I can't puff up my designer pants

Firstly I need to explain the whole "puffing up pants" reference.

Years and years ago we were invited to a posh commune for a weekend party.
The commune had its own swimming pool, which my small children loved, especially Fred who spent quite a lot of time splashing around.
I think he must of splashed another small boy too much, who made some kind of cutting comment about Fred being a idiot.
Fred's answer involved accusing the other boy of having puffed up pants, all because the other boy had swimming trunks on that were inflated by being in the water.
Ever since then "puffed up pants" has been a family saying that refers to people who are self important and boastful.

The internet, especially social networking sites are full of people with puffed up pants, including me.
"Puffing up your pants" is essential to running an internet business, its almost a full time job on its own and exhausting, to be honest I'd much rather be dyeing yarn or crocheting than shouting "look at me, look at me" the whole time.
For example I've been at work for 3 hours today and the only thing I have been doing is puffing my pants, on Ravelry, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and now writing this blog post.
I should be dyeing wool for Wonderwool or designing or working on the site, but because I have been silent all weekend I need to do some catch up.
The main problem is that there are so many people puffing that it is easy for our customer's to get side tracked somewhere else and forget we exist.
This might seem like a bit of a negative statement, but it happens and it did happen to us several years ago.
We stupidly went on holiday and I allowed myself 10 day's off pant puffing, sales dropped while we were away and I had to do lots and lots of puffing to regain ground.
Ever since then I have been really diligent about keeping up with my puffing.
I've just discovered Instagram which is a huge help as if I post a photo on Instagram I can share it with Twitter, Facebook and today I discovered I can also share it with Flickr, its saves a huge amount of time.

And now I get around to the reason I can't puff up my designer pants.
As you know I am working on a crochet blanket book, the deadline is December 2015.
So I will have 2 years worth of crochet that I can't share or puff.
I need to keep puffing or you will forget I exist and the book won't sell, so its a bit of a dilemma.
The other thing I have been working on is my NDS crochet Kaleidoscope club blanket and I can't puff my designer pants about this either.
It has to be kept a secret as member's get a bit more of the pattern each month and if I puffed the finished blanket it would spoil their surprise and the whole club would be slightly pointless.
The reason I am writing this blog post today is that I finished the 2014 Kaleidoscope blanket on Saturday, and I'm so pleased with it, and I desperately want to share my excitement.

The only thing I can do is share cryptic photo's that don't give the game away, so here is the latest photo of the finished Kaleidoscope and a sneaky peak of this week's NDS update yarn.
And hopefully I will be able to find enough things to puff in the next couple of years to keep you reading.

P.S And in case you didn't know already here is a list of places you can find me puffing up my pants :-)

Twitter

https://twitter.com/queenieamanda

https://twitter.com/DyeStudio

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Natural-Dye-Studio/166548117409

Ravelry

http://www.ravelry.com/people/Queenieamanda

Pinterest

http://www.pinterest.com/queenieamanda/

Blog

http://amandascrochetblog.blogspot.co.uk/

Instagram

http://instagram.com/queenieamanda2

Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36913211@N00/

Book Blanket's & Kaleidoscope.

I'm working on 3 blankets at the moment and I can't share any of them, its very frustrating as I'm really excited and I'd love to know what you think, so.......

But I can tell you a little bit about what I'm doing.

1 - Kaleidoscope 2014
I finished it last night, I have a few ends to sew in and a couple of rounds to do around the edge.
I've been working on this for 6 month's, and it feels like a major achievement.
It normally takes me about 2 months to make a blanket, but I've had to stop every round and photograph it and write the pattern.

This photo was of October, the light has washed some of the colour out so I'm happy to share it as I don't think it gives too much away.

2 - Book blanket no 1

Has been on hold for a few weeks, I finished about 1/3rd of it.

The trouble was I got so excited about book blanket no 2 that I had to work on it instead of no1

3 - Book blanket no 2

Is now on hold until I finish the Kaleidoscope, its sitting on the back of the sofa calling my name.

It's over half finished, I started it when we came back from Unravel at the end of February, so I've been working on it for 5 weeks.

As soon as the Kaleidoscope is finished (maybe tonight) I will go back to it.

Its a double bed size made in 4 ply, so is going to take a lot longer than normal.

Here's a photo, there are more, but they give the colour away so I'll wait until my publishers have approved them.

I am now about 12 weeks into my blanket book schedule.

I should have finished one and be close to finishing the second, but all I have to show for 12 weeks work is 2 half finished blankets.

I'm a bit panicky about time, but as book blanket no 3 is going to be a sofa throw made with DK it should be a lot quicker to make and help me catch up.

Wedding anniversary & Wonderwool

As you may or may not know we are moving house (again!) in 2 weeks time, so we have been packing all our possessions.
I have 2 big packing trunks full of family treasure, old school reports, my teddy bear, my babies first shoes, our wedding photo album and lots and lots of birthday, valentines and anniversary cards.
While looking through the treasure and reading some of the cards I noticed that several times I had written about the fact we only had X amount of years left before we could have a big party and celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.
I didn't necessarily want all the silver gifts I just wanted to celebrate with the people we love.

