Cushions & Goodbyes

This week has been a very emotional one, my whole week has been consumed by the very last NDS update and the immanent end of a business that I accidentally built 13 years ago.
I wanted our last update to be amazing, like the last firework of a firework display, I wanted to go out with a explosion of colour.
So we dyed a rainbow of nearly 70 colours, I had planned to put together a photo of all 70 colours, but ran out of time, so I am afraid this is the best I can do.

  

I spent the whole week in tear's, I hadn't expected to be so upset as NDS still has a couple of weeks left at Alta Lyn, I guess the update symbolised the last of the yarn, which was the core of NDS.
So putting it on-line Thursday night felt like the end of my world, I'm surprised I managed to press the update keys I was crying so much.
I didn't go home until 8pm Phil was waiting at the front door with a glass of wine for me.
I also came home to a really exciting e-mail, which held lots of amazing possibilities for the future.
I can't tell you more at the moment as none of the details have been worked out yet, but when they are I'll be doing lots of talking :-)
On Friday morning I woke up with a smile on my face for the first time in months and a huge sense of relief.
So I have my fingers crossed that I have cried all the tears, done my mourning and can now move onwards and upwards.

On a side note I finally understood why Tinks was so depressed and why she wasn't eating or drinking, she was sad because I was so sad.
I was really worried about her because she is was so skinny to start with due to her whippet genes and  I didn't think she could afford to lose much more weight and was beginning to think I needed to take her to the vet in case there was something seriously wrong with her.
I'm really pleased to say she is a lot happier now, although she still won't eat unless I sit with her, but she's smiling and bouncing again.
I just hadn't given her credit for being so loving and in tune with me.

Friday was my only real crochet day, as we spent a lot of the weekend at the studio sorting out stuff to recycle, stuff to give away and stuff to take to the dump before we can start cleaning and decorating.

So back to Friday, I didn't do much crochet as I felt like I had been run over by a train and needed some recovery space, but I did take several photos and looked at wool for a few hours.

  

On Saturday and Sunday in between trips to the studio and the dump I crocheted and had more good idea's.
I finally got around to working on the May instalment's of the Zodiac blanket clubs, the crochet one is nearly done it just needs it ends sewn and the knitted one doesn't take long as I have already sewn the ends, all I need to do is crochet the motifs together.

   

My good idea's were concerning cushions, I have always avoided things like cushions because they are one step away from cup cozies and iPhone covers, which I really don't want to design, not that there is anything wrong with them, but that they are far too small for me to play with motifs and colour.
But I came to the realisation that cushions were a lot quicker to make than blankets and took a lot less yarn and as I've already got a big queue of work I don't have any time to self publish new blanket designs for me.
And if I published some cushion patterns along side my blankets they might appeal to a much bigger audience.

The first design in the cushion queue is the colour wheel, I do have a blanket planned for this design, but its for my friend John Arbon's Knit by Numbers and I'm putting off starting it until I have a bit more brain space as I need to do complicated maths to make the pattern work.
The cushion maths is a lot easier :-)

Once I'd decided on the colour wheel cushion I started thinking about old designs that I could quickly translate into cushion patterns.
The most obvious and recent design choice is my Myrtle Scarf
Myrtle sadly seems to have been passed over, it hasn't sold many patterns and hasn't had much love compared to my 2 kissing circle blankets.
I'm not sure if its the photo's or maybe it looks too complicated or maybe it just doesn't look good as a scarf, but its going to look fantastic as a cushion - just watch this space..........

P.S - these 2 photos are of the scarf wrapped round a cushion to see what it looked like rather than the actual cushion design.