OUR 2017 YEAR IN REVIEW

WHAT A YEAR IT'S BEEN! 2017 has definitely been one to remember for us guys!

With Auld Lang Syne playing over the midnight bells and fireworks, like most others we wondered what the new year would bring. We had an idea of what to expect, but we could not have been more wrong!

Having secured a new job and landing a much sought after place at university I had decided that seriously.hooked.up would probably take a year off allowing me to concentrate on my career and studies. I won't go into detail here, but that plan went completely tits up from the very beginning. As always I turned to crochet (and alcohol) in an attempt to deal with my stress and started a new blanket (which is still a WIP 11 months later!)

This simple linen stitch (moss stitch) blanket caught people's attention and our instagram and facebook follower numbers began to grow. With work becoming more stressful I threw myself into crochet and soon racked up quite a collection of WIPs. Some (most) remain WIPs, some have been frogged and others completed.

I regularly posted on facebook and instagram about what we were working on and also about our fortnightly Stitch & Bitch sessions which we had enjoyed since 2015. We had decided to work on a group project and posted updates about our progress as we went along.

Our group project really captured people's imagination and we were often asked by those living locally if they could join our Stitch & Bitch group, however the venue being my living room and chairs being as rare as hens teeth we simply couldn't accommodate more people (more about this later).

We had lots of ideas about how we could make our passion for yarn a more permanent fixture in our lives and so after a few calls and emails to suppliers and armed with some of the most amazing yarns available we began searching for a venue to run a workshop / social session. We couldn't find anything suitable initially but then a chance encounter led to us viewing and then booking the William Segar Hodgson Pavilion in Kirkham! We promoted our workshops and socials and the response was great! Our socials were instantly more successful and enjoyable than the workshops were and so we ditched the workshops altogether. We've found that we can teach beginners and improvers during our socials in a far more relaxed way and at a more affordable price for our visitors. Stitch & Bitch is here to stay!

We can't wait to continue our work into the new year! We LOVE that our passion for crochet is bringing people together. We have made some wonderful friends over the last 12 months and we're looking forward to meeting new people next year! We're taking our little Stitch & Bitch to new locations and we're looking forward to participating in a number of charity initiatives!

Huge thanks to my little team (Paul, Angela and Kerry) for the hard work they have put in to making our ideas a reality. Thanks also to our suppliers and supporters, your faith in us to promote and sell your products has been a huge compliment and we look forward to working with you all for years to come. And finally thank you SO MUCH to all of you who have joined one of our groups, booked on to a workshop, sent a message of luck, shared our posts or encouraged us in any way, without you seriously.hooked.up would cease to exist.

We would like to wish everyone a very happy and healthy new year. We hope that 2018 brings to you the joy that 2017 brought to us.

Anthony