Happy Birthday Blog! You are NINE years old!

I knitted this mouse from a pattern by Sue Stratford for a gift.

Playing around with Christmas ideas, this is my own pattern but the antlers need imrproving..

Love this dog from a pattern by Sandra Polley.Again not for sale.

I wrote the first blog post on September 22nd 2008. That was long before I opened a shop of my own. Having a shop was a recurring  fantasy that I used to write about about with no real hope of ever achieving. Rents were too high.

 I wrote about what I was making, how I was preparing for the Country Living magazine show in London and often about the clothes I liked in Tricot Too a shop I worked in and made jewellery for.

Then I moved to Petersfield and, six years ago the dream became a reality and I opened Handmade Happiness in Dragon Street. Since then this is the 'blog that became a shop' and its now all about promoting other makers whose work I sell in the shop.

Strangely, if the statistics are correct, the chances are that if you are reading this you live in France. The blog has more readers than ever before but most of them live in France. To start with I could rely on readers living in the UK or the USA. But recently lots of readers are from Russia, and above all from France. Since I have always thought that the French have excellent taste I am happy about this!! But the chances of them ever visiting HH the bricks and mortar shop are slim!
As its the blog's birthday I thought I'd share what I'm currently making. A bit of self indulgence from me... I have a large family to make for now that all of my children have produced children of their own and I feel very blessed!
It's important to me that the shop offers the very best of handmade. Most of it local although I am now looking further afield ... after 6 years it is time to spread the net a bit wider but everything in the shop is made from scratch and made in the UK and if I love it then I hope that you will love it too!