A rainbow club is born

Just a very quick post as I have been up to my neck in wool all day.
Photographing and editing for tomorrow's update.

I'd like to announce yesterday's idea is now a reality and I have added the new rainbow club to the site.
You can find all the details HERE

Rainbow Club???

Everyone loves rainbow's
Especially me :-)
I use a lot of rainbow colours in my work.

I get really excited when I see lots of colours together in the same place.
In the past I've bought some really hideous clothes because I was so excited about the colours, only to realise later how awful they looked.
I love paint charts and art shops where the paint and pencils are displayed in colour order.

I am obsessive about the colour order.
I don't know if you have noticed that all colour names of my yarn are in rainbow order, they are alphabetically named so that the colours will appear in the right order on the site.
You can see what I mean if you follow this link to Dazzle BFL 4 ply/sock - Dyed to Order.

We used to dye rainbow colour yarn, but the trouble with it was that it looked amazing in the skein, but I was never happy with the way it looked when worked up.

I'm far happier using lots of separate colours together as then I have control as to how they work together and where they appear in the project I am working on.

I woke up yesterday morning thinking it might be nice to do a rainbow club.
I could start at one end of the rainbow and each month dye the next colour along.
The club would be for me as I love the idea of dyeing a continuous rainbow.
It would give me a huge palette to dip in and out of.
I think I'd do it in Dazzle 4 ply/sock as its one of our most versatile yarns, I love Dazzle its a proper woolly wool and not too expensive.
I could use the colours in all sorts of exciting new ways and maybe come up with some new designs too.

I guess you might like it too?
Let me know.........

Lovely, lovely Lily

Lovely Lily was named after my Mother.

 I have always made a fuss about my Bessie (my granny) as she was the one I remember making blankets.

But after my Mother died a few years ago my Dad decided to move house.

When he cleared the house he gave me lots of old crochet blankets that he had found stored away.

I realised that these weren't Bessie blankets, they were Lily blankets.

I don't ever remember seeing her knitting or crocheting, maybe that's why I had forgotten that she did so.

She was an seamstress and spent all her time sewing and collecting a huge stash which filled a whole room.

A lot of her fabric was pretty, flowery Laura Ashley, when I designed the Lily motif I had my Lily in mind.

The Lily pattern has always been a hit, it has over 2,000 hearts on Ravelry.

So it was only natural that Lily went into my blanket book.

We photographed her everywhere, my favourite photo's were taken in the West Lyn river. 

We live on one side of the river gorge and Alta Lyn (NDS's home) is on the other side, you can see Alta Lyn from Lynton, although it is a 10 min drive from our house to get there.

Anyway back to the photo's...

It was a beautiful sunny day when we took these photo's, there were quite a few tourists having picnics and enjoying the woods beside the river.

They must of thought we were totally mad.

Phil and I clambering about in the river trying to find suitable rocks to lay blankets on. At one point he stumbled and I thought he and the camera were going to fall in, luckily they didn't.

Then we took Lily down to the harbour wall at Lynmouth to get some detail shot's.

I love these photo's :-)

We sell Dyed to Order Lily Kits in NDS's shop.

But we also have some Lily Starter Kits, which are our featured kit of the week.

The starter kit's contain 500 gms of yarn, which includes 2 full 100gm skeins and 300 gms of mini skeins in varying size.

At this moment in time the kit is reduced to £59.50, its will go back to its full price of £70 on thursday.

What's the sneakiest place to hide a stash?

Today is a designing day.
I have several things I need to work on - Motif club motifs and the Mystery blanket club for next year.
My main inspiration is colour, especially the colours of my yarn, as you probably know its all naturally dyed and the colours are softer than chemical dyes.
I believe they are kinder colours on the skin, it doesn't matter what age you are or colour your skin is, the natural colours will flatter you.

So I normally start a designing day with my stash. I don't have a huge stash at home as I have the pick of NDS's stock whenever I want it, so I keep most of my stash on-line in NDS's Shop.
The rest of it is kept in baskets around the flat, I like to be organised.
There are baskets for each weight, although having said that I only have 4 ply and Dk at the moment.

I keep the yarn on old circular knitting needles (which I also use to hold motif's, when making them).
I bend one end over and slide a small ball of yarn onto it, then bend the end around the ball so it fixes it in place and stops motifs and balls sliding off the end.

This is the blanket I am working on at the moment, its secret, so you will have to wait and see.

I collect colours on the needles, the yarns are normally a selection of types rather than a single yarn type as its the colours that I'm more interested in. When it comes to writing a pattern I normally choose the yarn that features the most in the design - I know its a bit naughty of me, but its the way I have always worked.

Someone on NDS's Facebook Group joked that she would have to hide her stash in a duvet to stop her husband from realising how much she had got. This made me think it might be a nice idea to run a competition for idea's for the best stash hiding places.
So that's what I am going to do.

The competition is "What's the sneakiest place to hide a stash?"
Just comment on this post with your hiding place idea's, the best idea will win a skein of their choice from my giant NDS Shop stash.
On November the 1st 2012 I will ask Phil to judge them.
In theory being a man he should know places he wouldn't think of looking for a hidden stash.
However in reality he is a knitter and has his own stash that he hides from me in plain site.
His stash basket looks like its full of patterns and needle cases, but every so often he drags out a skein of yarn hidden in the bottom of his basket that I had no idea he had.