Welcome to 2014 at Apatchy Quilting! I guess everyone has taken Christmas down and the lights have been packed away for another year and those of us who have school-age children are organised for this week’s back-to-school. The weather everywhere has been quite erratic. The nice thing about it is – it’s a great time to turn on the air con (or heater if you’re in the northern hemisphere) and stay inside and sew.

I have a few projects on the go although I do have valid excuses for not producing much in the last month – firstly there was a wonderful month’s holiday including a tour of the Christmas markets in Germany, a week including Christmas in Paris, New Year’s Eve in New York (yes actually in Times Square – I was the one in the blue hat!) and a short trip to Vancouver and San Francisco. Quite a time. We travelled to the other side of the world for a white Christmas but everywhere we went was either experiencing an unusually warm winter or else it had snowed just last week (and again two days after we left). Did this mean we didn’t enjoy our holiday? No way! What you want isn’t always what you need. The break was wonderful and the places we visited strange and beautiful. It was an excellent opportunity to spend time with Luvvy and the resident teenager and we had a ball. As well as enjoying the time together we had an opportunity to reflect on our work life.

As a result of significant expansion in his company Luvvy has been in need of some management help for some time. Since (it seems in a former life) I am a qualified chartered accountant with an MBA the choice of who to help was not difficult. So for the next six months or so I have committed myself to helping him fulltime in the business. To quote Dumbledore from ‘Harry Potter’ “sometimes you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy”.

What does this mean for Apatchy I hear you ask? Fear not I have not forsaken the world of patchwork and quilting nor you my loyal customers. While I was away in December the lovely Jan looked after the shop – and very capable she was too. She has very kindly agreed to retain the reins for a little longer and while I am toiling at the office, she will continue to run the classes as usual on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and evenings starting from Tuesday 4^th February.

I will continue to oversee the computer side with email communication, the website and internet orders as well as the ordering and administration side and of course I will pop in to see you now and then to get my quilting ‘fix’ so I won’t be totally invisible. I would like to thank you in advance for giving Jan your support (and me too of course). We are looking forward to making 2014 a year of creativity and fun! There are new fabrics (of course) and other goodies to see so pop in next week and you can catch up with everyone you haven’t see over the holidays as well as seeing all that’s new.