The Knitting Goddess & Yarndale

This time next week I will be setting up my stand at Yarndale.
You would not believe the behind the scenes chaos and hoops I have had to jump through to get there.
Everything is beginning to fall in place and excitement is setting in and fingers crossed I will see you next weekend :-)))
Along with my family I have 2 people who have made it all possible.
The first is my lovely Valerie - Agrarian Artisan, she has always been my head cheerleader and has believed in me and talked me through numerous traumatic day's.
The second is Joy, the lovely and amazing Knitting Goddess, this blog post is about her :-)

I have known Joy for years and for almost all of them she has been one of my indie dyer competitors.
I remember first discovering her on eBay back in the day when I didn't realise competitors could be friends, but didn't actually meet her in person until 2009 when we both had stands at the disastrous wet first Ravelry day in Coventry.
We instantly became friends, because not only were we both indie dyers, but we also shared a slightly wicked sense of humour.
Since then when ever we have met at shows we have always done lots of laughing.

So fast forward 6 years to this spring when I closed NDS.
Joy kindly sent me some of her yarn to use in my last 2 book blanket's, as I wanted them to contain yarn from my indie dyer friends as a thank you for all their support and love over the years.
She sent me some Britsock, after playing with it for a while I realised it was the perfect replacement for some of my NDS yarns and so I asked if I could name her as one of my new yarn recommendations, to which she said yes :-)
Then I very cheekily asked if she could dye some colour wheels that I could use as examples for my book.
Joy took the colour wheel idea and ran with it, she was so keen to help that she spent a whole day dyeing mini skeins, I fairly certain she told me she'd dyed about 96 colours that day!!

Since then we have been discussing and planning on ways we could collaborate on a colour wheel project.
Yarndale will mark the beginning of our project.
Joy has been dyeing colour wheels and will have sets available to buy on her stand, they will be available in her on-line shop when she gets back from Yarndale.

And I have been editing and revamping some of my patterns for her to use for kits and to sell at Yarndale.
In fact she was so keen that she made her own version of my Iris scarf design, which she will have on her stand at the show.
She will also have my Rita blanket, I have spent the last week re-writing the pattern, who knows how she is going to fit it in, you will need to go and see her to find out :-)
Her stand number is 158

       

Incidentally you can find the new Rita pattern HERE in my Ravelry shop.

We have lots more plans for the colour wheel project later on in the year, including (fingers crossed) a set of colour wheel cushions and a blanket design using the motifs I designed for the Love Crochet CAL.
Plus I have a couple more of her yarns I want to use as yarn replacements, so far I have only swatched them, but am hoping that her 4 ply Silk and Merino will be a good substitute for a couple of scarf/garment patterns and her 4 ply British wool & Alpaca will work as a back up to Britsock.

Winter Blanket Warmer - Buy one get one free.

Good morning from a glorious sunny Exmoor

Even though its September already it feel like the summer has just started, stupid summer, its 3 months late!!

Anyway before the sun started shining I thought we all needed something to cheer us up due to the manky summer weather and I have been planning a pattern promotion for a couple of weeks.
I thought it would be nice to concentrate on my blankets because the autumn and winter are the perfect blanket making time, even if you don't finish the blanket you have will have winter wip to work on that will keep your knees warm while its cold outside.

The promotion is a very simple "Buy one, get one free"
So from now until the end of September 2015 all you have to do is buy one of my blanket patterns, and I will send you any pattern of your choice for free.
For each pattern you buy I will send you a second free one, so if you buy 2 you get 2 free patterns and so on....


You might like a second blanket pattern.

Or you might like to make one of my scarf designs

Or how about snuggly Anna, which is the perfect winter cardi/coat, or elegant Dulcie

 
Just reply to me via your order confirmation or Paypal receipt telling me which pattern you would like.
You can buy your pattern from either my RAVELRY SHOP
Or my - ETSY SHOP

If you would like to make you blanket as a kind of CAL, please join my Facebook page, where I will be available for encouragement and to answer and questions and will be able to help with any problems.

Homemade - Do you? Don't you?

Over the weekend I had a very interesting comment on one of my posts on my private Facebook account.

My post was about a conversation I had had with a lady I met in the village, which went like this.....

Q - what do you do?
A - I'm a free lance designer
Q - what do you design?
A - crochet blankets
Q - do you sell the blankets?
A - no, I sell the patterns
Q - what you mean you actually design the blankets yourself!!
A - (in my head) - REALLY!!!!! 😖

There were a few more comments and then I added....

