Or this post might be better titled “my year of taking selfies”. Honestly, I never have photographs taken of me, you could look through our family albums and boxes of photographs and note that I am the (often poor) photographer catching the moment. So I am so surprised that I have kept this going.

Reader alert – I’m going to get all philosophical now and there aren’t many pictures!

Reflecting on the year and my real reasons for starting a blog I can relate the whole thing to the quadruple bottom line so fancied in sustainable organisations everywhere. My reasons for blogging then are:

1. environmental – today, coincidentally is the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory fire and is “Fashion Revolution” day.
2. economic – what can I say? I am saving so much money by making my own clothes, although this was not a primary reason for handmaking clothing, it is a nice by-product.
3. social – this is the surprising one for me. I am now connected to people all over the world and I feel as though I know them. I didn’t think this would interest me, but it does. There are so many fabulous, talented people out there that it’s kind of humbling to make my rather paltry offerings. It’s also nice that my sister and niece, who live on the other side of the world, can see what I’m up to and see photos of the family. My neglected friends can see what I’m doing and my Mother-in-Law gets the blog posts as monthly printouts (I know, not very environmental, but she’s not connected to the internet), and can see how her son and grandchildren are going – I have been very poor at sending her photos so this assuages my conscience somewhat.
4. cultural – I almost made this list a triple bottom line, missing out culture, but on reflection I think that there is now an amazing culture of moving back to hand made clothing and items – probably for all the reasons mentioned above.

Of course, then there’s the whole Fadanista bit, my friends are always telling me that I have fads and now I can indulge them without shame. So, a roundup of favourite posts for the year? Hmm, tricky. I love the things I make for my family and when they’re happy, I’m happy: Mark loves this one – http://fadanista.com/2014/04/19/rugby-shirt and this one http://fadanista.com/2014/02/10/chevron-shirt/ Tom likes these: http://fadanista.com/2014/02/19/japanese-cotton-shirt and http://fadanista.com/2014/04/06/the-first-flannie (also shows Mark in his Rugby top) and Archie has these two http://fadanista.com/2014/03/12/white-shirt and this one http://fadanista.com/2014/03/01/black-shirt/

and I love this one on Bridgette http://fadanista.com/2014/01/27/double-stashbust and me? Well, there are things that I like, but I think I like the back of this shirt almost best of all http://fadanista.com/2014/03/18/vintage-blouse and I am also pretty taken with my Hitofude cardigan

http://fadanista.com/2014/02/02/hitofude-cardigan/

Coincidentally, today is the 24th anniversary of moving into our derelict house, and it’s also my sister’s birthday. A good date all round, methinks!

Thank you to everyone who has happened past my blog and for your generous and encouraging comments – you can’t know how much I appreciate them.