A Year In Redwood

There is so much pressure on people to ‘shop local’ this year. A good thing in our opinion. Actually I wish they didn’t have to have this mammoth advertising push to encourage people to do so.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if it just came naturally to people?

Personally I am probably any retailers worst nightmare. I am not good at shopping. In fact I dislike it at any time of year, but more so at Christmas time.

For the past 10 years or so, I have given up ‘buying’ gifts and instead resorted to making things for people. Standard items in gift boxes would be homemade chutneys, preserves and jams, and then I discovered how to make liqueurs so there might be a bottle of Cointreau or Limoncino included.

Now that I am back knitting family and friends have been inundated with hats, scarves and gloves!!!

So as you can see I am not of much use to local retailers!!! Sorry! However, when I do shop for wool, etc. I do make sure to buy from local shops.

This year I think we’ve taken the ‘shop local’ to a whole new level. Not sure if you know but there was no ‘inward’ bound post to Australia for a lot of this year, and post to the USA is extremely delayed in getting to its destination. This all prompted me to seek out some artisan producers in the neighbourhood of family away and do a ‘shop local’ in their own area.

This was not as easy as it seems. Off I headed to good old Dr. Google…. artisan food producers in Australia were so easy to find, and a good choice was thrown up. I got completely the opposite result for USA. Google threw up lots of ‘fancy’ shops that do Christmas gift hampers BUT nearly all were full of European produce.

Thank goodness for keeping in contact with some of our former AirBnB guests who I reached out to, and all came back with some great suggestions. So the job was done without me ever leaving the chair!

Another reason that prompted this method of shopping was a conversation with our postman. Can you believe that this week last year An Post (our national postal system) processed 1 m parcels? This year in the same week they’ve processed 3 million!!! And looking into the back of his van, unfortunately, the majority of the boxes were from Amazon.

Not alone am I not good with regular old-fashioned retail, but I have to admit I have never shopped on Amazon, and I don’t think I am likely to start now.

How do you manage your gift giving?