the other great things is that start of the year feeling, I always get it more in September than January – probably because I stayed in academia for so long (from age 5 to 25). So what better time of year to be starting a new venture!

So far we have moved the hosting on my blog, so my website you may notice is a bit tidier. All the old pages have now gone and the about page which was 5 years out of date ( though readers may have been fooled into thinking I was still 27!). We have suffered a bit of down time while the blog switched and the links in older posts need updating on the new system, but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome!

I’ve done some reading and planning for the business side of things – I found some good starting points on UK tax for small crafters selling online. I need to go through them in more detail, but also need to have things to sell first!

I’m going to be using Trello as my on line to do organiser. I’ve set up a board for blog post ideas – and one for home which I can add things to D’s to do list

I’ve got myself setup with Google apps for suzical.co.uk (which means my suzical email is now managed by gmail and i can have multiple accounts) and D is bugging me to set myself up with an online password manager (apparently the same password for everything is bad, who knew #eek).

All I need to do now is to get stitching

So I’m taking the plunge. I’ve blogged about it, I’ve commented on other people’s blogs wishing I was brave enough and I’ve dreamt about it for several years now. Suzical will start trading on the 10th October 2011.

Actually I won’t be trading anything that day, but I will start making my plans then.. I leave my current job on the 6th.

This is partly a quality of life move, I’ll be shortening Little Ted’s hours at nursery, I’ll get to see him on a morning and hopefully he’ll be less tired. But mainly it’s my chance to make some changes to our lives, try to follow my passion & see where this takes me..

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly recieved! I need to decide whether I’d benefit most from using folksy/ etsy or setting up my own online store or all three.. And also what I should be doing – Embroidery is obviously my main passion, but I’d love to do more quilting.. What do you think people will buy? Cushions, bags, door stops, art work??

So watch this space as I go into business! Eek!