HAPPY NEW YEAR! (2012)

Yes, I know I'm a few weeks late, but shush, this is the first chance I've had, so there.

Well, it's been one hell of a year, with one thing and another, and not all of us have made it, but there have been bright spots too.

One such bright spot was Graduation, and it was absolutely wonderful to see everyone again. The Masters was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and

on paper it doesn't seem to have been much of a help in terms of employability, but the people I had the opportunity to meet have more than made up for it - and I suppose it taught me what I was capable of in extraordinary circumstances... and some ordinary ones. Anyway, we all had a great time meeting up, bemoaning the lack of work, drinking a fair bit and letting our hair down. Most refreshing.

Another bright spot that involved the letting down of hair was Chi and Mat's wedding - the first of my school-mate's weddings. It was a bit scary being all grown up, but it was fantastic to see everyone again after so long - and the church where they had the service was beautiful.

This year also heralded the creation of Lazy Days , the craft blog that me, Bones and Krystyna occasionally update. It's been a lot of fun finding and sharing things to talk about on there, including giant pom-poms, sock monsters and do-it-yourself corsets - and hopefully this will only get stronger as time goes on!

Another highlight was the visit to Alnick Castle (HOGWARTS!) with Krystyna, and going to Beamish the next day - all good fun, and probably the subject of a belated post in the next few weeks. As will the trip to Litte Moreton Hall with JacAbsolute and Erador :)

I also took the difficult decision to actually start writing this year, and have been religiously practicing on fanfiction, and planning my original stuff. I wrote

an entirely new fanfic this year - it was supposed to be really short, and turned out to be 37 chapters and 200,000 words long. Suffice it to say that I don't appear to 'do' short. The fic, Much Ado About Hogwarts, is a very silly teenage romantic comedy, and is the complete antithesis of what I normally write - which is what made it so much fun :D It lives here.

I'm having great fun with my own stuff, and live in a weird combination of excitement and dread of the day that I have to actually show it to people :) I started it off during NaNoWriMo, which was great - it was so good to know that all of us were pushing ourselves together.

There's also Erador, who continues to be the man of

my dreams, and puts up with me for reasons best known to himself.

The next year, well... it looks busy, from here, and like it will last forever (which of course they never do)... But there are Big Things afoot, and the world is waking up again. Hope yours is a good one :)

To absent friends.

(Photo: Cuthbert, kicking it back in Biddulph)