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.

Update's

Did you know I spend at least 2 day's every week preparing for NDS's Thursday night's wool update?
After all the yarn is tied, mordanted, dyed, dried and re-wound it ends up in a box beside my desk.
The tieing, mordanting, dyeing, drying and re-winding processes take at least a week, so we are now about to start dyeing for an update in the middle of March.

Anyway back to the pile.....
Daisy labels it all and then I sort it into different yarn types.
I take 2 skeins of each colour/yarn type and photograph them.
I take the photo's just inside the dyeroom door, so they get as much natural light as possible, if its too sunny there are too many shadow's and it its too cloudy the photo's are dull.
I take at least 3 photo's of each pair of skeins.
I load them onto my computer, sort through the photo's and delete the ones that aren't perfect until I end up with 1 photo of each pair.
Then I spend hours and hours on Photoshop trying to make sure the photo colours are as close to the real life skein.
I have a daylight bulb in the light above my desk, I'm not sure if it makes much difference, but its there anyway.
Some of the photo's need a massive amount of editing, it was too dull this week and I ended up spending  a whole day on the photo's alone.
The photo below is the before and after shots of Lynbridge 38 Angelus 4 ply.

Once the photo's are taken I load them onto FLICKR for the preview and then TWEET the link.
The tweet is automatically posted in NDS's FACEBOOK group.

After a bit of social networking (chat) I make new listings on the site and add all the yarn, depending on the update it takes inbetween 2 to 3 hours. They all go in the NEW THIS WEEK section, as well as their individual catergories.

Then I do some more social networking (chatting), sometimes posting a photo here and there.

On the day of the update I send out the mailing list mail - HERE is this week's and tweet it, which in turn facebook's it.
I remove last week's yarn from its extra sections and delete anything that's sold out, sometimes I forget to do this, so end up doing it while I'm doing the update, which causes huge confusion.
And then I do some more chatting about yarn.
Stupidly I always forget to blog about it and never remember to post it on Ravelry.
I think Ravelry is covered as most of our Ravelry girls are mailing list member's.
There is a sign up link to the mailing list at the top on the left hand side of this blog, so I'm sure some of my blog reader's are member's, so I think most people get to see my pretty yarn at some time during the week.

Then I forget about the update for a few hours and do some design work or dyeing.
I have my alarm set for 6.30 pm so I don't forget to do the update, at 6.59 pm my finger is hovering over the reveal button. Several clicks later and the yarn is revealed.
Sometimes I sit and watch the orders roll in and sometimes I turn off my laptop and eat my dinner - I forgot to tell you Homer normally manages to coincide dinner being ready at 7 pm on a Thursday night?
I don't know if he forgets or just thinks it funny to see me trying to click buttons while trying to avoid spilling food on my laptop keyboard.

My update job is done for another week and I have a few day's off until Monday morning when I start preparing for the next update.

And here's a bit more yarn porn of what's coming up tonight, between mouthful's flan or pasta or curry or something really sloppy. Sloppy is brilliant at slipping between keyboard keys....sigh.......

Back from Unravel

This post is a bit odd and more dyslexic than normal, I wanted to say the stuff in my head, but its not making a huge amount of sense as it comes out on the page.
Hopefully you will understand what I am trying to say :-)

I love Unravel, its the first show of the year after the long dark winter.
Its held at Farnham Maltings, the building is beautiful and it always has a lovely atmosphere
The show was fantastic, very, very busy both day's, normally Sunday afternoon is quiet and we have the chance to walk around and chat to all the other stall holders, but not this year.
The show was exhausting, I think I'm still trying to recover.

We sold lots and lots of wool, met lots and lots of lovely customer's, some new and some we already know.
Its always lovely to put names to faces and be able to catch up with all the news face to face.
Our evenings were spent with our lovely woolly friends.
We only ever get the chance to see them at show's, so time spent together is precious.

I also met a lot of people who told me how happy and well we both looked, guess the stress of last year was more obvious than I thought.
And several lovely ladies came and told me that they had read the blog for years and how glad they were that our life had changed so dramatically.
Its lovely to know that I have so many blog reader's :-)

I don't have any photo's, I did take a couple of very blurry ones on my phone, but have forgotten my iphone connector so can't post them here.

The journey home was quite a poignant one as last years journey home from Unravel included a detour to Lynton to sign contracts for our new studio and home.
A year ago our life was a nightmare and Devon was a dream that I didn't dare to believe possible.
I tried not to let myself get excited, just in case it didn't happen.
This year we were driving back home to our dream life that we now live every day, its not easy, but its heaven :-)

Lorna Doone

My only hobby outside work is reading.

