Fyberspates

Stressed and unbelievably busy.

Title says it all.

xx

Oh my goodness, its so Early, its wrong!!!

I woke up at 5.50am, because I was dreaming anxiously about labeling yarn before I go to Peru. I have so many things to finish before I go, that its making me twitchy, so I thought I would get up, make some tea and go through all my flagged emails and get all the little things sorted this morning before I go to Bath for the conclusion of our knitting research meeting. The results have been analysed and now we are meeting to see if there is evidence to apply for lots of money to research it properly, so I suppose really its quite a big day today, especially seeing as I don't know what the results were, gulp.

So just to give you a taster, I have to get in the post on Monday 3 orders that are huge to the UK, Scotland and Canada, gulp, but this is a small proportion of a scrummy order for K1 yarns in Scotland, I am desperate to go and see the new shop.......

Update is still going in the shop, all the pastels are up, its the nice chocolaty colours next, the the scrumptious dk solids which you can see above and to be honest to dye for. Order from the shop have to be purchased by wed morning, or they won't get sent till I get back...... have a lovely weekend, back tomorrow with knitting results and ethics things, and hopefully a full shop, lol.

xx

Shop Update

This is taking some serious time, lol!

I will continue to update over the weekend so keep an eye out, there is lots of scrumptious dk, and a kilo in each colour so there is enough to make a garment, and a tone of lace silk and fairy wool and I mean a tonne, lol!

Scrumptious DK in leprechaun

Self striping merino DK

Shop update and weekend ethics reading.

So my cherubs, I will slowly update the shop from this afternoon, you know what I am like I never do things quickly, lol!

I have a new yarn to replace the Bluefaced Leicester cobweb, its the same yardage but its super super super soft merino, not from Australia, lol, it is very gorgeous and I am going to call it 'fairy wool', I translated into welsh, its unspellable, and Hannah would have to keep sending me emails about my spelling, because I guarantee I would get it wrong, so we'll keep the English for now, lol!

There is all sorts, oh and I will put some of the blends of fibres up on the white yarns and fibres page so that if you fancy dyeing your own of my yummy blends you can, and probably some more of the white yarns too.

Now onto weekend ethics reading, I got the wool record today, and I am fighting to save it for later with a cuppa and a piece of cake, I will read it and summarise and pop some of the articles on the blog on Sunday for you to read, but here's a few headlines of whats going on in the wool world at the moment:

Investors quit China over rising costs.

Mulesing - Some retailers lift ban

Swedish retailers consider Boycott of Australian wool

Pollution victims in china seek civil compensation.

That might sound boring, but they are very very interesting articles, anyway I will summarise them for Sunday reading for you, or if they are good, i will just cut and paste some of them. I may add in some back ground to give you some context too.

Self striping yarn in the Update and a little bit more on ethics.

Lets start with fun stuff. OK, so guess what I made yesterday ready for the shop update?

Some very very yummy self striping yarns, oh yes, they were labour intensive as hell, but alot of fun. They are in big 500gm hanks, pretty much enough to make a jumper, and they are gorgeous. I will post some photo's later in the afternoon once they are dry and ready to go, I am very excited about these, they are just scrummy, I have wanted to make some for donkey's years. There is also lots of lovely lace and scrumptious coming tomorrow.

Right Ethics, there is a  hidden storm brewing about this, which is kind of exciting, but in no way made to make people feel uncomfortable, its about walking forward together and helping eachother make great business decisions.

I am not of the opinion that anyone has the right to say whats right and wrong about yarn, there are just sometimes better ways of doing things.

What I would like to start with Amanda is to make a central resourse on the net, with all the links to fibre sourcing, and processing so that people can have a think about things, nothing more than that at the moment, I am not in the habit of pissing people off, after all we are making the place a happier world supplying people with yarn, and happy people are nicer to eachother.

MASSIVE Shop Update and Ethical discussions.

I had better start with the ethical thing. I'm glad people are starting to take notice of ethical things with yarn, on the new shop layout seeing as I can have unlimited pages, I will put detailed info of each of my yarns, and I mean properly detailed, not a vague hint, and Amanda and I are going to come up with a kind of ethical rating score that people can put on labels to make it easier to think about, but that will take lots of work and planning, and possibly an entire website, I am very proud to be involved in a thinking shift. Thats why I get up everyday and chant.

