Two years and a bit

Its 2 years and a few days since we moved here to Exmoor.
Although it seems like only yesterday I also feel I have been here forever and only have hazy memories of the trauma's that lead to us leaving Suffolk in the first place.
Lynton is now my home and I am beginning to feel like a local, I know I still have years to go before I can claim complete localship, but its enough for now.

I could write pages and pages of what we did last year, but instead I will share a few photo's instead or I should say a lot of photo's.

The day after Wonderwool 2013 we drove to Cornwall to pick up my new puppy Tinkerbelle

Ted Bad Poodle died in January 2013, Phil didn't want another dog and told me so many times right up until the moment he saw her tiny puppy face looking up at him.

In June it was my 50th Birthday, we had lunch at Hartland Quay and ate Thai in Dulverton in the evening with all our friends.

Then Daisy met her Adam and finally found happiness

Lynton and Lynmouth come alive in the summer, the place is full of tourists doing happy holiday summery things.

So the locals join in and have fun too.

There's the dog show, Tinks won first prize for best puppy

The annual Lynmouth raft race

The girls went on a boat trip to see the sea cliffs (including Tinks)

The boys went kayaking

And the dogs played in the river

We confused a lot of tourists by having an impromptu cocktail party on a boat in the harbour.

The boys sat around on the harbour wall in the evening summer sun, enjoying a few pints and talking utter nonsense to each other.

In August we visited Fep and her Moonpie in London 

And then we went back to Suffolk for a few days to see family and friends and re-visited Shingle Street with Fred. Moors Farm overlooked Shingle Street, so it was our local beach.

The first summer after the move I was too scared to go back as our last couple of years had been nightmare ones, I felt like I would be going back to the nightmare and wouldn't be allowed back to the moor.

We met a local lady on the beach who had lurchers, so had a chat about our dogs (it seems all lurcher owners are very proud of their dogs).

She asked where we came from and when we said Exmoor it suddenly struck me that Shingle Street wasn't my place anymore, even though I had lived there for 16 years it was no longer my home, it made me slightly sad to think I was an outsider. 

But I belong to another place that I love, so it was ok to leave it behind for her and her dogs to enjoy.

In September Daisy drove us to London for a surprise visit to Fep at the opening of her exhibition.

The winter was full of storms and sea surges

We had impromptu surge parties and Beaujolais night and Christmas and New Year, all of which were very drunken affairs at the Rising Sun on the harbour wall.

And then we began 2014, busy, busy working, too busy to spend much time gallivanting around.

We're still busy, busy, busy, but very much looking forward to the summer after the long months of hibernation

Billy and the book blankets

Just a quick post about nothing.....

Firstly Billy likes to test everything I make, luckily he doesn't moult like normal cats as he's a Maine Coon, so its safe to let him test them.

Here he is testing book blanket NO 1 which is half finished

And book blanket NO 2 which is completely finished.

And while I'm blogging I might as well share Daisy's and my new blog.
Its a irreverent take on food blogs, don't read it if you are a devout foodie and think you might be offended, but if you are domestically challenged you'll love it :-)
Today's post was about my cake making skills
You can find the whole blog by following the link below.
LUNCH AT THE NATURAL DYE STUDIO

Wonderwool 2014

We spent last weekend at Wonderwool, its the second show of the season and we were slightly more organized than we were for Unravel.
But I blame the disorganization on moving house 2 weekends before the show, plus trying to work on the book at the same time.
My advice is NEVER EVER EVER move house just before a big wool show, its exhausting and I spent a lot of time being incoherent to my customers and seemed to be incapable of using the till.

This year we had a much bigger stand, that was really daunting when we arrived, we stood and looked at the huge expanse of white walls and it seemed impossible that we would fill half of it, let alone the whole stand.

Then we unpacked and started constructing and we quickly realised that we didn't have enough space.

Plus I had stupidly planned my art gallery and hadn't allowed for tables to put the kits and books on - DOH!!

So I need to do some re-planning for Woolfest, I have a tabletop idea for the cabinets, hopefully Phil can make it work.

And we need more grids to fill the spaces, which means we can put more on the girds and give ourselves more table space.

We have been doing shows for nearly 10 year's, you would think that by now we would have the perfect stand and not have to add to it or redesign it every show.

But the space is different at every show and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the next - sigh.....

However even with all the issues that need to be resolved I was quite happy with my art gallery.

I think the customers liked it, I know Wonderwool did as they awarded us the second place prize for best triple stand.

