We went to Germany

Last week we went to Germany for the H & H trade show in Cologne.
Its a massive show, Europe's version of TNNA.
This blog post is the photographic story of our trip.

We left on Wednesday morning for a 13 hour drive from Exmoor to Cologne.
We crossed the Channel via the Channel Tunnel, we've used the tunnel before but never as freight.
It was a bit of an education because we were in with all the big container lorries.
This is us in the queue waiting to board.

The check-in was all automatic and done by touch screen, the trouble was the screens were lorry height, Phil had to stand on the seat in the van to reach the English button, the lorry driver's behind us weren't impressed with how slow we were.
This is the train, we expected side's, but there weren't any. Once we'd parked we were told to get out of the van, board a mini bus that took us to the driver's carriage. We were both a bit worried that the van would fall off mid tunnel

But all was fine, we got off the train drove past Brussels in evening rush hour and snow on the German border.

Thursday was set up day.

Our lovely friend's and neighbour's shared half the stand.

I was still sewing in ends of the spiral blanket hopeing it would look ok on the wall.

And it did. Lecchi and the nameless spiral will both be in my triangles book later in the year, so it was lovely to see them together.

We were really pleased with the finished stand and so were our customer's.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were show day's. We were so busy we I didn't have time to take any photo's except this one. It's taken from the car park on the roof of the exhibition centre.
We met lots and lots of lovely customer's, I'm happy to say our wool will be stocked in lots more shops around the world.

And then Monday we came home again, another 13 hour drive, we did have a brief stop in a hypermarket at Calais. I say brief, but it wasn't! We were there for at least 2 hours, I struggled to get Phil out of this aisle.

And then back to work on Tuesday, there really is no peace for the wicked.....

My new baby - Tinkerbell

If you've been reading my blog for a while you will know that our "Ted bad poodle" died early in the new year.
I miss him very much, he was my walking partner, but the time has come to try and fill the Ted shaped space.
I'm really excited to announce I have found my new baby.
She's the one with the fat white tummy.

Her name is Tinkerbell.

She is a Whippet/Bedlington Lurcher.
If you search google images HERE you can see what she will probably look like, she's a rough coat so hopefully will look like a small wolf hound.

I've stolen this image from a dog breed site which you can find HERE

Tinkerbell is 6 weeks old so I can't have her until the end of April. I'm so excited and broody, luckily we have 2 shows inbetween now and then so time will fly by.
We will come home from Wonderwool on the sunday evening and on monday morning we will drive to the bottom of Cornwall to pick up Tinkerbell..
Coincidently at the same time last year we were driving to our new life on Exmoor.

Prepare yourselves for lots and lots more puppy photo's in the very near future.
And I will carry on dreaming of my new life with my Tinkerbell, loving and cuddling her and also training her to be a good girl so she can come to work aand meet all our lovely visitors.

Emergency crochet

I haven't posted since February, its not that I don't have anything to say, its just that I'm too busy to say it.
Spring is a very busy time for us, we have 3 show's in a row all within the space of 8 weeks.
Plus all our clubs, wholesale and updating the website.

We are off to Cologne, Germany on wednesday for show number 2, its a trade show so is slightly different to the other 2.
But it means we need 1 skein of each colour way in all the yarns, thats about 170 skeins all dyed seperately, so as you can imagine Dais and I have been dyeing for England.
Last year we had our lollipop tree for the stand which wowed the customers.
I knew we needed something extra special for the stand, but last week I had no idea what and time was running out
The dyeing and update was finished by last friday, so I had 3 day's to come up with something amazing.

Luckily I had already started playing with a new blanket design, which I was going to keep secret for my new triangle book in the summer.
I started playing about a week ago, but hadn't really done much as I have other things I need to do.

Thursday night I made the decision that as I didn't have any other inspiration that I would have to get my secret blanket to a size that could be shown on the stand and big enough to wow the customers.

So I have been crocheting all weekend, and I mean all weekend.
The photo's are all a bit rubbish as they are taken with my iphone.

Friday morning it looked like this

And Saturday morning it looked like this

Saturday night

And last night at about 9.30

I then had to crochet all the little blue filler circles and eventually after crocheting for 16 hours I went to bed at 1 am, I still haven't sewn in the ends, but if I thread them all through onto the back I think I can fake it.
It measures about 30 inches from side to side and when I come home from Germany I will turn it into a bed sized blanket which was my original intention.
The blanket will be velcro'ed on the the stand wall so hopefully no one will notice.
At the moment its wet and blocking in the dyeroom, I hope its dry by tomorrow night as we need to pack it for its debut in Cologne.