What a week

This week has been so busy but a lot of fun.

First, K-Tog in Lustleigh, Devon on Sunday afternoon was fantastic. Terri and her group had put in a lot of work putting it all together. I was there to do a mini sock workshop and I'd brought two baskets of yarns to sell and some patterns. I also brought some of my knitting and 3 jumpers my Mum knitted for the girls when they were younger to display.

There were ltos of displays, a felting workshop, spinning and dyeing demos and a stitch n bitch cafe which I'd planned on visiting but I didn't get time. Adn the cakes looked so gorgeous. I'd also wanted to check out hte spinning but no time for thateither. It was so busy. I had peopel around the stall all the time. I had six people for the workshop and they all started at differetn times and they were all great and we had a lot of fun. One of the ladies I knew from the knitting group at Spin A Yarn and one lady attended my workshop at Spin A Yarn on Tuesday.

I also met 2 Norwegian ladies who were there on holiday. It was such a surprise to meet a Norwegian on the edge of Dartmoor but very nice. Also met a lovely American lady, Trudy, who had lived in Sweden and spoke pretty good Swedish which is similar to Norwegian so we could understand each other. She was at my Tuesday workshop too.

Here's a pic of my stall at K-Tog

and here's Joyce's stall (Spin A Yarn) before it opened. It was crammed full of people once it opened.

On Tuesday I drove up to Bovey Tracey (which is close to where I was on Sunday) to run a sock knitting workshop at Spin A Yarn. I had 4 ladies and they were all fantastic. One lady is Norwegian but have lived over here most of her life and she was down in Devon on holiday.Another lady was Trudy who I met on Sunday and who spoke Swedish. Then there were two other local ladies. We had a great laugh and I hope the ladies enjoyed it and learnt a lot. It's amazing how quickly the time goes.

And I was amazed at how many people were in and out of the shop all day. Apart from a quite period at lunch time the shop was packed all day. Joyce and her assistant, Alli, were kept very busy. We had a few stop and look out our mini socks too and admiring our skills with 4 dpns. And yes I did buy something but not for me, it was for someone else as a pressie so no photos. Only got a circular needle for me as I needed a 100cm long 5mm circular needle for a shawl in progress.

I'm teaching another workshop at Spin A Yarn in November. It's lace knitting for beginners next time and Ithink it's on Tue 27th Nov. Get your place booked quickly as places are limited.

Talking of lace. I've got a secret project on the go. I charted for it last night and coudn't wait to get started this morning and so far it's looking great. No pics or design details. All I'll say is that it'll hopefully appear in a mag next spring. My lips are sealed for now. But I'm so excited about it.

What else have I done this week? Well I dyed the rest of the club yarn on Monday and taught my daughter's Guide pack to knit last night. Taht was fun. They all did so well and enjoyed it. Even the ones who'd thought it'd be boring. The ones who struggled with the knitting did fingerknitting and I had some furry, glittery yarns with me. Jan, the Guider, who's a friend of mine and my massage therapist, made a gorgeous mobile phone holder out of some gorgeous soft novelty ayrn, I think it's called Gypsy and it's unbelivably soft.

Most of the international club parcels were posted yesterday and the rest are goig tomorrow togehter with the UK ones. I had planned to take the to the po today but I was just exhausted. Fell asleep in my chair this morning and struggled thsi afternoon.

And this evening we've had a B&Q consultant around to design and give us a quote for a new kitchen. I love the design he came up with. Our kitchen room is a difficult room as it has 3 doors and abig window and it's not that big. But his solution looks good. Bad news is that they won't be able to do it till January. We're getting another quote from someone else though before we decide.

To finish, a pic of some yarns I dyed about two weeks ago but I thougth they looked so good on the line. They're all South American Merino, some lace and some 4ply and some are in the shop now.

Nite x

Lime n Violet Etsy shop of the day

I'm so excited. On Monday 1st October I'm going to be featured on Lime & Violet The Daily Chum as their Etsy shop of the day. Did I tell you I was excited???? I first discovered their site last week when they featured 'Yarnimals', which btw sells the most amazing stitchmarkers and earrings. I've got several sets of stitch markers (ponies, sheep, pigs, ducks and ladybirds) and a pair of sheep earrings. They're really good quality stuff.

And don't worry if you forget to check out Lime & Violet next Monday. I'll remind you!!!!

In fact, they ought to be on everyone's daily reading list. Their site is brill and a great way to find out what's going on in the knitting world. They do a podcast too which I've heard is fab but I've no idea how to listen to podcasts. Do you need an ipod? I'll have to work out how to download podcasts as I hear there arelots of great knitting ones out there.

