Not a proper blog post this week

Sorry we've been so busy cleaning and decorating the dye room before we hand back the keys I haven't had much time to work on a proper blog post.
But I have added a couple of new pages, they both need lots more work, but both of them are a start.

I've added Choosing Colour
And Lynton Links

Hopefully lots more later :-)

Zodiac & swatching

A very short Instagram round up this week as I've already told you about Love Crochet and added the new Lynton Crochet Stroll page.

Last week was all about organising my new work schedule, working on the Zodiac and swatching new yarns.

I had planned to have the Zodiac club blankets finished by the spring, but as we are almost in May I am playing catch up, I've finished the may instalments for both blankets and are now working on June, I've joined the knitted motifs and hopefully will finish the crochet version this afternoon.
Phil has finished knitting the July motifs and is working on August, so I've almost caught him up :-)
Although by the time I finish July he will have finished knitting August and I will still be a month behind him.
But it won't take me long to catch up with him and then we will both only have 4 months left to knit/crochet, I've given us a deadline of finishing both blankets by August.
Below are some wip photo's which I've taken and posted to prove that I am still making blankets :-)

I've just realised if you don't know anything about the Zodiac blanket clubs you might be very confused :-)
The Zodiac mystery blanket club, runs throughout the whole of 2015, there are 2 versions, the knitted one knitted by my lovely husband Phil and a crochet version made by me.
At the end of the year members will have a knitted or crochet blanket, the design is based on the Zodiac and contains all 12 star sign constellations in roughly the right order revolving around the sun in the centre of the blanket.
I am planning a Zodiac page for the blog, but its still on my to do list along with several other pages.....maybe this week....

        

 

     

I've also been swatching my huge pile of sample yarns from Love Crochet

I need to remove and replace the recommended NDS yarns for my entire back catalogue of patterns, Love Crochet are supporting me by sending me samples to test as potential replacements.

As soon as I've finished I will be adding some yarn reviews on yet another new page :-)

    

We had a very busy weekend, we spent the whole of Saturday cleaning, de-constructing and decorating the dye studio. The top two photo's are of what its looked like full of yarn and the bottom is what it looked like after we had almost finished cleaning, de-constructing and decorating.

Next weekend we will tackle the dye room which is a much bigger job :-(

      

And yesterday was the first time in about 9 years we celebrated our wedding anniversary. 

We've always been at Wonderwool selling yarn but as NDS is sleeping at the moment we could finally enjoy the day without working.

We did celebrate our 25th anniversary four years ago, but it was a disastrous series of events, that ended up with Phil eating frozen pizza while I lay semi concious on the sofa recovering from food poisoning.

Next year is our 30th wedding anniversary, I really hope we can celebrate in style with all our family and friends, maybe even have a party.....

Love Crochet

A couple of weeks ago I had an e-mail from LOVE CROCHET asking if I would like to work on some projects with them.
Of course I said "YES PLEASE", its an amazing opportunity for me to be able to work with them on some of the ideas I had planned for the future, plus I have the chance to test and review lots of new yarns and choose which ones to recommend for my designs, its rather like being given the keys to the sweet shop :-)
At the moment the joint projects are in the development stage, so I can't tell you what they are yet, but I can tell you I'm really excited and can't wait to start.

Love Crochet is the sister shop to Love Knitting and was launched at the end of last year, its still early days for them and they have lots of interesting ideas planned for the future.
But even though its early their shop is jam packed full of lots and lots of lovely yarn in all weights and fibres.

Even before I was invited to work with Love Crochet I had started going through their site writing a giant shopping list.
I had chosen Love Crochet as my "go to" shop because of their involvement with Ravelry and their support of Independent designers throughout the whole digital vat mess crisis at the end of last year.
Their sister company Love Knitting took on the digital vat burden to help out Ravelry at a time when no one else seemed to care.
Ravelry channelled all the European digital pattern sales through Love Knitting which enabled indie designers to carry on designing and not have to stop designing because the new law was so difficult to comply with.
I think Love Crochet/Knitting were surprised to discover the wealth of talent of the indie designers and have continued to work with and promote them (and me :-)

So back to the yarn...
This week I received 2 packages full of exciting new yarns to test - or rather new to me :-)
I've got a huge pile to work through, I want to test/swatch each one individually and then test/swatch them alongside NDS yarn to work out which yarn needs to be recommended for each pattern.
Its going to take a while, but I will make a new yarn review/recommendations page so you can find out what I discover.

So for the meantime here are some lovely photos of yarn :-)

The last dye bath & onwards

Last week was all about end of the NDS dye room.
We started off the last weekend with a mega packing session, well over 100 parcels of the last NDS update wool to pack and send all over the world.
As expected the stupid website sold the same skeins twice and even sold yarn that I had deleted off the website, several hours after I had deleted it - Grrrrrr
So sadly there were a lot more refunds than we had expected.
Thank goodness Etsy doesn't behave in the same way!
I am planning to thin my stash in the next few weeks and add the extras to my Etsy shop so our disappointed customers get a chance to buy some.

 

On Monday evening we filled the Beast with post for the very last time and took it to Lynton Post Office

      

We had 40 kgs left to dye for our friend Linda of TALL YARNS

We're working overtime this weekend to get it to her and really hoping it will arrive with her in time to be at Wonderwool next week.

If you are going to Wonderwool, go and see Linda as she will be selling the last skeins dyed at NDS.

Anyway on Monday the dye room looked like the above photo's.

And by Wednesday morning it looked like this, 3 dye baths down, 3 to go.

Our last dye bath was indigo.
This is Dais dyeing her last skein

   

And me dyeing my last skein, in the first photo I was crying so much I couldn't look at the camera and in the second frustration had set in, the tears had stopped as I was grring so much.
The indigo came out blotchy and so I had to re-dye the skein meaning it ended up a lot darker than I intended.

   

By the end of the day, we had emptied the last of the dye baths, We'd dyed 40 kgs in 3 days and so were both physically and mentally broken.
So we went to the pub and cried into our beer.
And then I took my dogs for a walk on the top of Countisbury Hill, it was peaceful, serene and beautiful, Lynton and my home is in the dip between the hills, which you can't see it because of the haze.
It was a perfect ending to a heartbreaking day.

And then on Thursday morning I woke up to the first day of my new life, although I was physically broken, the worst was over and I felt excited and positive for the first time in ages and it was full of exciting new possibilities.

The first was being asked to do a interview for an impressive South African blog.

 No 2 was being accepted as a exhibitor at Yarndale 2015, its going to be my first show as a designer and even though I'm so happy to be able to be there its also really scary, there are so many things to think about, I need to start planning now and have already decided I'll dye some yarn to take with me

The photo below is of the NDS stand in 2014.

The last possibility is so exciting and I can't wait to break the news to you, but you will have to wait for next week :-)

So back to this week, I'm still recovering from the mega dye session and so a bit blurry as to what to do next, so I wrote a "to do" list, I stopped after 2 pages, because it was beginning to make me panic, this week I will prioritise and fill in all the details and be far more organised.

  I played with some motifs and colour for Book Blanket no 8

   

And yesterday we started the long process of deconstruction, cleaning and redecorating the studio.
By the end of the day the dye room looked like this and we'd fill the Beast with dye baths & spin driers, so technically it had become a mobile dye room :-)