Congratulations were given to Raphael Selbourne for winning the 2009 Costa First Novel Award and we came across The Music Quarter, a new music blog.

Hustle made the move to the Midlands, we had a giggle with Kipple and the Emerging Festivals Fund was announced, with some of the fruits of that being revealed towards the middle part of the year. Leftfoot started their 10th birthday celebrations and our most popular post of the year was published.

Ian joined the CiB team, we got the first glimpse of WeVee and plans were announced for the CiB shop

We also waved hello to Jane Anderson, Mark Wilkinson, Lucy Pryor, Phill Blake, Helen Flanagan, Sarah Lynch, Jade Sukiya, Jodi Ann Bickley, Leon Sparkes and Luke Halliley.

We also said farewell to Neil Farrington.

Patterns contains loads of exquisite illustrations from five fantastically talented screenprint artists, who each have very different styles – Karoline Rerrie, Sarah Lynch, Ruth Green, Helen Entwisle, Daisy Whitehouse – and yeah, I did some stuff too. (Though I can’t call myself an artist!)

Love to Print Patterns #1 will be available at The New Art Gallery Walsall’s Artists’ Bookfair on 22-23rd May. If you can’t make it there though, watch this space for other ways of getting your hands on Pattern

Her post has photos too.

You can see some of Sarah’s ornithologically-inspired illustrations and screen prints on her blog.