Madder Triangles is Finally Published!

This a long photo heavy post and if you want to find out where to buy the book you will need to make it all the way to the bottom of this post :-)

Drum roll please.......

Madder Triangles was published on Monday night, so far the reception has been amazing.
The plan was to publish the PDf and use the funds to pay for the printed version and we are already half way to our target number of 300 copies. if it keeps going like this we will be able to print lots more.

Madder Triangles is unlike any other crochet book, rather than containing lots of crochet stitches and complicated patterns it focuses on colour and surface design.
I have designed a really simple triangle crochet motif, because I wanted beginners to be able to use the book.

If you can make a grenny square you should be able to make my triangle without too much trouble.
4 of the designs use this motif and there are 4 variations of the motif that make the other 4 designs.
The variations are simply taking a few stitches away for the main triangle.

The book is written in 2 sections, the first half contains all the info needed to use the book and the motif patterns.
The second section contains the designs, each design has its own information as to what you will need, yarn, hook etc etc And colour photo's and "crochet by numbers" charts and key's.

So onto the designs, these are some of my favourite photo's

KALEIDASCOPE

Lecchi Blanket 

Plankton Scarf  

RIPPLE 

The Rising Sun 

Isabella Scarf 

SPIRAL

Spyro Blanket 

Firefly Wrap 

WINGS

Icarus Shawl 

Serefina Shawl 

You can buy it on the NDS website.

Either as a PDF

or Pre-order for the print copy

I will be adding all 8 of the single patterns in time for tomorrow nights update.

Or you can buy it as a PDF on Ravelry

Some of the patterns are available as singles, I will be adding the rest today.

Spyro Crochet Blanket

We are off to Blacklands in a couple of hours to do the second photoshoot.
At the moment the sun is shining, but its high tide, so we have to wait a couple of hours until the tide has gone down a bit and the rocks are exposed.
I'm really hoping it looks like this, with a bit more sea and less rocks.

Spyro is the second blanket from my new book, it was named after a character in a computer game that my children played during their childhood of the same name.
Spyro was a small blue dragon who had to run around a very colourful kingdom collecting gems.
I remember watching Spyro run around in circles a lot. 
I've blogged about it several times and twittered my progress day by day in the very early stages..
This is how it started.

I wanted to take it to the Handerbeit trade show in Germany in March, so I raced time to get it to the stage below.

And here it is finished.

I've just added the pattern to Ravelry HERE

And I've added the kit to the site HERE

Lecchi done

My Madder Triangles book is so close to being finished.
I just have a few more photo's to take and it will be ready to be publish.

The photo below won't be in the book, but I'm thinking about developing the idea and doing something similar for the cover

If you want to see more photo's you can find them in my NDS Facebook group - I've been posting them all week.

Its been a long hard process putting this book together, but for once in my life I have loved writing crochet patterns.
Thats because this is a crochet book with a difference, its about design and colour rather than crochet techniques and as you may have gathered by now my whole life is about colour and I've spent a very long time on Photoshop colouring in triangles :-)

I'm not going to do a press release blog post yet, as its not quite finished and I want you to be able to have the chance to buy it, rather than telling you how fab it is then making you wait.

BUT I have published my Lecchi crochet blanket as a single PDF on Ravelry, the pattern has already been published in Simply Crochet, so I feel I won't be giving too much away.

The new Lecchi pattern is completely re-written in what I hope to be a very user friendly format, its crochet by number's :-)
It also has some lovely new photo's, taken at Blacklands, a beach just outside Lynmouth and a short walk for my house.

You can find the new updated Lecchi pattern on Ravelry - HERE
And we have a Lecchi Kit in the website shop - HERE

Why I have blood shot eyes & Stardust Lace

Life is a bit mental here at NDS.
We are trying to dye 200+ kgs for the Ally Pally Knitting and Stitching show in October, I know October seems a really long way away, but we need to take 20 kgs of mini skeins and about 80 kits, 3 of them made with Dazzling Lace which all needs to be rewound into small skeins.
We also have about 60 kgs of wholesale to dye and send, plus clubs, everything we do is always plus clubs :-)

Dais has broken her finger, so she is having to work at half speed, which is bad for me as her boss as I have to do everything she can't manage in the dye room.
But as her mum I don't want her to do anything in case she makes her finger worse.

All this means we are struggling to dye retail for shop updates, so I am putting several yarns in our Super Summer Sale to keep our on-line customers happy.
This week's yarn is Stardust 2 ply Lace - Merino/Silk/Stellina Sparkle
You can find it all here in our Orphan and Odd Boy section.

I've also taken the below set of photo's to document our chaos :-) 

This is what the studio looked like at 9 am this morning.

The un-dyed yarn waiting to be tied and mordanted, each of these big boxes holds 25 kgs of yarn, we started off with 10 of them.

Yarn mordanted, waiting to be dyed.

The cochineal baths

Indigo waiting to be washed

Madder and cochineal waiting to be washed

Indigo waiting to be hung outside to dry

There is a photo missing here, it should be of Phil re-winding all the skeins.

Indigo/Fustic waiting to be labelled

The start of the kits, the 2 piles in the bag and box on the floor are Dazzling lace and all need to be ball wound then re-wound into smaller skeins.

And finally some of the wholesale, most of it already labelled and packaged, these are the orders that are close to being fulfilled, there is another stack of orders in progress.

Oh and somewhere in between all this and the end of the month I need to publish my book, still haven't taken the outside photo's - keep your fingers crossed the sun keep shining over the weekend.