Secondly, seeing as most of April will be spent gathering information in Peru about where our yarns are made and sourced (when I say ours, I mean mine and Amanda's, we share alot of the same yarns) I will not be able to operate the shop to the fullest capacity, so therefore, this Friday's update is going to be the largest I have ever done, its got to cover the month of April so its going to be super duper, if there is any particular yarns/fibres you would like to see, or colours, please leave a comment or email me. Orders will be shipped up until Wednesday, and probably not after that until April the 20th. I will start uploading Friday's update from the morning.

Portrayal of the perfect life.

Blogs are great for portraying a perfect life, and sometimes I read through the lovely blogs and think, OH how lovely and how cute, it sounds idyllic. And then I laugh, and think about all the bits people chop out to make it sound nice, don't get me wrong, I love reading them, but as I was about to embark on a tale of cutsiness, I thought I would write a reality one, I had a really great weekend, it was relaxing, and I got lots done and spent it with my two favourite people, but there was no cutsy crap, so here is a comedy/real itinerary of my weekend:

• It started with a few gin and tonics, a good start I always think!
• Rewinding skeins with a serious hang over in my pj's and attempting to update the shop, but gave up.
• Driving to mom and pops and taking my extended family and eating seriously good food and not drinking hardly any alcohol because it made me queasy.
• Did a dye workshop at Get knitted, we had tonnes of fun and there was no gin insight.
• Celebrating the success of the workshop with Japanese food and wine, wrote blog about ethics whilst drunk, rewrote blog when a little bit more sober and toned it down. (I always recommend checking my blog on a Saturday night between 11 - 12, there is often lots of uncensored stuff on there, lol!)
• Sunday morning: Easter eggs and alkaseltzer
• Did some more winding, and cooked vegetarian easter dinner with small amount of alcohol, think my liver was starting to give up by then.
• Did VAT return and more winding and dyeing. No alcohol, honest VAT man.
• Went to cafe and had nice glass of wine and dinner.

The end, oh did I mention I am giving up alcohol? No I am actually, I drink to much, and I am concerned about my wrinkles now I am 30.

Onto serious stuff. Carmella and I have come up with an action plan for the business. She is employed in a minimal capacity, where she kind of helps out in emergency, but I need to streamline the business, and focus on what I am good at doing and thats designng and dyeing. I love doing my VAT Returns every 3 months, because I get an idea of how well the business is doing, its growing steadily, and that is good and exciting, and there is room to expand but I need to do it without kiling myself. So carmella will be trained in posting out orders, and helping me out with all of those things which take me away from dyeing etc, and seeing as I have 2 big business trips this year, where in effect I will be away for 5 weeks, I need to keep sales up, and customers happy. Believe it or not, but next week on wednesday I go to Germany for 3 days on business, then the day after I go to Peru for 10 days!!!! Gees, that came so quickly. Then I have a 4 weeks at home and then I am off to the US on another trip, but I can't tell you about that one yet, its kind of big ;-). So to cope with the expansion, I suppose really I am getting my first real employee, lol, its very exciting, so if you get emails signed by Carmella, say hello!

God I love yarn tree huggers - especially the natural dye Studio.

Probably my bestest freind in the whole yarn hand dyeing world is Amanda from the Natural dye studio. I love her because she says things how they are, and stands up for what she believes in, and her yarns and kits are superb, and she is REALLY ENVRONMENTALLY FREINDLY. When we do shows we always eat great food and get drunk together and always put the world to rights.

Go and read the last two of these posts, and you will know why I love her so much.

Too much chocolate.

Oh god, I have eaten too much chocolate, our house is full of the damned stuff, huge packages of cakes and chocs from Spain, and presents of more, I am having a slight sugfar high, lol.

Anyway, I did a super dyeing workshop at getknitted yesterday, it was just so much fun, it really was, the lovely ladies dyed some really super colours, and we laughed alot, which meant we were all inspired and had a perfect day :-) I also accidently purchased some knitpicks needels for peru, I figured I might be able to get them through customs seeing as its at least 30 hours of flying, I could knit tonnes in that time.

Shop has finished being updates, there are some of the new fibre blends on there, and some cute sock yarns. Right off to knit and watch the Grand prix. Happy easter everyone.

xxxxx

Update

Started update with a few yummt sock yarns, but have to go to mom and pops for dinner, and so I'll continue over the weekend.

xx