Small is Beautiful This Week
Saturday, 2nd December is Small Business Saturday here in the UK. The first Small Business Saturday was founded in 2010 in the US by American Express. It caught on so fast that within a couple of years it had reached this country.
Buyer Beware
I love poking around small independent bookshops and always try to buy something. Many small businesses operate on a knife edge. I’m not a complete pushover, though! On one occasion, I decided to buy a book I wanted from a local bookstore, rather than get it from Amazon. When I got to the shop they didn’t have the book in stock, but the owner opened his laptop and offered to order it for for me, for delivery next day. I noticed he was going to be ordering it from the Amazon site, so I asked how much it would be. The figure he quoted was full price, so I told him I wouldn’t bother. I would have had no problem in paying the extra if I’d thought he had to pay full price to his suppliers, but for him to buy at a discount then bump up the price for me was not on. I went home and ordered the book from Amazon myself!
Charity Begins…
I buy charity cards whenever I can. This week I called in on the Charity Christmas Card pop-up shop in Hereford’s All Saints Church. Each charity represented had a section with selections of cards. There were also many different designs of Advent calendars, as well as ordinary calendars and diaries for 2024. I chose packs from two charities I haven’t supported before: GUTS, a charity supporting sufferers of bowel cancer, and Perennial, a charity which helps people involved in horticulture. That one is particularly close to my heart.

Last year I had astonishing luck in the raffle at a local church’s sale of work. You can read about that here. There were lots of lovely things on sale (as well as raffle prizes!). Events like this are a good place to find handcrafted local gifts. Market stalls are often the next step for growing businesses after they have been selling from home or online , so they need all the support and encouragement they can get.

…At Home
This year I’m trying to give useful presents. DD is getting a HotBin compost box, which might not sound very exciting but it’s something she definitely needs. Her little cottage is in such a picturesque part of Tewkesbury that there are strict rules about putting out rubbish bins. The less she has to dispose of, the better. She is already a dedicated recycler. This composting system will gobble up practically everything in the way of compostable waste, including cooked food. That’s the plan, anyway –we’ll have to see how it works out.
My sister rather rashly said she’d like me to make her some pyjama trousers, after seeing a pair I made for myself. I bought the material from a local supplier. You can see the fabric I chose in the header of this blog post. I’ve got as far as cutting the pattern pieces out and tacking them together, but then life got in the way. Those half-made pyjamas have spent the last week hung over the back of a chair waiting for me to get the sewing machine out!
Have you ever thought of making, rather than buying Christmas presents? How did you get on?
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