This week Rowan and I put out the Christmas lights. A little early maybe, but we wanted to get it done before the weather turned too cold. There is nothing worse than hanging Christmas lights in evergreens in the freezing cold. It's so hard on your hands! Anyways, so with the Christmas lights up I thought it was officially time to launch a few holiday gift ideas!
This is always such an exciting time of year. We've got a few new things in the TFA shop for your gift giving (and gift receiving, who am I kidding?) pleasure. This year's Gift Bundle is a good one. Putting together a Gift Bundle is a holiday tradition that I started just last year, along with the TFA calendar, and is one that I hope to carry on for many years to come. The 2016 calendar is sold as part of the Gift Bundle and is also sold separately here. The calendar is full of inspirational images that I think you'll all enjoy.
The Gift Bundles are a collection of some of my favourite things. I've already touched on the calendar, so next up is that gorgeous project bag! I've mentioned before that the super talented Jenna of JennaRose is one of my best friends. We went to art school together and every year us girls from art school do a Secret Santa gift exchange. Last year Jenna had my name and she gifted me one of her gorgeous Traveler Pouches, knowing very well that I would use it as a project bag and that it would totally elevate my every day knitting projects. I love my bag so much and one night while catching up on the phone with Jenna we came up with the idea to collaborate on a bag for the Gift Bundles! I am a big fan of all of her prints, but after receiving one of her beautiful buckets as a baby gift for Micah in her Rainy Day print I was completely smitten. She had this vibrant blue fabric that she thought would be perfect for me, I mentioned that I loved her prints that featured a touch of metallic and the rest is history! She customized her Rainy Day print to feature gold stars, added gold details in the hardware and voila, my perfect bag was born! It's very Jenna but with a dash of Tanis. Such a fun collaboration.
The next little treat included in the projects bag are a set of those adorable Raindrop stitch markers from Fripperies & Bibelots. I purchased a set last year around this time and think that they are just the loveliest stitch markers in all the land. And of course I had to include a one of a kind colourway to round out this special bundle. I had been hoarding a bunch of 75/25 merino/silk fingering weight yarn, waiting for a special occasion to whip it out, and this project seemed like just the thing. Originally we were going to go with a colourway that was a more literal interpretation of the project bags, maybe something in shades of navy and gold? But then we switched gears and decided to focus on the raindrop theme that we had curated and this colourway just fell into our laps. It's a soft, watercoloury blue with washes of purple and the faintest green/gold peaking through. I completely love it.
So, there you have it! Everything you could ever want to know about this year's Gift Bundle!
Next up on the agenda for today: the 2016 Clubs! That's right, Clubs, plural! We've switched things up for next year!
You may have noticed that since the beginning of the TFA website, up there in the header, it has always said "Clubs", not "Club". Even though we've only ever been able to offer one Club at a time, I had always intended to do more, and in 2016 we will! We will be offering a variety of clubs in 3 month instalments throughout the year. 2016 will be an experimental year for us in many ways. We've been doing things the same way for years and it's time to freshen things up a bit. You'll find all the details on the January-February-March Club instalment on the Clubs page. I'm really hoping that this new approach will allow for much more flexibility throughout the year. I'm thinking maybe a Blues Club, maybe a Neutrals Club, maybe even a Fiber Club! With smaller blocks of time to experiment with I'm not committing myself (or any of you!) to a full year of anything until we're certain it works. Doing the Clubs this way also makes them more affordable for you and more manageable for me. It's a win-win!
So, there you have our big announcements for the day. Happy Wednesday!