I had a deliver of merino yarn bright and early this morning. Before 8am! Didn't know ParcelForce started work that early. LOL. The yarn had to be skeined unfortunately, which is a job I hae and that seems to take forever. I'd hoped to skein 2kg but I only managed 1kg which is 10 skeins. Then they went into the vinegar. I hate the smell of vinegar. It makes me want to puke. Then after lunch I started dyeing. I couldn't get the colour I wanted right. I was going to go for the colour combo I'm knitting the October socks in but I just coldn't get it right. The yarn I'm using was dyed ages ago and I only did one skein and I didn't write anything down adn I think it was a result of a lot of mixing. So I decided on another colour which I prefer. It's dyed in the same manner as the original yarn. And now came the big challenge, making up large amounts of dye stock in the same colour and trying to get all the skeins to look roughly the same. I didn't think I did too badly. I'm hoping it'll be dry enough for tomorrow for me to wind up a skein and knit up part of the sock as a colour sample so that club members can see what the sock looks like knitted up.

Tomorrow the 2nd half of the yarn will be dyed. I'm definitely keeping a skein or two of this yarn for myself. It's gorgeous. In fact I'm hoping I can keep two skeins and use it for a shawl.

I want to finsih the typed pattern off tomorrow too so I can print it off for the club parcels. I'm worried my ink is running low and I'm going to Plymouth on Thursday so it would be a good idea to get it refilled then if I need to.

Not too much knitting yet today. But I'm about to turn the heel on the 2nd October sock. I'm hoping to finish it tonight. Although once I get past the heel, the main test knititng bit is done. I only really need one sock to take pics. So I may do past the heel and then put it on hold. Got another sock (part of another pair) I'd like to get done before Friday too. NOt sure if it's going to happen though.

Happy knitting!

Lots of dyeing pics

I had adelivery of BFL sock yarn and laceweight yarn yesterday. It was only a small order, aobut 10 skeins of each just to try it out.

So I decided to dye the sock yarn tonight and to try to dye a 100gr each of the fibres (shetland, merino and bfl).

Here's how the day went:

As it was lovely and sunny outside I decided to use our picnic table in the garden. So I carried all my supplies outside. Made up all hte dye solutions in the kitchen.

Doens't it all look neat and colourful:

I'd planned to write down teh colours I was using and dye all skeins individually and photgraph them as I'm starting to work on some regular dye recipes.

Here's skein 1:

and skein 2, using a bit of a random technique, which consisted of squrting turqoise and yellow dye randomly until whole skei nwas covered.

Skein 3

I had decided to dye each skein separately, using proper hadn painting techniques. I'm not too keen on ths method of dyeing and I can't do it in teh kitchen due to the mess it makes ubt it's fine for the picnic table. Then I realised what hte time was and that I had to be at afriends house in less than an hour. So away went the squrtie bottles and out came the bowls.

The reaminding skeins

Then the fibre, it all looks different here before microwaving:

Not quite sure what happened to the colour after rinsing

I think I need to do some research into how to dye fibre properly. I'm happy with hte result but what happened to hte blue bits. And the colours are a lot paler than I'd expected. I did it the same way as Idye yarn. More practice needed.

And here's the dye area once I'd finished:

Not quite as neat as it was when Istarted. Empty bottles and bowls scattered everywhere. Water everywhere. And most of that wet stuff on the floor is water rather than dye, apart from the red bit on the left.

Rushed clearing up and getting all hte yarns microwaved, rinsed and hung out.

Then a quick lunch, change of t-shirt, toilet and a spritz of perfume and ran out the door to visit my friend, Clare. Two of my other friends were there too and we had a Cornish Cream Tea - Yummy and sat in the sunshine in the garden and had a lovely chat.

Oh and this came in the post this morning

Hipknits aran and dk silk which I won in a charity auction run by Piglottie. Wasn't I lucky. The yarns are stunning, especially the dk (light blue/grey - it's like silver). I may do a Clapotis with hte aran and I'm thinking of doing a lace shawl with hte dk.

No spinning news today as I basically havne't done any since yesterday. But I'm curling up on the sofa with my knitting and a tub of Ben & Jerry's and a Julia Roberts film so may do some spinning then.

Watch out for an Etsy update tomorrow or Thursday - most of the BFL (keeping a couple of skeins for myself) and some more merino which I found in a cupboard earlier. Just needs re-skeining.