Competition winner.

Thanks for all the entries, but its congrats to Jane for winning the voucher for woolfest.

That was loads of fun. I will do one for non woolfest people when I get back.

Thankfully the rain stopped, and it was windy yesterday so at least the wool is not sopping any more, but my house is rather warm at the moment, even steamy you could say, hehe.

There is so much wool and silk and sock yarn I am drowning. I'll take a few pics later to tempt you with my wares for friday.

Oh, I wonder if any of you could help me I am trying to get hold of a Lady  called Louise, she owns a woolshop called Woolfish in St Abbs, I can't seem to find any contact details, can any one help me/

Woolfest etc.

Thanks for all the entries so far, I've had a great response. If you are not sure what I am on about read the two previous posts.

I will pick a winner at random after 9pm this evening, so you still have time to enter, and why not?

The password for getting your 10% off at Woolfest is 'SUNSHINE', hmm, the reason for that is that I have 30 kilo's of wool hanging from my garden structure, which is currently sopping wet with the unbelievable down pour we had last night in Cardiff. Lets just put it this way It needs to be dry by tomorrow so I can take it to woolfest and send off my wholesale orders, one of which is going to Laughing hens, who will be at woolfest selling my hand dyed scrumptious, and I have done some super colours, I am so pleased with them. But they need to be dried and labelled. GULP!

I need you sunshine I REALLY do.

Competition time to win a £25 voucher for woolfest.

Right, so all you have to do is answer this little question, or at least have a stab at it anyway, have a go even if you are not too sure. Email me the answer and your name, the link for that is on the left, or fyberspatesATbtinternetDOTcom.

You have to be able to spend the voucher at woolfest, either yourself or get someone else to do it. If you can't, don't enter the competition because there will be another opportunity to win another one following woolfest for people who couldn't get there.

Right. Here is the question.

What cheese have I been making recently?

Email don't leave a comment. Oh and tell me what fyberspates products you want to see at woolfest, seeing as I can't take them all. I'll pick one answer at random.

Happy guessing.

Woolfest 2007: win a £25 voucher and readers get a 10% discount.

So my darlings! Guess what next week is? Its woolfest 2007 of course! Yippee!!!!! I am so excited, I just can't wait.

So to celebrate I am going to give you two treats!

Firstly I will run a little competition on sunday in which one winner will win a £25 fyberspates voucher to spend only at Woolfest, so you need to be coming, or at least know someone else who can spend it for you.

Secondly blog readers who come to see me and purchase some goodies at Woolfest can get a 10% discount. Not bad huh? This is how it will work, I will post a password some time between now and wednesday which you need to remember for your woolfest visit. Thats it, keep reading though because you might miss it.

Thirdly, go tell everyone OK!

XX

Yipee, feeling back to normal.

Phew, I'm glad my misery seems to have lifted, I can't post when I feel like that, I was a bit worried yesterday, waiting for my spark to come back, its been a little flat recently with all the changes and things going on. I was so desperate last night, that the only thing I knew that would make me clean my kitchen would be if I was cheered up by buying food. That truly never fails to make me smile. I spend about an hour and a half wandering around sainsbury's browsing all the scrumptious foods, and it made my soul warm up a little bit. I sat infront of the tv and read cooking books and watch crappy tv, and ate yummy food, and ignored all the work I had to do, and seems like it worked, I woke up this morning to the sound of the rain, and I had a big smile, cause I love the rain, and felt like sitting in bed allday on my laptop and read blogs and do my work,  and read books, and listen to radio 4. This was good cause all the other morning I have just felt like sleeping and ignoring the wholeworld.

Thankfully I'm not too behind with orders, one or two late sock clubs are to be posted, but apart from that its all ok, and they will go today, I had a little helper who supported me with that, thanks sweetie, you are a star.

So fresh italian coffee, yummy bread, with apricot conserve and thickly spread with butter, yum yum yum, and a massive big grin and ready to face the world. Hmm, there is this little buddhist poem that I love that descibes how I feel today;

'Glad to be just who I am, may I never forget

to keep a smile as refreshing as a spring breeze on my face,

to shine with a summer sun of hope

to persue wisdom while conversing with the Autumn moonlight

and to be a person who sparkles with the purity of new fallen snow.'

There we go, aren't I feeling philosophical today, lol.

Rainy monday.

Hi folks,

Thanks for the comments on the last post, I was not sure whether to write it or not, but I am really glad I did, and I think I will write regularly about yarn and its production, I think its really important that you guys understand how yarn is produced and where it is produced and all the issues involved, I have lots of knowledge about it, so I'll share. I might be a little controversial, but hey.

So what been going, I tried in between showers over the weekend to dye wool for my wholesale orders, and get some bits and pieces ready for woolfest, I don't mind the rain too much though because my garden is so lush and green at the moment, and have flowers on all my vege plants, so its getting exciting.

I sell alot of lace weight silk, and its one of my favourites because it looks so beautiful, but I tried to knit it before and I found it too fiddly, because its thin and slippery, got fed up and left it. So the other weekend when I went to meet Helen and Steve from stash in chester, for a treat she gave me a pair of the new Addi lace circulars. They were a welcome addition to my collection, but I was skeptical about whether they would make any difference to my unsuccessful lace attempts. But I was tempted Saturday evening, so I put them to the test.

