Two weeks ago when it became clear that things were getting serious I announced I’d run a comfort blanket knitalong and use our techniques videos to put together squares for a design.

Gosh, that was naïve of me!

I had an idealised picture of what I wanted this time to be like, and the reality is far from it! We now have the kids at home, and they are needing pretty much our full attention every hour that they are awake, which doesn’t leave anything very much for self-care (which is massively important), let alone work. So thinking that I would be able to design (design?!? that’s something I find hard at the best of times!) a blanket, knit it, write it up clearly enough for others to follow, and write blog posts, was utterly crackers! I’m sorry, but in order to get through this, I need to do a bit less, not a bit more!

Accepting our limitations isn’t always a bad thing. In this case, it’s definitely a good thing for me and my family, but it’s actually a good thing for all of you too, because there are some amazing blanket patterns out there already! Using existing patterns also means that we can give a little support to a range of designers, and now more than ever, supporting our community seems the right thing to do.

If you follow me on Instagram you may already have spotted that we are playing lots of board games, and I’m learning to make sourdough bread – both activities I can do with the kids. I’ve set up highlights for both on my profile if you want to follow along. There are lots of amazing board games out there, and you won’t find Monopoly (or Monotony as I prefer to call it) anywhere in sight.

Our March sale will run to the end of this month, and we have made further reductions on some books (now up to 30% off), as well as Fyberspates Vivacious 4ply which is now just £10.50 per 100g skein, and there’s a good garment quantity available. We have also added gift cards if you want to give yourself, or a friend, a treat for later in the year.

The UK government advice is still encouraging online retailers to continue to work, where it is safe to do so, so we are still shipping orders from our online shop. To keep things manageable, we are only shipping on Mondays and Thursdays. Jim is the only person going to the office, and he can do the whole process by bicycle without having any contact with another human. He is taking full hygiene precautions before packing orders. We will of course review this regularly.

We are only shipping international orders with a tracked service at the moment. UK orders are still using the Royal Mail 24 service, although they are taking slightly longer than normal.

In the interests of getting this post published and out into the world, I’m going to leave it there for now. A blog post with some marvellous blanket patterns will follow when I next get an hour to myself. There are lots of beauties out there, so do go and browse Ravelry if you can’t wait for my picks…

Sending all our best wishes out to you! And this is an official permission slip allowing you to regularly reassess what you are capable of at this tricky time. Take care, and see you next week.