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Unbelievably it is two years since I began, what became, a huge project entitled the Cornish Year.

Following the lead from a booklet, which I picked up at a Christmas fair in Penzance, entitled The Cornish Year written by the President of the Truro Old Cornwall Society in 1926. The booklet had an entry for each date of the year, a Cornish tradition, a Cornish Saint or a famous event or person of Cornwall. I decided in the dark days of post Christmas lull to illustrate the entries. It soon became evident that some of the saints weren’t Cornish and some of the entries had no relevance to the date they were aligned to.

This led to me a lot of online research double checking the booklets information and as I researched I found more and more stories I wanted to include. As the year progressed I found more and more resulting in having to extend the year by an additional three months.

Each event/person/place was illustrated digitally on my iPad. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the amount of illustrations on paper quick enough, thank goodness for digital layers!

I had no idea that it would grow from 365 posts to over 740! Had I known that I probably would not have even started.

However, I am so glad I did. It ignited my passion for Cornish history and finding the lesser known stories that make up the remarkable depth of history in this amazing land.

I’ve decided to revisit the 740 posts and have chosen ten for each month to tell you more about. They are some of my very favourite stories I found during my long year of research.

I do hope you enjoy them.

Here are all the illustrations I shall be documenting in January.

Sally x