Goodbye Website

I have has a website since 1999.
Over the course of time I have built several sites with the help of site builders, I honestly think that this one is the best, but now is the time to say goodbye forever.

Before it goes you can find it here Amanda's Perkins Art

The site has galleries and a shop, the shop has never sold much more than a few crochet patterns, some months the sales will pay for the site, sometimes not.

Wix my site provider has tripled the prices of its services, even though I love it I can't justify the price for a glorified portfolio. Wix will close my site and I will lose my domain name on the 30th of May.

I'm not entirely sure what will happen as they provide a free website service and might transfer some of it to a free site, only time will tell.

The demise of my site will leave me without a on-line presence, so I have resurrected this blog.

I've had a blog since 2006, I started writing it for promotional purposes for my then business The Natural Dye Studio.  

It was called Dye Studio Diary.

The blog is a mix of yarn news & photo's and a personal diary of my life. 

In 2010/11 we went through a crisis of redundancy and losing our house, I blogged all the way through pouring my heart out, for me it was a cathartic process. At some point later I deleted all the emotional posts on the advice of my book agent, she didn't think potential publishers would want to read them.

My next blog was Amanda's Crochet Blanket Adventures

Again it was a mix of personal and professional, it covered the birth of my grand boy's and the birth of my crochet books.

At some point in time I stopped blogging as I had a brand new shiny website with a blog of its own.

Amanda Perkins Art website blog

I never liked it, it had no soul so I tried to be professional, I didn't blog very often as I had nothing to say.

There's not much more I can say about it, except it might disappear on the 30th of may.

So I'm back here after 4 years, posting about my life and art, it feels like I am talking to an old friend.

I know not many people will read this as the Facebook and Instagram algorithms have silenced me and only a handful of people will ever find it. 

But that's ok, my grandboy's will find me one day if they ever decide to look.

Love you both 💙💙

Maggies Blanket Book

 Repost form my website blog, posted in October 2021

I'm very proud to announce the publication of Magnus's Magnificent Crochet Blankets, which is available as a paper back on Amazon HERE

Magnus is my second grandson, his book as take over 4 years to complete, the book started off life 18 months before Magnus was born, its was originally going to be a book of crochet circles blankets, hence the reason why the blanket motifs start with a simple crochet circle.

I had made several of the blankets, but never really got started on the book, once Magnus was born I knew I needed to dedicate a book to him as I had for his big brother Bert.

It's taken me nearly 4 years to finish the blankets, plus 6 months writing patterns and a week of stress trying to get it accepted by Amazon's computerised review system (apparently one of the pages was a fraction of a mm too big).

The book contains 9 blanket patterns which were all photographed on some of our favourite local beaches on the days we looked after our boys.

Some of my favourite reject photo's of all the blankets.

It's not easy photographing two small boys, so I let them loose to play, get the blankets wet & cover them in sand. Dogs, dinosaurs & dump trucks also feature, it was a special moment in time recorded for the boys to remember in the future.

I'm very proud of this book, its very personal to me full of love and laughter.

I feel it is my magnum opus, at this moment in time I have no plans to write another crochet book and so might be my last.

The patterns are only available in the paperback book, when I have time I will add them to the Ravelry reference library, but I'm afraid they won't be available as single patterns.

Also the kindle version won't be available for some time, maybe next summer, Amazon publishing has changed their publishing programme and which means I will need to rewrite the whole book.