New Year, New Adventures.

I'm back from the winter break - and ready for the next year to start off properly, and for new adventures. There's a stack of things already in planning, and to my great delight, I have managed to catch up on a few things in the meantime.

One reason why my breaks (both in winter and in summer) may seem rather long is that I'm not relaxing and taking time off all the time - there's also a good amount of behind-the-scenes things going on during these weeks. For the end of the old year and start of the new, these include a lot of paperwork. New numbers for the invoices, book-keeping for the end of the year, doing the tax paperwork. That, for me, always means quite a bit of checking, as VAT has to be paid for the last quarter, then I double-check if I have caught everything during the year (sometimes a receipt slips past and turns up after its accountancy period), then the car costs have to be figured in. Why the car costs? Well, it's the company's car, and due to German legislation that means if I use it for private purposes, it counts as income and I have to pay VAT on that. So that's another thing to book...

The good thing is: Once that's all finished, there is not a lot more left to do for filing the "proper" taxes, as in the income taxes, which have to be paid on top of the VAT. And this year I've managed to finish all the paperwork and tax prep work in the winter break, which is a very nice thing. It always gives me a good feeling to have sent off the last quarter's VAT, and have all the books in order.

The next step was taking stock of things in stock, and replenishing where necessary. That's mostly done, too, with a few items still on the waitlist because the suppliers are busy, or there's issues with raw materials, or other reasons out of my own control. But having sorted that means I can now take care of orders that came in during the break.

And then... planning. Plans for this year include a reprint of my Gold Embroidery book (that sold out during the last year), there's two articles about tablet weaving coming up in two different places, and I might be travelling to Lübeck again in spring for some more collaboration with the ever-lovely Hansemuseum.

The next European Textile Forum will be in Mayen once again, with a focus on dyeing - the date is not fixed yet, but hopefully will be rather soon. 

What has a fixed date, though, are the next in-person workshops I will be giving. 

First up, from February 3 to February 5: A selection of workshops at the "Historischer Nähtreff" at Burg Rothenfels, near Würzburg. I'll be offering a number of workshops: Hand sewing (medieval seams and stitches), historical spinning, sprang (which is braiding in a frame) and fingerloop braiding as well as weaving on a bow loom. If you're interested, here's more information, including how to register:

The second one is a big tablet-weaving workshop taking place in Tüchersfeld, in the stunningly beautiful Franconian Switzerland. That is going to take a full weekend, enabling us to cover tablet-weaving from the basics up to weaving patterns based on diagonals, freestyle, no pattern draft required. The course will be in German, and if you're interested and free on March 3-5, book your spot here.

Apart from that, I have some tasks left on my list from last year - such as finishing off the website migration, and some writing tasks are to be done as well. Which means the new year has started off nicely, and promises to not be boring at all!