Washing instructions for the New Year

I’m writing this from my bed, which is the only place I can currently manage to keep warm in my unrenovated house. Every so often I have to stop typing and place my hands on the hot-water-bottle under the covers to warm my icy fingers. I am a cold person generally but this point of the year is a little trying. There was supposed to be a wood stove installed in the living room by now but that’s another story. Plus have you really renovated a house if you haven’t lived through at least one freezing winter without adequate heating?

I only just go back from holiday last night. I was supposed to go for four days, but we left late because I pulled a muscle in my back, and then when we tried to come home, my wily car managed to break down in a very decisive fashion - taking out the clutch plate and immobilising us for an additional five days. I say wily, because her timing meant that we ended up staying longer with our gorgeous friends, I ended up having a real holiday and a very deep and much-needed rest, and we saw in the New Year in warmth and company and the energy was everything I want in this coming year. I finished 2023 with a bad back and a large garage bill, and the whole of 2024 felt very much like Groundhog Day to me. Not having that again!

This last year should have irrevocably changed you. If it hasn’t, you must be sleep-walking through the world, or deliberately averting your gaze. We cannot be now in any doubt about the leaders we have, the systems we live in, or what we as Western citizens are complicit in. This coming year will show us how much power we have to change things, and I think it bears remembering that we hold all the power when we move as a group. To this end, I have been thinking a lot not just about consumption, which is something I always think about, but peace and cohesion, and how to live with those values. I’ve started to reflect on how I show up in all the spaces I am in, but also, on how much I require these things in my real offline life. A lot was revealed and fell away last year, both people and beliefs, and I am so grateful that they did and that I am where I am, surrounded by the people I have in my life. But we really are in a time of reckoning, and we can’t just continue along as though we aren’t either part of the problem or part of the solution. I’ve written a lot about this, I will certainly be writing a lot more!

I am trying to be more regular with posting here. My life contains a lot of responsibility which I hold as a single parent, as a business owner running a strange business that requires a lot of work behind the scenes, as an immigrant to a country I didn’t plan to move to, and now as a house owner living in a frigid dwelling which is going to require a lot of my own physical labour to make comfortable, and I am almost always behind schedule and a bit exhausted. I would like to be a bit more present here and it is one of my professional aims for the year.

And now a couple of work-y things. After many many requests I finally just got around to reviewing a section that has been on my website for ages but has been hidden from view because it was incomplete. So if you have been asking how to wash things, there is now this section on washing and storing textiles which is up on the header navigation (I also restored my ‘about’ page so that if you are new here, you can put a face to the business side of what I do, and I have made a clearer link to the page which outlines how I work and my terms and conditions).

And I am putting everything on the website, with a few exceptions which I have made invisible, on a 30% markdown both because my car has managed to cost me more than we paid for her over the past three weeks and because I’d like to clear my website so I can reconfigure it a little. The markdown is not visible on the prices, because I would have to manually adjust every single thing (there are so many things I hate about Squarespace and I wish there was a better alternative for what I do but there isn’t). Instead I have noted it on a banner on the landing page. Please go and have a look - the sale discount includes things already on sale as well as undiscounted items, and I have some especially beautiful table linen up at the moment as well as quite a few items of wearable clothing.

Lastly, I haven’t run a raffle for Abdalla for far too long. I got exhausted, which is no excuse, but he and his family are on my mind every day. I will start those raffles up again very shortly, and I really wanted to thank everyone who has been entering, and everyone who is donating without entering (there are a number of you, I see your names, you warm my heart). If my work has meant anything to you over the past year, would you consider tipping Abdalla’s Paypal a small amount - even the cost of a coffee. This money goes directly to him, after Paypal and local banks have savaged it (we must just consider that as collateral costs) and any money sent is literally helping feed him and his family. The Paypal account is not in his name, for reasons I have spoken about in previous newsletters, but the link to paying into it is here, and you can see Abdalla’s instagram account here. Going forward, I think one of the most important things we can do is to directly help each other, as it should now be crystal clear to every one of us that our leaders, our governments, our institutions, many if not most not-for-profits and charitable organisations, international governance institutions, as well as a shocking number of individuals, some of whom we personally know, are only interested in their own access and proximity to money and power and their own comfort. We need to hold each other and this need is only going to increase. I think it could only be a matter of time before we may need to be held ourselves. Put out into the universe the energy you would like back!

And on that note, I wish you all a 2025. I can’t say be happy because under the circumstances I think it is normal to not feel unbridled happiness, but I can say I wish you health and love and enormous joy. Holding joy, going deeper into what makes us connected to each other and how we are so profoundly part of our earth that nourishes and supports us, really moving to the root of things which for humans is finding and nurturing true community, I think these things are going to be a fundamental and growing part of all our futures. I’m going to hope that we continue to find our connectedness and our joy in those connections, and that this is the year that things begin to really shift in the balances of power. Hold people in your hearts and move from there, caring about them. Be strong and keep warm xx

The image at the head of this post is a piece of 18th century Toile de Beautiran. I love the beautifully-observed faces, the child’s face as he looks at the scene in front of him, the love with which his mother in turn regards him, the way the other child is also watching him with a gentle expression.