Melissa Lawrence

Hi everyone. My name is Melissa and I hate Christmas. There, I’ve said it and let all the wrath of Rudolph “rein” down on me, I don’t care. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever been much of a festive fan. It probably dates back to when I discovered three of my mother’s nylon stockings, minus the suspenders but crammed to the toes with tiny parcels wrapped in cheap Christmas paper, hidden under my parents’ bed. I didn’t need to be one of the Wise Men to realise that the stockings had not been put there by Father Christmas. They had actually been put there by Mother Christmas who was probably too exhausted after individually wrapping 137 cheap plastic toys, not to mention the packets of sweet cigarettes (it was the 1960s) and the cut-price satsumas, to look for a better hiding place. I hope Santa is wearing flame proof trousers . But why, you ask yourself, as you force down that final crumb of your Waitrose All Butter Mince Pie (other mince pies etc etc), would anyone hate Christmas? We

Hi everyone. What is hybrid crafting? Along with “How can I hide yet more new craft supplies from my husband?” and “Why are there strips of red liner backing tape all over the dog?”, this is one of the questions that have troubled crafters ever since computers and crafting went to bed together. There are various definitions for the word hybrid but my personal favourite is “anything composed of elements of different or incongruous kinds”. The key word here is “incongruous”. Put simply, computer and crafting should never have been bedfellows. One is mechanical, impersonal, cold and at times (usually when you’re in a hurry and need to print something out before the kids get back from school), unbearably frustrating. The other is handmade, inviting, warm and relaxing, at least most of the time. (That red liner backing tape again.) In simple terms, hybrid crafting is just a mixture of digital crafting and non-digital crafting. Digital crafting requires an electronic device such as a compu

Hi everyone. It’s a strange time here in the UK right now. As they used to say in times gone by, “The Queen is dead. Long live the King!”  Thankfully we are a bit more sensitive in the new  century but nevertheless, everything seems totally out of kilter and off balance.   As someone remarked the other day, “There’s a lot of stuff swirling around at the moment” since Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II finally came to the end of her long and incredible life and was succeeded with immediate effect (to use a very new  century phrase) by her eldest son who is now King Charles III. This “stuff that is swirling around” is probably an apt way of describing the wide range of feelings and emotions that many of us seem to be experiencing, not just in this country but across the world too. Much like when Princess Diana died so tragically in 1997, a huge number of people (myself included) seem to have been taken by surprise as to how much the death of a 96 year old woman, whom most of us had never

Hi everyone. How focused would you say you are right now? I have to be honest and say "Not very". I've been blaming the recent UK heatwave, the menopause, putting my house up for sale, the distractions of working from home, Netflix and anxiety about everything from the war in Ukraine to the rising price of peanut butter. Of course, when I look back at the items on my list, I do realise that they sound rather like excuses. And what exactly does being focused mean anyway? My dictionary has several definitions for the word "focus" and the one that is the most relevant here is "a point upon which attention, activity etc is concentrated". OK, so it's really about concentration then? Now that's more like it. I feel as if I know where I am when it comes to concentration.  Back to my dictionary again. It defines concentration as "intense mental application". So far, so good, but how do you get into that zen like state in the first place? And

Hi everyone. I have to start this review with a confession. I was never a big fan of the comedy juggernaut that was Monty Python and I'm afraid that Fawlty Towers did nothing for me either. However, I am a big fan of the notion of "creativity", whatever it is, and I had no problem at all, when I heard about this book, in accepting that John Cleese would know a thing or two about it. To be honest, I was also attracted to the book because it says on the cover that it is ‘A Short and Cheerful Guide’ and as someone who now finds reading a whole book to be quite a challenge (Netflix has a lot to answer for), I decided to give it a go and much to my relief, War and Peace it is most definitely not. Although Creativity seems mainly aimed at writers, which makes sense given the background which Cleese is coming from, as someone who works with "creativity" on a daily basis not just in writing but in art, design and crafting too, I’m pleased to say that it still

Hi everyone. Happy Easter! I hope you’re enjoying this special time of year although rather like Christmas, it does seem to have become less about celebrating a significant Christian festival and more about how much money the retailers can make. Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a cross between Scrooge and the Easter Bunny, it did get me thinking about why Easter has become so synonymous with chocolate. After all, I don’t think Jesus ever tucked into a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (other chocolate bars are available) when he was on the road with his disciples, so why do we feel the need to consume our weight in chocolate every time Easter comes around? Back in the day, there was no chocolate at Easter. (Can you imagine it?) In fact there was no chocolate at all. (Yes, I know. A world without chocolate. How did they survive?) Although the cocoa bean which forms the basis of chocolate was first cultivated by the Aztecs and Mayans over 5000 years ago, sweetened chocolate didn’t ap

Hi everyone. Is it just me or does Valentine's Day get more OTT every year? Once upon a time it was just cards, roses and the occasional fluffy pink "teddy" (in every sense of the word) but now it's personalised star maps, digital radios, spa days, scratch off posters, heart shaped egg boards and hand-casting moulding kits. Check those last three out on Amazon if you don't believe me! Of course if you are single at this time of the Great Love In, whether by choice or necessity, it can feel even worse than Christmas. At least then you can probably find the odd relative or friend (odd often being the word) to help get you through the day and make you feel less of a Social Pariah. And unlike Christmas, there is the ignominy of the postman knowing that you have only received some double glazing junk mail rather than a card that is too big to fit through the letter box. As it happens, I try to treat Valentine's Day in exactly the same way as I do Christmas Day whi