Time Flies...

This morning as I was groggily checking my phone for all the overnight emails and messages that bombard my little electronic life organiser, I was alerted by Facebook to an event that happened a year ago. Apparently, a year ago today, we opened our doors to our new shop at Blake House Craft Centre. The new-new shop that is, not the new shop. The new shop had opened the September before, this was the new-new shop a few doors up that we overhauled only months after overhauling the new shop...

...anyway, where was I? Ah yes, we opened our doors to the new shop! I can't quite believe a whole year has passed. Not least because everyday we get people coming into the shop exclaiming with delight that a new yarn shop has opened at Blake House. People who visit Blake House regularly. So sometimes I do feel that maybe we only opened a few months ago and I'm going crazy. But Facebook told me so, so it must be true...

It's been a crazy year. But a wonderful one. We've had Yarn Shop Day (which was just the busiest day EVER), a Rowan launch, we were nominated for Best Yarn Shop in the South East of England in the Let's Knit British Knitting Awards, we have had a shop birthday party to celebrate 4 whole years as a bricks and mortar shop (having been an online only shop previously), we had a special shop birthday party for the Sconchlet, we've had a Craft'n'Cake social...

And once again I have been blown away by support from customers and friends, who constantly amaze me with offers of help. Whether it's massive offers of help like staying until 2 in the morning to paint furniture and put yarn on shelves so that we can open on time, having only done the same thing a matter of months before, or to watch the shop whilst I run for a wee for the 200th time that day (my bladder isn't suited to retail with an ever growing small thing pushing on it every 2 minutes!!).  Or to sit and take photos of letter boards for me so social media posts are ready to go, or just to sit and listen to the Sconchlet read, as quite frankly, I'm exhausted. Or lovely customers who turn up with a box of chocolates for me because they felt I sounded down in recent posts. It's just a never ending stream of happy support. Well, apart from the odd low-life who steals from the shop. But even then it always brings to light a huge amount of support, so you know, swings and roundabouts.

And oh how the shop has grown! We were looking at some photos taken way back last year of the shop and couldn't believe how empty it looked! We are already back at the point of regularly commenting on how we need a bigger shop (don't panic, we are making do...). We've taken on embroidery ranges, felting ranges, and our yarn has exploded into a riotous wall-to-wall extravaganza of colour.

Of course I couldn't do it without the amazing crazy team I have behind me. This photo from the Rowan event sums us up nicely...we tried to do a serious picture as well as a crazy faces picture, but couldn't quite manage to get one where we all had the same face at the same time...

And now we have Jenni as well...we managed to grab a photo with her at our Christmas social (she is apparently very camera shy), and most of you will recognise her from being in the shop and at Craft'n'Cake if you're local... best get used to photos Jenni!

It's a been a difficult second half to the year with my health in particular. Never one who has been particularly healthy, I've always had the support of my staff. But most of you will know how difficult I've been finding growing a human, and it is such a relief knowing I have amazing staff who can just get on and run the shop without me there, and who will go out of their way to cover my shifts when I'm back in hospital whether for routine appointments, or because I've been admitted and hooked up to drips...

So, what have we got planned for the next year of Sconch? Well obviously more yarn. Because, well. I'm an addict. I just do yarn shopping on a bigger scale. And as I've finally got round to starting to add bits to Ravelry (you can find my tiny selection of patterns here), I am going to start getting my other patterns on there too. Which means more blog posts with tutorials (there is already one on the way!) and patterns. And more vlogs. Because everyone loves to watch me in my pyjamas sleepily rant about stuff, right?

And of course a new little addition to the Sconch team, which may take up rather a lot of my time!

All in all, it should be quite an exciting next year too...

So, let me know what you want to see more of on the blog, and what you would like me to vlog about - otherwise I'm simply ranting to myself...

Sam x