I have to read every night before I go to sleep and first thing in the morning when I wake up, but only when I'm not bullied into get up.

My favourite's are the classic's, especially victorian novels, non-fiction history  (pre 20th century) and of course Tolkien, who wrote the Silmarillion my most favourite book of all :-)

I also like fairy tales and childrens stories

So when we moved to Exmoor I knew all about Lorna Doone, even though I hadn't read it.
What I hadn't realised was that the book was set in my local area.
I loved every page of it, from the dramatic love story to the descriptions of places I had come to know and love.
The tree lined secret river valley's, the windswept high moor's and one of my favourites the majestic Valley of Rocks and its resident witch - Mother Meldrum.
So when someone suggested I made a Lorna Doone coat I decided that Lorna was far more likely to wear a shawl so I designed her one.

I also decided that I needed an extra special yarn for Lorna, so we commissioned the Lorna Doone wool to be spun, its 40% Exmoor Horn, which is the local Exmoor breed./30% Wensleydale/30% Zwartbles
This photo was taken at Alta Lyn, of the Exmoor Horns that live in the field behind our office

And here it is...
All of the photo's below are taken a few minutes away from my front door, next to the East Lyn river at Lynmouth.

The pattern, kit and wool are all in today's NDS update.
You will be able to find them HERE at 7 pm tonight.
I'll also be publishing the pattern HERE on Ravelry

Still

We've or rather I have been silent for a few day's, don't worry we haven't disapeared we are still here, but we are still up to our necks in wool preparing for Unravel next weekend.

As you might have already realised Maisy Mae my number 2 dyer (and daughter) was away on holiday for 2 weeks, stupidly when she asked for time off we said, that's fine have a lovely time, we'll see you when you get back.

HOW STUPID WERE WE???

She'd sorted out all the clubs, but as the wool hadn't been dyed they couldn't be packed.

We are nearly 200 club member's, so as you can imagine managing the clubs themselves are almost a full time job.

So not only did I have 10 days to dye 80 kgs of wool  for the show, I also had 15 kgs to dye to finish off February's clubs.

I managed to do all the dyeing in 9 day's.

Towards the end I was so exhausted that when I went home all I could do was crash and sleep.

A couple of day's I went home in tears as I was so tired I didn't know what to do with myself.

I finished the dyeing on Thursday last week and it has taken me 3 day's to recover.

This is what the dyeroom looked like on the last day. The photo shows 32 kgs of wet wool.

Once the wool was dyed it needed to be dried and wound.

Our spare bedroom/study is almost packed to the ceiling and some where in the massive pile is Phil with a set of wool winder's winding skeins for England or rather Unravel.

Today is the first day back at work for Daisy and we are trying to work in an office full of wet wool, luckily its the last lot, we have our oil radiator on full and several drying racks.

The office feels like its a million degree's and I really think we are cooking our brains, trying to label, sort out kits and patterns.

Its all very blurry and confused, there is lots of tea making and giggling going on, I really hope we aren't making too many mistakes.......

Sheep boy's and crochet cake jumpers

I'm very, very tried and soggy.
We have 10 days to tie, mordant, dye, wash, dry, wind and label 80 kgs of wool to get it ready for Unravel in 10 days.
Daisy is away on holiday, so Phil and I are working almost 24 hrs a day.

My brain is exahusted, but I wanted to share a few photo's with you.

My cake jumper, I had nearly finished the body, I tried it on and it made me look like a barrel, so I frogged it and am now doing side increases to give it a more floaty shape. The trouble is because its aran its quite solid and now looks like a bell tent.
I'm hopeing it will drop when washed, but I like it lots more than the original.

One kg of chunky BFL slub that I managed to felt, I was test dyeing it to maybe add it to our range. But the wool doesn't take the colour very well, so i had to keep over dyeing it - result felted wool.
It is useable and I have crocheted a test square, it will be my next mindless project, but we won't be adding it to the range.
I ended up using a 9mm hook, so this really will make me look like a barrel.

And the sheep boys who live in the field behind the office.
They are Exmoor Horn (our local breed) and I think the prettiest sheep of all.
When I said good morning to them they all came running over, obviously thought I was going to feed them.

Incidently in my head all sheep are boy's and they are all called Barry - obviously thats not true, but I like to think some of them are called Barry.

Rainbow cake jumper with pompom's

Firstly thanks to everyone who commented on my copying post.
I found the comments really interesting, especially the difference in perception of what constitues a copy.
I've done some more research and have come to my own conclusion which I'd rather not share - enough said!

So onto my rainbow cake jumper with pompom's
As you know I've been working on this

And I was a bit bored with it, there is not enough colour changing, the existing colour scheme is a repeat of what I've already done. I need to be challenged.
So I decided to put it on hold and think about it for a while.

