Sunshine on window boxes

At about this time of year, I start to get hopeful. The mornings get lighter. I start to leave work as the sun sets, looking at my beautiful adopted city bathed in impossible - and impossible to photograph - colours. Then it gets lighter earlier still, and soon I'll be leaving the office in daylight. The quality of light starts to change - this could be fanciful, but it starts to feel stronger, richer. It is still freezing cold outside most days, but it starts to become possible to believe that some time soon, spring will come.

Not knitting! Emily Peacock Cross Stitch kit

When I was little, I loved counted cross stitch. I loved carefully following a diagram, and turning a blank sheet of fabric into a picture. I loved how complex shapes could be made from lots of tiny squares, and how the texture of the fabric could be completely changed as each square was replaced with a stitch. And I loved the calming effect of carefully putting the needle through the fabric, again, and again, and again.

Little pretty things: French letters

 

When I was a little girl, I used to ask my mother why I never got any letters.

Rather than explaining to me that the letters grown-ups get are in fact very boring, mostly bills and bank statements, she would explain that you had to write letters in order to get letters.

I would then go away and work out who I could write to, so they could write back and I could get a letter of my own. If I didn't get distracted in the process - usually by a book, because very little has changed - I would get out a pen, whichever writing paper I had been given the Christmas or birthday before, complete with sheet of lined paper as a guide, and start writing. I suspect my grandmothers or Great Aunt were the lucky recipients of these epistles, given the high likelihood of them writing back, and I still have a letter my Great Aunt once wrote to me, tucked into the recipe book from her childhood she sent me (that's a whole different post!) Sadly, these three wonderful ladies all died before I entered my teens, so I have no way of checking what sort of correspondent I was!

These days, I get plenty of letters. And let me tell you, boy are they boring. Junk mail, pension statements, bank statements, credit card statements. I'm beginning to realise that no post that comes in a window envelope is ever worth having. 

So when a handwritten envelope drops through the door, it's exciting. Even more so if it's not Christmas or my birthday. And even more so when you recognise the handwriting and realise it's an update from a friend you don't see enough of.

There's something wonderful about saving a "real" letter to read with a little drinky or a cup of tea, and catching up on news. Reading it another couple of times over the next couple of days while starting to think of a reply. And then finally getting out a proper pen and paper, sitting down at a table and starting to write.

So when I realised I had run out of notelets, and had nothing apart from tiny correspondence cards and great sheets of printer paper in the house, it was the perfect excuse to nip out to Paper Tiger and spending a happy ten minutes choosing stationery. 

I took home the above. I couldn't resist the pretty designs, based on vintage French fabrics (hence French letters - what else did you think I meant?), the envelopes, and the fact that it comes in its own sturdy box, perfect for stacking the letters I get in return in, just like I used to when I was eight. 

I wish I'd kept them. It would be lovely to read a letter from Granny now. 

Little pretty things: personalised correspondence cards

When I was younger, I hated writing thank you letters. It was always a chore, never a pleasure, but something my parents would never let slip. Many an hour was spent staring out of the window trying to work out exactly how to say thank you for yet more writing paper.

As I got older, I started having to write fewer thank you letters, as my grandparents passed away and as I became "too grown-up" for presents from a lot of relatives.

But as I got older still (and this post is scheduled to go live on my 30th birthday, so I'm positively ancient...!) and started giving more gifts, I began to understand how important that thank you is. Not necessarily in the old-fashioned way - a heartfelt thanks in person, a text or an email, all can be more than enough to reward and reassure the gift-giver, and thank them for their kind thoughts (even if you can't think of any redeeming features to the present itself).

So by the time the Husband and I came back from honeymoon to a list of 50 thank you letters to be written, I'd got to the stage where I enjoyed writing them - explaining to the giver why we'd asked for a thing, why it was important, and thanking them for coming to the wedding. Mind you, the process still took three months.

These days, I'd still rather drop certain people a card than an email. But often good intentions slipped away - usually because I didn't have a suitable card or piece of paper to hand and so needed to pop to the shops, and then I would forget to go for a while, and then it would be just too late to say thank you.

So when I saw these beautiful correspondence cards on Etsy I had to get them. They're personalised with my name in the bottom right corner, which is a lovely touch - and a useful one if your handwriting is quite so bad as mine can be - means gift givers should at least be able to work out why I'm writing. 

The paper is lovely and thick, and the cards are the perfect size for the message - thank you, or I made you this, or "boo!" - as well as a bit of news,  and the usual pleasantries - without becoming a full blown epistle. 

What I really love, though, is the slight creepiness of the illustrations. What is that Victorian gent doing with the giant butterfly? Does he know it's there? Is it a giant, or is he tiny?

 

I've been known to keep one or two in my desk drawer at work so I can send a quick thank you note for a dinner party the next morning if I think my host is old-fashioned enough to want a thank you note (and I don't think being old-fashioned is a bad thing at all in that context).

 

I got my cards here. There are oodles of cards on Etsy, but to my mind, these are still the best. Currently, there are none listed in the shop, just wedding invitations and calling cards - but the seller does do special requests, so if you send her a message, I'm sure she'll help out! I paid about £10 for 10, but that was a while ago.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that, by the time you read this, I'm going to need to write a thank you letter or two!