Gardeners Crafting Diary of Wonderment, January 2026
- Cat's Punky Stuff
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Last year I really struggled with blogs, having felt I had covered everything there was to cover. However, I had really enjoyed the blogs of 2024, my Gardeners Crafting Diary of Wonderings, where I did bite-sized entries covering the garden and crafts throughout the month, noticing how they complimented each other with many a crossover. With so many new things planned for this year, I will be writing a Gardeners Crafting Diary of Wonderment, a nice way to catalogue the year.
1st JANUARY
Happy New Year!
The year has started off with a huge win, though the monumental aspect of the win is only really important to me, but I have finally got my little robins photographed on a Christmas tree. We don't bother with a Christmas tree; we don't bother with Christmas at all as it goes, so trying to photograph my hanging robin decorations in their natural environment has been troublesome. For years I have been looking for a dressed Christmas tree, one that had neutral decorations, none of the
sparkly red and green traditionally associated with a winter wonderland, but a tree dressed in jute, hessian and in particular rustic-coloured baubles. Our new next-door neighbours had THE perfect tree, so perfect it could have been in Selfridges window. It had copper and bronze-coloured baubles, each individually chosen to enrich the overall look. So perfect, the wait had been worth it.
3rd JANUARY
We have a Crow Bar
In the middle of December last year, a juvenile crow started to regularly visit the garden, sitting on the birdbath just outside the kitchen window. After researching, it turns out crows like mealworms, grated cheese and peanut butter spread on a log. So we started to feed him. Today he said 'cak' twice, once when I unfroze his water dish and once when he was on the ground when I nearly trod on him. I assume from this that 'cak' means 'thanks' and 'I'm here'. We called him Mr Zailes and he was
my inspiration for the raven solstice card. A lady in America asked me to design a Yule Raven card, just as the crow turned up. It was very exciting once I researched the meaning of a crow adopting you.
4th JANUARY
Herby Birdies flying away in flocks
The year is absolutely rocking; it is only day 3 and so much has happened already. A lady had asked me to make a lavender-filled light pull Herby Birdies in fuchsia and teal, which matched her decor perfectly. She was so happy with it that she asked me to make some smaller birdies which she was going to use as embellishments on gift-wrapped gifts. This little project was actually a huge challenge, as I could choose any colours I liked. After a day of contemplation, I decided to work from the colours on the gift wrapping paper I had here and I said I would supply the wrap to match the birdie. These little birdies were the size of my holly robins, but I replaced the Christmas accent with a little filigree heart charm. Delicate and sweet, they complemented the tag birdies perfectly. From this, I then thought I could use the filigree hearts to make 'sorry for your loss' little robins.
7th JANUARY
The Land of the North Wind
Way up north where the winter wind starts, in a land far away that few get to see, is a landscape of deep snow hiding the remotest, unspoiled wilderness. Here can be found cavalcades of towering cedars clinging to steep, rocky snowscapes and an emptiness that unknowingly, or perhaps knowingly, holds secrets of old. Ancient wisdom is the lore of this land, where nature's turning wheel brings unforgiving winter storms of drifting snow
and howling winds. Only the oldest and
strongest of trees can be teased and whipped by fierce north winds, holding their ground as their branches flap like bird wings.
Imagine, Little Plant, this snowscape of crags and rocks,
Towering cedars with some fallen as moss-covered logs.
A year-round winter far too savage for man,
I'll describe it to you as best as I can.
An extract from my latest book, Short Stories for Little Plants
10th JANUARY
Pom Pom crazy!!
Once December's rush is over, usually about the 15th, I start to revamp my Etsy, but three weeks later I'm still making poms; it hasn't stopped. There are lots of little orders for all manner of poms and commissions to make from very specific colours. I was asked to match wools to photos of a green coat and a new bobble-less woolly hat. After discussing the MANY possibilities, the lady chose a green pom to match the coat, with orange polka dots to match the hat.
EDIT 26th January: The lady is over the moon; she says the colour match is perfect, absolutely spot on, she couldn't be happier! I explained that her photographs had been true in colour, the praise was all hers.
I finally got around to photographing the shaded poms I had just remade. My pom-making has considerably improved since the last time I updated this listing and so I remade all 18 colours in 45 mm samples. Etsy is doing a new thing where we can now display 20 photos per listing rather than the original 13. I saw this as an opportunity to create little adverts cross-referencing my different wares, basically self-promoting.
13th JANUARY
Patience is a virtue!
We are still decorating the house! Yes, it has been six years and yes, there is still loads to do and yes, every new year I vow to get everything done, which never happens, but very slowly and surely we are getting there. Buying an old cottage brings many problems, especially when you want to change virtually everything. Whilst the old part of the house is decorated in traditional Victorian wallpapers and colours, the modern kitchen extension is a chaotic mix of Morris blue walls, a bluey-greeny-grey, accented with every colour under the sun. As with most crafters, I am a bit of a hoarder and love keeping anything that has some sort of aesthetic appeal. Pretty little bowls, candle holders, rabbit and hare ware and all manner of curiosities. My curio shelf is overflowing with oddities, all stashed according to colour. One of the MANY jobs the kitchen needed was the main light and although I knew exactly what I wanted, it was just one of those jobs that got overlooked. A relative gifted us a huge, glass Moroccan lampshade of gem-coloured stones. It was perfect, exactly what I had wanted. We went from a blindingly bright, bare, gnarly hanging bulb to a gemstone kaleidoscopic wonderworld.
