Busy, busy, busy .....

And I've just realised I haven't blogged for a few week's.
So here's a list of the reasons why.

1 - Fibre East
Its the first time we've done the Fibre East show, so are very excited about going back east.
Especially as we're planning to incorporate a visit to our family on the way home.
Hopefully we'll some faces from the past at the show, we've dyed lots of lovely wool and I've just spent the morning packing Rainbow skein collections and kits.
It's also the début of Kissing Circles, which is item 2 on my list.

2 - Kissing Circles
Not content with having 10 blankets left to make for the book and a club blanket, I also decided I needed to do a quick design for NDS.
I started on my birthday mid June and finished a week ago, so it took about 4 weeks.
Soon after I started Valerie warned me circles were very difficult to join and so maybe it wasn't a good idea to do a circle blanket.
So I set out to prove her wrong, not that she didn't have a very good point I just like to challenge the impossible :-)

And here it is.........
The pattern is on Ravelry - HERE and I'll be adding a kit to the website later today.

3 - The Zodiac Club

The Zodiac club blanket has taken an unbelievable amount of time to design and plan.

The original idea seemed simple, I wanted to design a blanket that had all the Zodiac star's on it 

But when it came to arranging all the star sign constellations in the right order and into a pattern that look right, I realised I had created a monster. 

Plus it has involved a huge amount of maths, which the poor long suffering Valerie lead me through by the hand and I think we have it all right.

Now all I need to do is chop the design into month size pieces and make the blanket.

The sign-ups are on-line now and you can find them HERE

And just in case there are any knitter's out there who would love to join the club but can't crochet.

I'd like to secretly hint that there is frantic designing going on behind the scene's, that you might be interested in, so watch this space ;-)

Woolfest 2014

Sadly Woolfest is over for another year.
It was the first proper wool show that NDS had a stand and will always hold a special place in our hearts.
Its always chaotic, always exhausting, but always enjoyable and we love it

We arrived home late Sunday afternoon and were at work first thing Monday morning trying to sort out post show chaos.
Yesterday was an enforced day off as both the van and Daisy's car were at the garage and the only way to get to the studio was a 3 mile hike up hill.
So my day off was actually a designing day, as I left my laptop at work it involved about 15 hours of crochet.
So today we are back in the office and attempting to get back to normal.
And my first "normal" job is to write this post and share the photo's, so here they are.....

We had lots of lovely wool

 And lots of crochet kits and rainbow skein collections

And more wool and Twinkle, Twinkle looking extra colourful in the corner.

Yet again Lily was a superstar

And best of all lots of lovely customer's came to see us and chat and buy their NDS fix.
Here is Nic, with her stunning March kaleidoscope, you can't see the detail in the photo, but believe me her stitches are incredibly neat and perfect, a fantastic work of art.

Day dreaming of maths and wages.........

One of my most frequently asked questions at shows is "how long did it take you to make that blanket?"

I hate answering this question and normally start off with the phrase "You have to remember this is my full time job"

When I tell the asker the answer, they are normally shocked and tell me it would take them years to make the blanket.

The  "You have to remember this is my full time job" phrase just doesn't seem to sink in.

I know its difficult for some people to understand that doing a hobby that you love can actually be work, but it can be and is for me.

Even my own mother-in-law doesn't understand, the last time she phoned up in the day time I was crocheting She asked "are you busy",

I said "Yes, I'm working crocheting one of the book blankets"

She laughed in a kind of "don't be stupid, that's not work!" tone.

I've been timing myself while making the book blankets and so now have a real idea of how long it takes me to make a blanket.

Of course it depends on the blanket.

I've just finished 2 blankets one is a king size in 4 ply which took about 8 weeks, the other is 60 x 60 inches in DK which took about 2 weeks.

I crochet and design part time or rather part time in my world.

I spend 4 days at home on the sofa drinking coffee, lazing around watching CSI or some other murder that I don't need to concentrate on.

And 3 days at the NDS studio in front of my laptop or dye bath and then 3 evenings of the same day's at home doing more crochet and not concentrating on something on the tv screen with Phil.

So I did some number's to see how much I would earn if I turned my hobby into a proper job.

3 x studio days, crocheting from 5 pm to 11pm = 18 hours

4 x home days, designing & crocheting from 9 am to 11 pm = 56 hours

= 74 crochet/designing hours a week.

- 4 hours for trips to the kitchen and a Friday night local's pint (or 2) at the Rising Sun

= 70 hours

If I were paid minimum wage at £6.30 (ish), I would earn £441 per week, according to the careers website below, if I classed my self a senior designer I could earn £2,800 per week.

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/fashion_designer_salary.htm

• The range of typical salaries at senior designer/creative director level is £41,000 - £85,000+.

Which means the 8 weeks it took me to make Book Blanket NO 2 would of earn't me £22,400, enough to mend the Zoom and buy a new car while the Zoom is at the garage having its engine replaced !
It also means that the blanket is worth £22,400 + yarn + 8 weeks of electricity and coffee + several seasons worth of DVD boxsets.
So when I'm asked how much I sell my blankets for £25,000 is a reasonable response, except that that doesn't take into account any kind of profit, all good business people know that you normally double the costs to come up with the retail cost.
SO.......
Book blanket NO 2 will cost £50,000.

So if you'd like to pay my wages or buy a blanket I take credit cards, cash and paypal :-)))))

I'll leave you with a sneaky peek photo of Book Blanket NO4, just in case you feel the need to buy a blanket.....

Kaleidoscope Update

The Kaleidoscope Crochet Blanket Club members have just received their June pattern instalment.

The club has been a massive learning curve for me, I've run crochet clubs before and only ever had about 20 members, so I wasn't expecting the response we got to Kaleidoscope, the club has just under 90 members and we are still getting new members joining up!

I started designing the blanket back in October last year, I had the bare bones of the design when I started crocheting, I didn't really plan the colours so used what ever I had to hand at the time.
We decided to send out the yarn each quarter rather than send it all at once, my main concern was the membership costs a lot of money and so I wanted members to be able to spread the cost over the course of 2014 - BIG MISTAKE!!
I hadn't even thought about how and when we were going to dye the yarn or the fact that most of the colours would need re-winding into smaller skeins.
So we were dyeing and re-winding yarn for Kaleidoscope during the whole of December, and then again in March and now we are working on the third quarter, plus preparing for Woolfest, plus we have a couple of massive wholesale orders in!

BUT its all been worth it, the club members have been amazing and crocheted like busy little bunnies.
I am adding each month's pattern to my designer page in the Ravelry database just after the members get it, which you can find HERE
And members have been posting their blanket photo's in the KALEIDOSCOPE GROUP
So there are plenty of photo's to look at.

The photo's below show how the blanket has grown over the last 6 months, they are a bit rubbish as they are my wip photo's and were all taken with my iPhone, but you'll get the idea :-)
I will be making a Kaleidoscope Gallery page for member's photo's, maybe today, maybe tomorrow.......

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