Terrential rain and a protest

What a day! This morning it was glorious sunshine and now it's bright and sunny again. But in between these two spells of sunshine we've had terrential rain. And in the middle of the worst of it we attended a community protest in town. The protest was against a 'massage parlour' which is due to open up in our small, Cornish, market town. Now some of you may think 'what's wrong with massage?' and if massages were all they offered I'd say nothing but they're also planning 'adult parties' and 'extra services'. Now I'm not going to spell out what these extra services may be - just use your imaginations. And if I also add that this establishment is highly likely to be staffed by women brought in from poorer countries and forced to basically work as slaves you will probably get the idea of what sort of establishment we're talking about here.

As I said we're a small, Cornish market town and our local town and district councils turned down the planning application for this establishment but a government appointed official (not our elected representatives) overruled the council's decison. Now there is a campaign to stop it. It's in the middle of a residential area, only yards from family homes. As I said we're a small town but over 200 people turned up this morning to protest against the opening of this 'massage' parlour. It wsa really terrential rain so having so many people turn up in a small town was amazing. Several of the local churches were well represented but it was nice to see non-Christians turning up as well. We had our photos taken for the local papers, radio and a TV station. Emily held a plackard reading 'Protect our children' adn as she is quite a cute little girl had her photo taken on her own by most of the photographers there. Okay, so Simon and I pushed her forward to the front of the crowd. I must admit trying to explain to the girls why we were attending this protest without telling them things they don't need to know about yet was hard. We were there for well over half an hour and all thouroughly soaked at the end but it was great to see so many people turn up and the unity and the mood was brilliant.

Before we went off for the protest I managed to dye some yarn quickly. I did 2 skeins of lace and 4 skeins of 4ply. That was all I had time to skein yesterday. I wsa doing pastels and 'strawberries n cream' this morning and here they are drying in the bath, although I may pop them outside in a minute to take advantage of the sunshine. I'm hoping these yarn will be on Etsy by the end of tomorrow.

The 'Spring Flower's yarn (from yesterday's post) has been reskeined now and will be on Etsy soon. One skein has a couple of knots in it so will be listed at a lower price. I just love this colourway and I'm tempted to keep the skein with knots in for myself.

I'm also starting up a new initiative - Surprise Yarn of the month. What is this? Well basically you order a skein of yarn before the end of the month and a specially hand painted yarn will be sent to you on the 10th of the following month. So if you order by the end of June, your surprise skein will be sent out by 10th July at the latest. The yarn will be especially dyed for this offer adn will not be on general sale or repeated again in the future. So you will be getting a unique, surprise yarn. All the skeins hand painted for this offer (and I will only dye them when I've received all the orders) will be hand painted using the same dye solutions but as each skein is individual they may vary slightly. The Paypal button for July's surprise yarn will be up on Etsy and the blog later today. I'm capping the orders for this offer at 20 so it's quite exclusive and remember you only buy one skein at a time so it's not like a club where you sign up for several months at a time. The price will be $22 if you buy on Etsy and £11 if you purchase through my blog. Postage will be free. Remember only 20 skeins available so be quick.