In the meantime I was crochetless, after last week's tooth incident I lost inspiration.
I've always found the way to tackle loss of inspiration is to just crochet something mindless.
So I rooted around in my stash and found 2 skeins of aran handspun that I had bought from my very talented friend Daniela, you can find her shop HERE
She spins the most amazing art yarn, if you fancy a treat I highly recommend a trip to her shop.
Anyway I also found a big pile of Dazzle Aran that I had intended to use for a blanket, I had done some swatching and decided I didn't like using such a thick yarn as I couldn't get enough detail into the piece.

Un-loved Dazzle Aran - I'm afraid I didn't photograph Daniela's skeins.

The 2 piles of wool fitted together perfectly so I decided to make a cake jumper.
If you are wondering what a cake jumper is have a look at this Father Ted video clip on Vimeo
Cake jumper has become a term used for big baggy shapeless sweather in the NDS household.

Its cold in Lynton and its not a glamous place, nearly all the residents are self employed and work very hard for a living, so everyone tends to walk round the village in their work clothes, a lot of the time their attire involves wellies and mud.
In the 9 months I've lived here I've only seen one or two suits.
I'm not glamous I'm scruffy, most of the time I have blue hands and dye stained clothes, no one cares,  I feel I can wear a cake jumper without being judged or laughed at.

So here it is, I started it saturday and am hopeing to wear it to the pub friday night.

Coincidence or not??

As I have already told you on several occasions I am not a prolific designer.
Each one of my designs takes ages to make and design, I put my heart and soul into my crochet, I do it because I love it.
So when I discover that someone might have copied me I get very upset and angry.
My designs are very personal to me and I feel betrayed and helpless.
My initial reaction is to shout about it and make a huge fuss, then calm down, forget about it and move on.
Yesterday I was made aware of the pattern below.
I decided to sleep on it and to see how I felt in the morning.

Lily is probably my most popular pattern, it was first published in 2011 and was a best seller almost instantly.
It has nearly 2300 hearts on Ravelry, plus loads of projects.
RAVERLY LILY
We have sold thousands and thousands of copies of the Lily pattern all over the world.
It always has pride of place on our stand at shows and always gets lots of attention and admirers.
Lily was designed in honour of my mother, so is very personal and special to me.

Our Mini Skein club grew out of the need for mini skeins to make Lily.

Last year not only was the Lily pattern in my blanket book, its also the cover photo.

So why am I so upset??
I'm upset because I found the links to this.....

The motif is almost identical, the foundation chain has more stitches, round 2 uses trebles instead of half trebles and round 5 is missing.

My Lily chart.

The other one

You can find it HERE on Ravelry.

You will notice the published date is January 2013.

There's a Facebook group HERE

and best and most upsetting of all it's been published in a book which is currently selling on Amazon.

Now you tell me...

Is it a coincidence?

Am I overreacting and being too sensitive??

Should I grow a thicker skin and be less of a drama queen??

I don't know, what do you think?

Star Scarf part 2

Here it is.

The orange trianges have begun to fade.
And you should be able to see the design emerging.

Quiet day's & books

The snow has gone and the temperature has gone back up, the birds are singing and the sun is shining and its very peaceful here on Sunday morning.

I thought I would share what I have been doing for the last few days.
We were snowed out of the studio for several days last week, so we have been working at home.
I decided it was about time I started on the next motif book, so I have been gathering motif patterns together and sorting through swatches and photographs.
It doesn't sound like a lot, but it takes ages, each photo needs editing and charts need to be re-checked.
Today is day 3 of photo editing, so I'm having a break for a while and writing this post.
My evenings are spent crocheting and I have a lot of swatches to make for the book, but I'm really struggling to make them, all I want to do is make orange triangles.

So not only am I working on a motif book, I'm also working on an orange triangle book.
I'm using the same motif for all the designs and each one will have at least 1 orange triangle lurking in the design.

So far I've made 2 blankets and 1 scarf and have just started work on a second scarf.
You have already seen the first blanket - Lecchi
And sneaky peaks of the second blanket which is still secret.
The first scarf is going to be published in a magazine, but I do have a photo to share.
Its a pile of ends, I like sewing in ends, if you do it at the end or beginning of every time you sit down to crochet it becomes easy and a lot less stressful.
But sometimes I don't want to stop crocheting so end up with a huge amount to sew in, thats why I have this pile of ends.

For the last couple of night I should of been swatching motifs, but did this instead - its the second scarf.
Can you see the orange triangles??
Its made with Dazzling lace and so this swatch is quite small, I'm hoping the orange triangles will disappear into the background as it grows.