One of the highlights of my show (apart from meeting and chatting with lots of our lovely customers) was meeting some of my Kaleidoscope blanket club members who had brought their blankets to show me.

This is Sue and Denise meeting for the first time and the first time I have seen 2 blankets together.
I'm amazed at the difference the different dye lots have made, even though the blankets look the same, you can see that each blanket is unique to their creator.
The size is different due to the fact that Sue has just finished March and Denise has finished April.

There is someone missing from this photo and that is my beloved Valerie, she brought her blanket but somehow there we were either too busy or too busy talking with her to remember to take photo's.
So her is the photo of her April that I have stolen off Ravelry

However even though we didn't photograph her she did photograph us, as it was our 28th wedding anniversary on Saturday, if you've been following this blog you'll be aware of our anniversary adventures.
Daisy had made us special anniversary crowns, luckily mine covered most of my hair and the fact that I had forgotten the hairbrush and the Coop at the garage in Builth doesn't sell hair brushes, so I was sporting a lovely rats nest hair do.
And given us wine and chocolate, and Valerie gave us more wine and a card and we had several other cards, for the first time in years it actually felt like a anniversary and I'd like to thank everyone who made us feel special :-)
Oh and I forgot to thank The Mulberry Dyer's who were our near neighbours and gave us a lovely bottle of more red wine as we were breaking down the stalls.

I know there's lots more to say, but my brain has just gone blank thinking about all the wine and chocolate :-), so thats it for now.

Busy, busy, busy & not going backwards.

I'm sure life used to be a lot quieter than it is now.
It seems every spare moment is filled with work and even then the 3 of us struggle to keep up.

For example for the last few weeks Daisy and I have been dyeing yarn for Wonderwool, this means the wholesale is piling up and finding enough yarn to update the site with is a struggle.
I've managed to sneak away a couple of kilo's for this weeks update, which will be HERE tomorrow night (24th of April 2014) at 7 pm UK time.
Here are a few of my favourites....

And then when we come home from the show we need to start thinking about dyeing the May clubs and the 3rd quarter of yarn for the Kaleidoscope.

Plus Phil and I have just moved house and like all newly moved people we want to spend as much time as possible making it our home. 

Unfortunately most of our time is spent working so there are still piles of books everywhere and piles of pictures waiting to find their places on the walls.

Luckily we have an amazing landlord who wants the house to be perfect so he is helping us solve all the problems as they occur.
But even still we still have a kitchen wall we need to paint, its dark wood panelling and makes the kitchen very dark and pokey.
And I'm desperate to spend time in my tiny garden and plant herbs.

Plus I have the book which has a very strict timetable, I've been panicking about being behind by 7 weeks, but I have just finished NO 2 blanket and have gone back to NO 1, which was already half finished.
NO 3 and 4 are both DK blankets, so shouldn't take too long, I'm hoping to have caught up with myself by the summer.

My lovely Valerie is the only person (except Daisy and Phil) to have seen NO 2 and thats because she's my tec editor, she seemed to really like it and was overflowing with compliments.
When I look at it I see what I could of changed to make it better and console myself with the fact that its sister blanket (NO 4) will be even better.

Let me explain I go through several emotional stages with each design I make.
The first is at the design stage, where I feel this design is going to be the best thing I have ever made.
The second is while I am making it, constantly changing the design in the places I've got it wrong.
And the next stage is when its finished, most of the time it looks like the design, and I'm glad to finish it and it is kind of OK, but by this time I am already designing the next blanket which is going to be even better.
And a few years later I hate it and am embarrassed that I made and designed it.

Such as my original Triangles blanket, which I designed 7 years ago.
I'm really embarrassed by it now, the colours are all wrong, the corners of the motifs don't meet, its just wrong, wrong, wrong.....

So a couple of years ago I decided to remake it, but I got very bored very quickly and gave up.
At this point in time I promised myself I would never try to go backwards again, for me its frustrating and boring and I waste too much time.

However last year I re-visited the triangle motif and redesigned it and then had a whole year of designing triangles. Culminating in the Kaleidoscope blanket, which I can't show you so here's Twinkle, Twinkle instead which was the second from last triangles blanket of last year.

I've just finished the swatch for NO 4 and it measures 6 inches, which is massive for me, I can't remember the last time I made anything with 6 inch motifs, so I am a bit concerned its too big, as it is I have to take a border off the design to make it a sensible size.

I want to be working on it now, to see if it works, but instead I should be adding the update yarn to the website, writing a mailing list mail, printing patterns for Wonderwool and generally be doing something more important for now........