Belladonna Crochet Scarf

Tah Dah......
Finally a blog post, I'm getting very close to finishing writing my book and so normal service will be resumed in the very near future :-)

In the meantime here is my promised post about my new Belladonna Scarf, made and designed for The LITTLE GREY SHEEP

The Little Grey Sheep is based on Well Manor Farm in Hampshire, their aim is to conserve the countryside by farming as traditionally as possible.
Their flock of Gotland and Shetland sheep produce a stunning range of wool yarns, which are spun in Devon and then dyed by Emma on the farm.

Belladonna was designed to showcase their stunning collection of colours, when I visited their stand at Yarndale I was overawed by the depth and range of colour, I wanted all of them, so I designed a snuggly colourful warm winter scarf, that would use a collection of warm snuggly colours.
Belladonna is 4 squares wide x 30 squares long and has 4 tassels at each end, that you can see in the photo below.
It measures 66 x 9 inches/167 x 24 cm's (excluding tassels).

The sheep photographs are of Bilbo, who is a Gotland ram who is daddy to some of the sheep who kindly donate their fleeces to make the stunning wool yarn that was used to make Belladonna.
They were all taken by Emma of The Little Grey Sheep.
As you can see Bilbo makes rather a stylish model.
I've named the scarf Belladonna as its the name of Bilbo Baggins's mother and its nice to keep it in the family.
It's all very hobbitish :-)

The scarf needs 15 x 20 gm skeins (300 gms/approx. 860m) of The Little Grey Sheep British Stein Fine Wool® 4ply (Shetland/Gotland/Merino wool)
There will be kits available in the very near futue on The Little Grey Sheep's website which you can find here - THE LITTLE GREY SHEEP

You can find the pattern on Ravelry - HERE
And on Etsy - HERE 

 

Zodiac published

I've talked about this blanket for so long, if you go back through this blog you can find several previous Zodiac posts
And today is the day I finally publish it - YAY!!!
You can find it on Etsy - HERE
And Ravelry - HERE

I designed the Zodiac for a NDS blanket club about 18 months ago.
It took 6 months to design as the layout was so complex, I had to work out how the Zodiac constellations would fit together in the right order and then calculate yarn quantities and colours so NDS could dye 16 full skeins of yarn.
It doesn't sound like much but it was weeks and weeks of maths tweaking colours here and there to make sure they were used evenly.

So here it is.....

Exmoor is a designated international dark sky reserve; the reserves are classified as public or private areas that possess an exceptional quality of starry nights.
The layout of the Zodiac constellations were a perfect illustration of the stars you might see on a moorland dark night.
The blanket contains all 12 constellations in the right placement order, however they may seem backwards, but this is due to the earth revolving in an anti-clockwise direction.

The two motif patterns are both fairly simple, they only the basic stitch's, they are only a couple of steps more advanced from the traditional granny square.
The pattern includes step by step layout charts, and a colour key for each constellation , all of this hopefully should make it reasonably simple for you to follow.

Love Amanda

P.S - The photo's are a little bit dark, one day I will manage to get some perfect blanket photos.....sigh....

Behind the scenes

I'm sorry I'm a bit absent at the moment.
I've realised that I only have 8 weeks until my book deadline and am working away behind the scenes colouring in charts, writing patterns and trying to finish the last blanket.
It seems like its all very last minute, but I wanted it to be perfect so have spent the last 6 month's refining my pattern format and deciding how I was going to explain colour and alternative yarns.
The patterns are kind of under control, even though I still have about 14 layout charts to finish (originally there were 30!)
But I still haven't started writing the other bits, as I'm still working on it in my head.

The last blanket is almost finished, I spent the whole weekend crocheting like a mad woman and I'm now working on the last border of motifs.
Here are a few wip photo's that don't give too much away :-)

     

I will be publishing the Zodiac blanket pattern next week, so there will be a big blog post and still have the Little Grey Sheep scarf to finish before Christmas, so will be blogging about that too.
But apart from these 2 posts I don't have anything else planned.
BUT I have big plans for the blog in the new year, lots of pages to add, posts to write and maybe even a new website.

Wish me luck
Love amanda

VAT's & price rises

A bit of a monday morning rant.....

About a year ago, someone on Ravelry discovered that there were new digital sales European VAT tax laws/rules planned to come into effect on January 2015 and luckily for all involved told the community.
The VAT people claimed that everyone who would be affected should have been notified, however no one knew anything about it.
The rules are incoherent, contradict other rules/laws and absolutely ridiculous, they are supposed to force the big international companies like Amazon stop evading European VAT, but they apply to all businesses world wide that sell digital downloads to customers in Europe regardless of how big or small the business is.
I could write a very long essay trying to explain all the details, but it would be very boring for you to read and even if you managed to read to the end, you would be far more confused you were before you started!

The main result is that  knitting & crochet designers have had to increase their pdf patterns prices.
Designers have 3 options on how to deal with VAT
1 - Absorb the cost of the VAT and keep the pattern price the same, which means a big drop in income for the designer.
2 - Raise the pattern prices to cover VAT, this means the price goes up for everyone.
3 - Leave the pattern prices as they are, and charge VAT on the European sales.
Whichever option the designer chooses is unfair on themselves or their customers.
Sadly I rely on pattern sales to pay the bills and so can't afford a drop in income, so I have chosen option 3, it means the prices have risen for my European customers, but stays the same for all my international customers. Its unfair if you live in Europe, but at least some of my customers don't suffer.

The reason why I have written this blog post is to answer a thread on Ravelry
http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/patterns/3294295/1-25
It was started by customer's who weren't happy about the price rises, the thread has become very heated so I have chosen not to join in.

What I'm trying to say to you is "Please don't blame the designer's, its out of our control, if you want to have a rant, get in touch with your MP, MEP, VAT office, the IRS or anyone in power who you think will listen"

Phew......
Now I've come to the end of my small rant about a big thing I'm going to leave you with a happy picture, to brighten your week :-)
Its my new Belladonna scarf, photographed on the wild and windy moor yesterday.