15th JANUARY
The Recycling Fair
Although my plan for this year was to have a bit of a break, it isn't working out that way. At all! I'm really not complaining, as it is all around new ideas and a creative overload. Every now and again I have many new ideas, often tied into chatting with folks who want bespoke wares. From their ideas, inspiration jumpstarts creativity and I find myself where I am now. I have partnered with a buddy in the village to put on pagan craft fairs at the village hall. One of my responsibilities is to design the posters. Each needs three versions: one to promote the event to sellers, then the public one, once all the slots have gone and then a very basic one for the roadside. For the poster, I collected a stash of all different crafting things and ran the poster through Photoshop to add the wording. The recycling fair is an opportunity to clear out the crafting cupboards, of which I have many, mostly full of unused and unwanted bits and bobs.
16th JANUARY
Pagan Beltane Fayre
Whilst the recycling fair is a bit of a side-line, the main fayres will be in May for Beltane and November for Samhain. The poster for May features apple blossoms and dancing hares around a maypole, set in vintage colours to capture the mood of the fayre, rustic and traditional. I also created an identity, The Pagan Raven Crafters, with an email and Facebook page. As much as I can't stand Facebook, it's a place where we will find the sort of people interested in what we are doing. Pagan craft fayres attract great people, so letting them know about the fayres through social media is just one of those bugs to bear. As it happens, manning the social media isn't too bad. I just check in twice a day, promote once a week and monitor any queries that come in. It's pleasant chatting to folk. I have found some fabulous music for the May fayre: flutes and harps with a medieval ambient feel. I am hoping to add birdsong for an outdoor feel, which I hope will be enhanced with the scent from potted bluebells.
20th JANUARY
Year-Round Robins
As I mentioned at the start of the month, I had decided to make robins for year-round interest, though the holly robins are also available all year. The saying about robins appearing when a loved one is near has inspired many robin wares; it is a saturated market year-round. However, with my little lavender-filled robins being so popular, it was an obvious new development, though it took me years to realise it. I started to think that quite a few of my things are from folks asking for something to be made. A lady bought my poms regularly and when she mentioned they were for her cat, I started listing kitten pom toys with a giftie stash of catnip. The summer solstice card and raven yule card are both customer suggestions from the same lady in America. I feel really fortunate being asked to make so many wonderful things, especially the variety of great pom pom colour palettes.
21st JANUARY
Charmless
It was bound to happen at some point; I can no longer list a popular Ostara Blessings card because the charm is unavailable. I originally bought them six years ago, online from China, back when 25 charms were about £2, though you had to wait three weeks for delivery. When they arrived, I really liked them and bought a second batch. I have never found them online again. I have even used nasty AI to try and find them, but no, they don't exist any more. (By the way, have you noticed you can't get a Topic chocolate bar anymore? I'm totally devastated). So this year the last 9 cards went in just two orders. If I had the charms, how many more folks could have enjoyed them? Such a shame. I have rebranded the card using the same colours, with a different charm. It is still a nice card, but the Celtic knot tree of life charm was…charming, very delicate but detailed.
26th JANUARY
Transformation of a gift shop
As mentioned earlier, I can now list extra photographs on Etsy and have created several little adverts to cross-reference my cards and lavender gifts. I decided to take supporting photographs of my cards and gifts as inspiration and to make it an easier time for curious shoppers. As part of my new year declutter, I had amended the sections my wares are listed as. Whereas before I had 'lavender gifts' as a section, I have now merged cards and gifts together, so each has a selection of items under new sections like 'Solstice gifts and cards'. I still have a bit of work to do on my Etsy, as I am running about two weeks behind schedule due to all the extra pom and birdie making. I still have about 70 giftie robins to make for a years quota, I plan to create some new poms in a polka dot look but based on either vintage beiges or wintery greys. Paul is also busy making me some knitted squares to restock the lavender-filled hares ready for Ostara and Easter.
27th JANUARY
Miles of floor tiles
Besides fitting the new kitchen light shade, we are working on the bathroom floor. We had been given a load of wooden crates made from very thick planks of wood. We cut them into squares, Paul has added a fancy border and I plan to paint each tile a variety of colours. I have loads of match pot paints from craft projects and decorating. Whilst the main theme of the bathroom is deep, dark French turquoise and bright copper orange, with a burnt wood foundation, the 30-odd match pots are an extended colour palette and will make the floor look quite spectacular. The bathroom has a wallpapered wall of distressed wood in dirty blues and browny greys and fortunately I have these colours for the floor. I plan to add a bit of olive and moss green as an extension of the turquoise and maybe some chestnut browns as a stretched representation of the copper colours. There are about 500 tiles, so 15 tiles per colour would give an even spectrum. However, some of the colours are a better match than others, so I'll try to do 20 of the main colours and less of the minor ones. It is a long project; I estimate about three months and we are a third of the way through. Very excited about FINALLY getting the bathroom finished.
You have just read Diary of Wonderment, January 2026. Check in each month to see how things turn out. See you soon. x
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