I've also had customers at shows asking "did you make that?" and when I say yes, they're really shocked and surprised
I'm not sure who they thought had actually made it, maybe I should ask next time....

My friend and neighbour Caroline (who runs a lovely B & B in Lynton, if you are coming to visit Lynton make sure to check her out at Lee House :-) commented that it might have something to do with people being removed from creating due to being able to buy everything they need cheaply.
I realise it doesn't apply to knitters and crocheters, but maybe it does, hence this post/comment/question.

I've always assumed everyone made home-made things, I guess due to the fact its something I grew up with and have done my whole life.
My mother and aunt have/had always made all their clothes, as a child I can remember shop bought clothes being a luxury and being allowed to buy a pair of trousers from an actual shop as a birthday treat was something really exciting.
My granny knitted and crocheted and made everything including carpets for her house, my granddad was an upholsterer, had an attic room full of bolts of fabric and owned about 5 or 6 sewing machines, he also had an allotment.
My grandparents brought up three children during the war years and so homemade was part of life.
My dad built several of his own boats, including his first yacht.
There was home grown fruit and veg, birthday cakes, jam and chutney and home made wine etc etc etc
My parents weren't destitute, its just the way it was and it meant they could take me on camping trips around Europe every year and spend my summers sailing.

I've always assumed everyone of my age had a home made life, Caroline's comment made me step back and reassess my assumption and to think about the people who didn't and don't.
I'm beginning to understand that being able to do homemade is something really special now and this is the reason behind all the really popular sewing, cake making, gardening, crafty tv programmes, I've always struggled to understand why they are so popular, surely everyone knows how to make a dress, grow new potato's and bake a cake?
I had several childhood friends whose mothers didn't own sewing machines or knit/crochet or make their own jam and I guess these are the people whose children a generation later have no idea how to do home made, but are eager to learn and make for their own children.

So just I'm just wondering.......... did you? do you do home made?
Or have you had to learn the skills as an adult because there was no one to teach you as a child?

Yarndale 2015 & panic

Good morning world from a gloomy damp Exmoor.

I feel really sorry for the tourists, especially the campers, but they did have sun for a few hours yesterday afternoon so its not all bad :-)

YARNDALE 2015 is a month away.

Thanks to Attic 24, (Lucy is one of the original organisers and attracts crocheters from all over the globe) Yarndale has become the only UK yarn show that focuses on crochet.
There will be all the normal suspects :-) - indie dyers, spinners, knitting designers, yarn brands, shops etc etc, but there wll also be a lot of crochet designers and crochet related stands.

It will be a momentous show for me as its going to my first show as a full time designer, not only is it my first show as a designer, but its also the first show that I will be flying solo and I'm beginning to panic.
I have no idea what to expect, what am I going to sell? is anyone going to know who I am? will anybody come and see me? will I be busy? or will I spend the whole show sitting in a corner quietly crocheting? and will the Beast behave and manage to get me to Yorkshire without any problems in the first place?
I really don't know the answer to any of these questions.

I've done yarn shows with NDS for about 10 years, but my designs have always just been pattern support for the yarn, over the years the NDS stand had developed into a very professional looking stand.
Its going to be difficult for me to produce a comparable crochet stand.
For one thing I won't be able to take all the grids as they are too long for the Beast and I don't want to hire a trailer, even though the Beast is built for towing the last 2 times I hired a trailer it had a big tantrum and broke down.
I might manage to persuade John Arbon to squeeze a couple of them into his van, but only enough to hang 2 or 3 blankets.

Secondly I don't have much of a product to sell.
So far I have a box of crochet hooks and a box of "Madder Triangles" that I discovered hidden away in the cellar, I thought the book had sold out, but it turns out that there are still a few left.
I will also have some Knit by Numbers DK, which is yarn support for Kissing Kaffe and Harlequin.
And I'm planning on raiding my stash for what's left of my NDS yarn as I can't really use it in my designs any more due to it being discontinued.

The only thing I am certain about is which blankets to take......

 Harelquin, Kissing Kaffe and Kaleidoscope for the 3 side walls.

Cornucopia for the table 

& maybe one or two blankets from "Madder Triangles" to cover up the rest of the table.

I need to stop dithering and panicking and just get on with it before I run out of time :-)
Wish me luck!