It’s some time since we started a family hobby of sewing – all sorts of things come out of our dining room these days and not very many seem to be food related. Our dining table has become the sewing table – it’s big enough to have the sewing machine parked nearest the power sockets and behind the machine we have our self healing cutting mat. Strangely I didn’t plan to buy such an item when we popped into a local craft store last year. Knowing they’d only just reopened after lockdown 1, I saw it standing up against a wall and having no idea how much one would be on the usual online sites, I rashly said I’d take one, together with a few knitting supplies. I’m so glad I did buy it there and then. It’s been so useful and really does self heal when a cutting blade is used too enthusiastically and it has saved our oak table beneath from life threatening injury so many times!