This scarf won't be secret so I can post photo's as I make it, but you won't be able to buy the pattern until I publish the book :-))

Why I use natural dyes

When I first started dyeing 12 years ago I couldn't afford chemical dyes, so I used what was in my garden and the local hedgerows.
I became very skilled at dyeing yellow and beige, but there are only so many times you can use yellow and beige, so I saved up and bought a few chemical colours.
I hated them, they didn't have any character and I didn't know what to do with the exhausted dye baths, it seemed wrong to pour something down the drain that I was unsure of. 
Was it harmful? or was it safe?
I didn't know anyone to ask, so went back to my natural dyes.
I still don't know much about chemical dyes, but I do know a lot of chemical dyers who are ethical, responsible and skilled people and that their dyes are tried and tested to be as safe as possible.

In the early day's I used alum and cream of tartar as mordants, they were freely available, alum was used in hospitals to bath bed sores and cream of tartar was used in cooking, so I felt that I was safe to use them without harming the environment.
After a year or so of yellow and beige I discovered a supplier who sold historical plant dyes and mordants.
My world changed, suddenly my colour palette was a lot bigger and I had the option to use lots of different mordants which made the palette possibilities even bigger.

I quickly wrote off using the mordants as most of them are heavy metals and certainly couldn't be poured down the drain.
So I still only use alum and cream of tartar.

The dyes were all the raw materials, which meant lots of boiling and soaking to extract the colours.
It was like making mud pies for adults, I loved it.
I used the raw plants for many years and was very snotty about extracts as I believed it was cheating.
But then NDS grew too big, we needed to cut down on the time it took to prepare a dye bath, so now I use extracts.
Most of our extracts are made by a very ethical company who grow a lot of their own organic plants and are soil association certified.
They are only too happy to give us advice and answer all our dye related questions.
When I first started using extracts I was really happy to discover that they behaved in exactly the same way as the plants.

I find it impossible to obtain the same colour from the same dye using the same recipe each time.
The dyes are effected by the water quality, weather and the time of year.
For example the dyes play up in the winter and the colours lose their intensity, but by the spring we can get a lot deeper, more saturated colour.

For example the first photo below shows Angel lace dyed in the spring and the second shows Angel lace dyed in late autumn.

Last year we moved to Devon from Suffolk, our water type changed from alkaline to acid. 
The water type effects the colour, its been a huge learning curve and challenge not knowing what colour to expect.
The colours seem darker and more intense here, but we have to add chalk to several of the dyes, to get a similar colour.
It will take us several years to know what to expect each season.

You may notice I am using "we" instead of "I", thats because Daisy our number 2 daughter moved with us and has become my apprentice, we have learnt about the new colours and how the dyes react together.
Its been a huge amount of fun, every dye bath is exciting.
She has by-passed the years of stinging nettle dyeing and gone straight to extracts.
But she's already become a skilled dyer, some days she does all the dyeing and creates new colours on her own.

But this year we are faced with a new colour challenge, but I'll tell you more about that another day.

Our very first snow in Lynton

Occasionally it used to snow in Suffolk, not much, but a little bit.
Over the past week I've been following the weather forecast and its seems to be snowing a lot in Suffolk, but we didn't have any here.
While Suffolk was snowed in we had manky grey drizzle, but all that changed on Thursday night.

We woke up to snowy Lynton yesterday morning, we are very close to the sea and the roads were melting by about 10 am so Phil decided we would go to work.
He wouldn't accept that there would be more snow the higher you went and persuaded Dais and myself that it would be fine and we were being wimps, so off we all went.
The drive up the hill was very slow and tricky on the hair pin bend, there were several places where snow was drifting across the road, but even still he was determined to get through.
Eventually we got through, Alta Lyn is up a tiny lane, up a little hill and down a little hill.
Up was ok, down was ok, but turning the van round so we could go home wasn't.
The van got stuck on the very small hill, luckily there is a grit box outside the studio gate, so Phil had to do griting just to get the van out so we could go home again.

Here are some of the photo's just to prove we made it.

Outside the dyeroom

The studio and dyeroom

Lynton from Alta Lyn

And Daisy being a standing up snow angel.

After a manic post packing session we made it down the hill very slowly with not too much trouble.
When we got home Phil took Loki out for a walk and took lots more photo's

The Torrs hotel, Lynmouth from the North Walk

The Lynton cricket pitch in the Valley of Rocks

Lynton 

Loki loves to roll in snow

Hollerday Hill from South Cliff, if you look really careful you can see a row of wild goats walking along the path in the middle of the photo.

Countisbury Hill from the North Walk

And finally the Valley of Rocks