Lots today.

I have knitting, shop updates and all sorts today, its a bit of a mamoth one.

Ok, so I got some yummy presents for my Birthday, all of which were unusual presents for me, I got a wonderful bright red digital radio, which I carry around with me everywhere in my house. I also got some beautiful glass, and a knitting book, I haven't bought any knitting books for ages and ages, so imagine my delight when Elly bought me 'fitted knits' for my birthday. I was soooooo excited.

I thumbed though and saw at least 4 things I absolutely have to knit, firstly though, I got started on this cardi;

I feel guilty for not knitting with my yarn so I decided to do a slightly less contrasted version, but use my space dyes yarns instead, so work the main body and arms in fyberspates DK and then the collor and the 'cuffs' in the scrumptious. I've finished the first sleeve and am on the second which won't take long, I'm desperate to get on the collor cause I want it for the weekend, when I'm off up to London to visit a couple of lovely freinds and I'm popping into a couple of knitting shops too.

Here's the progress so far

and here is a close up of the two different yarns in the arm and cuff

finally, with the shop, I will do a weekly update of yarn, which will be posted under new arrivals in the front page of the shop. There is plenty of lace weight silk and cobweb lace, also I'm trialing a new alpaca silk yarn, which is wonderful, this is for my online shop only and won't be available in larger stores.

Finally found my camera lead!

Congrats to Kerry!!!!!!! What a beautiful little baby.

Right, so remember that 'Chuff chuff' mohair I was talking about, well finally I found the camera lead. This is my favourite:

I'm so tempted to keep it. There are more colours, some in the shop, but not all, I have a beautiful red and pink one, but I can't get the colours right. 'Chuff Chuff' has 100m per 100gms, these are big 200gms skeins so you can make something yummy out of it, perhaps a drop stitch shawl for spring or a small wrap or something.

Not much more to say today, feels strange to be 29, and I can't see anything apart from wool around here.

Spring

Its all springy here, sun shining, and as normal I'm bouncing around, dyeing and drinking tea and trying hard not to eat crap, seems like being 29 is coming 2 days early, and I don't have quite as hollow legs as I had. AHEM, I'm reduced to eating veges and fruit, which is growing on me although I think I might be detoxing a bit, as I have a thick head and mild giddyness. I haven't even had a glass of wine for days, but seriously I can't handle my belly hanging over my jeans one day longer. Not too sure if I'll be able to keep the healthy diet up when I go to Dublin at the weekend for another wooly trip, especially seeing as is paddy's day. Guiness has iron in it doesn't it/

I am officially a dyeing demon. I was up till 11.30 dyeing, some thing just happens to me about 8ish, and I just can't help it, I think about mohair and I just can't resist the pot.

Its a new addition to my range, and I'm calling it 'chuff chuff' This must be said with a slight spanish accent, because carmen one of my best freinds and yarn testers uses so many fantastic verbal descriptions, I just know that she would feel it and say 'chuff chuff' the 'ff' needs to be elongated so a very soft 'f'.

So I'll upload some pics of some 'chuff chuff' once I can find my flipping camera lead, and put some in the shop.

Radio Wales

Right people, who listened on Sunday to the 'Wales in stitches' show?

Its about the addiction to knitting, and was made by the lovely Marie at scifiville, and even better I'm on it, and Martha and Claire and Judy from our Stitch and bitch group

It'll be there only be there for a short while, so you have to have to go listen. Its brill

Click this link and go to listen again on the right hand side, a new the scroll down till you get to 'wales in stitches'.

*giggle*

Oh I've been dyeing the most scrumptous mohair for the shop, I don't know if I can let it go, hehe.

its saturday.

I know, I need to be more creative with my titles.

Posting on a saturday, very unusual for me, it feel like a real saturday, one where I chill out with coffee in the morning reading blogs, and then dyeing wool, and then eating chips for tea and watching tv, which is all correct except that I am going to a party tonight so i'll be eating hot dogs instead. I can't believe i've actually not been home for so many weekends that I haven't had a proper saturday.

Thursday afternoon.

*yawn* I was up at 6.30 am today packing up orders which were delayed because I was in Paris. I just woke up, jsut like that, v v odd, and cool, i did 4 hours work before I came to work, hehe.

I'm getting spinning cravings at the moment, I was reading Theresa's Blog whilst chomping on my sandwiches and she mentions this ebay shop. I took a look and my heart skipped a few thousand beats. I know I make my own fibres and blends. But i've never really tried that many others. So i'm bidding on some cause I neeeeeeeeeeeeed some of those luxury sock batts. I really do. I'm feeling awfully creative at the moment. I'm also feeling like I might need a new spinning wheel. But before I do that I decided that I will dye, spin and blend enough fibres, and then spin them for a good sized self striping cardigan. Once I have done this, then I deserve to buy myself one. So seeing as saturday is dyeing day, and I have a vey important wholesale order for Stash in chester to finish, I might dye some yummy fibres at the same time. Ohhhhhh I'm getting excited at the thought!!!

Ohohohohohoh!!!! I knew there was something else I to tell you, I'm on the radio again, hehehehe on a programme Marie has made about the addiction of knitting. It's called Wales in Stitches and will be broadcast this Sunday, March 11th at 12pm on BBC Radio
Wales and repeated at 9.30pm on Wednesday March 14th. You can also
listen live online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiowales. The frequencies are
listed on that site too.

Yipee!!!!

What a beautiful day! :-)

I'm extremely tired from paris, but I am feeling so happy. Lots of things really, you know when you have that feeling that you are living right in the moment, and not for the future? I think thats the first time I felt like that for a very very long time, I have the tendancy to be thinking about whats next and not take in now, but i'm just soaking now up at the moment and its superb. It might ahve something to do with the fact that I'm going to be 29 next week and being nearly 30 is scary!!

I had a wonderful experience in Paris with a customer who is crazy about my lace weight mohair, suffice to say, its very popular and rarely actually gets into the shop, but i'll update some soon, and post the shops you can buy it from, anyway, she bought some at allypally last year and preordered some to collect in paris. She was chuffed to bits with it and brought me some biscuits to say thankyou, how sweet is that? it make me soooooo happy when people love their yarn. Talking of which I had three emails yesterday of projects people had made with my yarn:

This is Becky's clapotis in scrumptious, Sue's socks in BFL sock yarn, and these also in the BFL by ride.knit.read. Yipee, aren't they all super?

Its a perfect spring day today here in cardiff, daffodils everywhere, I loved Paris, but boy do I love coming home here, its such a beautiful city. I feel like another poem coming on, but I'll save it for tomorrow.

*sigh, with a big grin*

omg

Having soooooo much fun, but v v v v v tired. My pigeon french is a little bit of a problem, but everyone is so lovely and is willing to keep trying, I can understand more than I can speak which is ok, thank goodness for signl-anguage, thats all I can say.

Here's a pic of the stand.

Also we should hopefully be securing a french distributor tomorrow too. Blimey thats so exciting. Yippee.

Food in Paris is v expensive, but so damned good at the show compared to the food you would get at a Uk show for example. Probably one of my favourite parts of travelling is getting to eat wonderful things. So here's a pic of me eating my lunch, this is for my reference really, but I know it'll make most of my freinds who know me well, laugh.

So I'm signing off, in Paris, to get some scrummy yummy Parisienne food and wine. Here's to more wooly trips to this fabulous country.