In short, they are totally amazing, I was actually able to knit really fast with them, and they weren't too slippery and the points are perfect, I am a complete fan, here is the progress so far.

Not much, but for me with something that fine its brilliant. The colour is Grenada, it should only take one hank of the lace weight because it has 400m per 50gms.

Now, another nearly finished lace project here;

Right, now I'm off to get everything in the post because I'm off to mums now for the funeral.

Take care people, and happy knitting.

Ethical Issues.

I care allot about where I get my yarn from. I admit, that I take a great deal of time to learn about wool processes and I know where most of the wool of all the major companies are produced and take a keen interest of all of that, I get the majority of my wool processed in the UK because we have good regulations which protect the environment, there are also some other countries that are good with their regulations but there are some which I can not guarantee are as good.

Hmm why am I telling you all this, well one of my mission statements for Fyberspates is the importance of the traceability of my yarn, and to make sure that when its processed it has as little impact on the environment as possible. I get asked quite alot if I would sell cashmere yarns. I currently do not sell them because if I had it spun in the UK it would be so expensive no one would even consider buying it. So the other option is to get it from china and well, I can not guarantee that yarns made there are going to up to my ethical standards, especially when I read this report this evening I debated whether to post about it and then I thought, yeah I will. So here it is, you can make your mind up.

June 14th The Wool Record Weekly Market Report

Contamination closes 17 mills in Wuxi

Seventeen wool-scouring mills are reported to be to be temporarily closed in Wuxi city, of jiangsu province, in Eastern China, due to a severe outbreak of contaminated water caused by algae in the nearby Lake Tai. The city is one of china’s major wool-processing centers. The closed plants are understood to be small operations with old machinery which pump out effluent. Sources close to Wuxi say that major wool-processing plants have not been affected. The algae bloom, which smothered Lake Tai at the end of May, lasted six days until it was flushed out by rain and water from nearby Yangtze River. Wuxi draws it water from the lake. Experts expect Wuxi to suffer from contaminated water for the next few months, and some residents have begun fleeing the city. Tap water had become undrinkable, and reports have emerged of organised protests. Residents near the lake have campaigned for years for the closure of polluting factories. Last week, the government demanded that officials close "several hundred" lake side factories by the end of the month.

Although local officials blame the problem on natural conditions, Chinese state media and government experts have criticised officials for ignoring pollution and its effects.

The sun is shining, metaphorically anyway.

Right, I ate some vege soup for breakfast and it seems as if things are calming down a little bit, thank goodness for that, If things go in three's then thats my stuff over for a little while. Thanks for the kind comments by the way. I am writing a poem about my Nan for her funeral, it will probably be quite a comical one or at least happy  so I may post it, but not too sure yet.

Anyway back to woolly stuff, very exciting things happening here. I think that keeps me going most of the time; the exciting developments of my business. I visited 2 fabulous shops at the weekend, one of which is going to do a 4 week exhibition with my yarns and fibres, and I'll be doing a paint your own sock yarn work shop there too, I'll tell you more once the full plan is in place. In addition, I had a fabulous meeting on Saturday afternoon with another super duper shop who already sell lots of my yarns and kits, it was such a pleasure to be able to spend time with these two, they are super people.

And despite that it is meant to be raining here, the sun is shining, so I'm going to see if I can drink some coffee with milk in now in the garden, please please please universe, I need coffee like you would not believe.

Oh and lastly, a little pic of new design for the scrumptious designed by the talented miss Elly of course. And, the best bit is that it only takes one hank, yipee.

Why the hell not.

So lets add a litle bit more to the recent trauma shall we, perhaps something like some chronic stomach cramps, so bad I can't eat or do anything. Bang my fists on the fricken table, I can't eat ANYTHING because its excruciating. Not sure if its a bug, or just my body saying, thats it, ENOUGH. Its time to go to sleep for a couple of days now.

Not being able to eat is the worst thing ever ever ever for me, food makes me so happy.

Anyway I am drinking pints of fresh spearmint tea, which seems to help, and now I'm going back to sleep.

End of an era.

My nan died peacefully yesterday at lunchtime. I want to write a post about her because she was such amazing woman, but I need to think about it first, and I'm not really in the mood today.  So I guess thats all I'm gonna say for now.

I love you nan, I hope you are in a wonderful place, where ever you are.

XX

Dunno what to say today.

Hmm, normally I have lots to tell, but my life has just exploded to the point where I can't think straight, everything is fab, things are developing so nicely, but sometimes I just get a bit bewlidered with all the changes, especially emotional ones, especially when relationships change and get better, in a way you would never expect.

hmm, got lots of psychology work to do, eating cheese and chutney sandwiches, feel like sitting in my garden and knitting, but. must . work.

Sorry for such an odd post. Oh, I Know, I am going to learn to play the mandolin, I have had one for about 4 years, and played about on it, but now I have a teacher!! yipee!!!!!!

The weekend.

I had such a restfull weekend, more restful that for a very very long time, saturday was a scorcher, so seeing as I had a squillion wholesale orders to finish, I dyed my little heart out, I love this pic, because you can see the gardens progress nicely. All the yarn hanging up is a new yarn I am stocking which is  a merino tencel yarn, in sock weight, it has such a super shine on it.

Then sat afternoon, I took a trip to getknitted the most wonderful knitting shop on the earth, and purchased some noro blossom in a turquiose colour, I can't decide what to knit with it though yet.