On the 26th of April  Phil and I will have been happily married for 28 years, we got married in 1986 on the day Chernobyl blew up, although we didn't know it at the time.
We were both young, Phil was 23 and I was 22, looking at the photo below makes me realize how young and innocent we were.
Like any married couple we have had our ups and down's, some very major downs, but we have come through it together and are still best friends, we spend most of our time together, rely on each other, laugh and just enjoy being together.
I am really proud of us, especially as I don't think I have any friends who have been married as long as us.

But we never celebrate our anniversary as we are always working.

Wonderwool is always held over our anniversary weekend, so we are on the stand chatting and selling yarn to our lovely customers.

Although a few years ago Wonderwool were very thoughtful and held the show 2 weeks early, it was the year of our 25th anniversary and so I was really happy.

We didn't have the party as we didn't have the time or money, but we did have a lovely celebration Thai meal with Phil's parents for lunch, the 26th is Phil's mum's birthday so it was a joint celebration. 

But I must of eaten a bad prawn as by mid afternoon I was being very, very sick with food poisoning, I then passed out and had to be taken home to my sofa. I woke mid evening to find poor Phil watching DVD's and eating a frozen pizza. It kind of summed up our life at that time, redundancy, losing the house etc etc etc

I've just been updating the website with this year's show dates and realised that on the big day we will be yet again standing on the stand selling yarn and chatting to our lovely customer's.

I'm seriously thinking of putting up some streamers and drinking champagne all day, but I suspect I'll forget once we start dyeing Wonderwool wool and concentrating on show preparation.

So sadly yet again the mythical party won't be happening....

Maybe for our 30th, but I kind of doubt it, unless Wonderwool has to re-jig their dates again.

My Mega De-Stash Update

This is a long post, please bear with me I ramble a bit but get to the wool part before the end  :-)

We have had to move house 3 times in the past 3 years and in a few weeks we will be moving for the 4th time, but this time we have a 2 year lease with an option of longer if we want.
At this point in my life I'm really tired of moving and I want to settle.

Those of you who have followed me (us) for a long time you will remember our story and why we have had to move.
We originally lived here in a proper house with a shower and a kitchen and central heating.

Then when we lost the house we lived here under the radar in the derelict pig farm that NDS worked from.

It actually looks quite nice in this photo, but believe me life was very very difficult.

Then we took the plunge and escaped to Exmoor to start a new life and our first home was the Mews. 

The mews was tiny, lovely in the summer, but in the winter it turned into a mouldy hovel.

When our landlord decided to sell we had to move again, we were lucky to be offered a massive flat almost next door and have been very very happy at no 19.

Here's Billy being very happy last winter before we re-tiled the fireplace and us being very happy with our close woolly friends.

And then just before Christmas our landlord told us he was putting our giant flat up for sale and that we had to move again, as you can imagine it made us unhappy to lose our home again . 

But living in a place and being part of the community means you know people, who know people and so we found our new home, which not only has a kitchen and a garden, but it also has a cellar, a shower and one of these.

And a view from my new bedroom window

And better than anything else is the fact I am going to have a Wool room/Studio.

So I have been planning my wool room in my head, its going to have filing shelves for all my pattern work and books and of course boxes and boxes of yarn, but as I have 14 blankets to make for my new book it needs it has to be very specific yarn, not the large and varied stash I have now.

So I made the decision that rather than move all my stash to the new house and fill up space I should be using for something else I would do a massive de-stash update and sell it.

You have to remember that the whole of the NDS stock is my stash, so this is just stock that's been on a long holiday.

I have spent the last 2 days photographing and preparing my stash for Thursday's update, I made a mental decision that everything had to go as long as it hadn't been used and was still in a good condition.

Some of this yarn has been with me on every part of our roller coaster journey, and I am really sad to part with it, but its much better that it finds a new home with you who might make something beautiful rather than stays with me in a box on a shelf for the next 2 years plus.

Here are some of my saddest goodbyes.

This beautiful boy. He is a bright pink (cochineal) Precious 100% silk DK, he got left in the bottom of a dye bath about 4 years ago and has been my treasure ever since.

He is impossible to photograph, but so stunning in real life.

 And the last ever batch of the old Angel 4 Ply/Sock which was discontinued several years ago, I kept the last 500 gms and promised my self I would make something special, but then life got in the way.

And this stunning collection of Godiva DK, the colours look so beautiful together I would keep them just to look at if I didn't have the job where I could dye more any day I wanted.

And the last skein of the first batch of the Lorna Doone that we had spun, I've paired it with the first skein from the new Lorna Doone batch.

And my lovely collection of Dazzling lace, lace just isn't really a blanket yarn!

 And some pure gold Lynmouth Precious 4 ply, so perfect, so precious, but so NOT blanket.

And finally amongst so many others I could chose in my stash is my collection of Madder Dazzle 4 ply/Sock, as you know we are discontinuing Dazzle 4 ply/Sock at the end of this year and its pointless making blankets for a book with yarn that won't be available when the book is published.

My de-stash will be this weeks NDS update, you will be able to find it on The Natural Dye Studio's website HERE at 7 pm (UK time) on Thursday the 20th of March 2014

And you can find all the photo's of my lovely yarn HERE on Flickr.

If you end up re-homing it for me, please love it as much as I do :-)