How did we get to 2021 so quickly? It's a complete mystery and yet here we are. So what's new for Lazykate in the year ahead?

When I first thought of having a textile business more than 20 years ago, my aim was to grow natural dyes, spin and sell my yarn. Such a labour intensive process would not have been sustainable at that time, the internet was very much in it's infancy and I had to contribute to our family with my part time job in a bank.

So buying in fibre and dyeing with acid dyes was the way forward for me to be able to make steps in my dream of my own business. I started with dyeing fibre for other spinners along with patterns designed by my mum and things grew slowly from there. This was the Eliza Scarf kit, the first kit I ever sold through etsy in 2008.

Lockdown has given us all a chance to think and maybe use the opportunity to make changes or rethink how we operate and although we can't completely change hour working practises we can certainly start with tiny steps to achieve a change in the long run.

So this year, we will be making steps to reduce our packaging and to move further with our greener choices, resusing and recycling where we can and encouraging our workshop attendees (in person and online) to use materials they have.

With that aim, we are expanding our online and inperson courses, teaching people to weave, weave yarn and cotton, create new patterns in our pick up stick workshops, dye their own yarn and spin locally sourced fibre. That's the plan, covid19 permitting and we're pretty excited about it.

We realise that there is a long way to go and our steps are indeed tiny but Rome was not built in a day and hopefully when we look back in a year we will see how far we have come.