Hello!

London Calling.

So, I went to London.
London = Knitting shops.
More specifically, London = Socktopus and iKnit.

First, Socktopus.
This is Alice (and Deuce).

 

All the London pics are phone photos BTW, not proper photos.

Alice has set up a great wee shop. It's a cornucopia of yarn I have never seen before, and it's all in one place. Some of it is Yarn Yard yarn too, although that's not on the website because every skein is different, but of you are in London and you'd like to see it "in the skein" then pay her a visit (there is some fibre too).
Yes, I did succumb. You probably all think I am immune to the delights of other people's yarn, but I'm not.

Koigu.
I bought two.

We drank tea and talked about phone apps and websites and blogs and twitter and redbush tea and p/hop and wine and dogs and spinning and lazy kates and ... oh yes, we squeezed in a bit of chat about knitting as well.

And then I went to iKnit which is completely different, but equally nice and Gerard and Craig and I talked about cider and twitter and phones and p/hop and needles and spinning and books and... yes a bit about yarn and knitting as well.

iKnit has a quite astonishingly good book section.

And then we left there and went back to the hotel via the Bamboo Tree Canteen where I had this.

Well, Gavin had the one on the left which is Dim Sum, and I had the one on the right which is crispy lamb. It was very tasty.

 

Remember this?

I spun it into this...

and gave it to my Mum for Christmas.

She has done something fabulous with it.

Come back tomorrow and I'll show you.

n

Hi honey! I'm home...

Oooooh and I have so much to tell you but I am absolutely whacked, so I'm going to wait until I am a bit more coherent.

I do need to remind you that there are just 24 hours left to sign up for the Lace Club and after that it will be closed until the last week in June, so if you are wavering, it's a long time to wait for the next one!

Next week will see fresh shop updates.
In fact, I am going to try my best to get something new in the shop Every Single Day.

It might be DIY3Ply.
It might be sock yarn - all of them.
It might be laceweight - I have a whole load of Betwixt ready to dye.
It might be batts - with and without sparkly bits.
It might be fibre. Hand dyed fibre as well as the new always-there fibre. And new colours in The Yarn Yard exclusive sock fibre too.
There will also be more spindles, and niddy noddies.

Many of you tell me how frustrating you find it to join a free-for-all when a shop only does updates a week. It can make you feel you need to grab just about anything in order to be successful in your purchasing, whether it's a colour you like or not.
Rest assured that this "scarcity" model of yarn and fibre shopping is not something I intend to adopt. It can be good for the seller, but really, I think it's pretty rubbish for the customer, so I'm just not going there.

Now, I need another cup of proper tea and then I might feel human again.

n

PS     One of the chickens died while we were away (Adam managed perfectly). The other one is bright as a button and doing all the things chickens do, so unfortunately I think it's just one of these things. In some ways it's part of taking ownership of where your food comes from. She had a nice life in our garden and that's something to feel good about even though it's a bit sad.

Tea at Socktopus!

I'll write properly when I get home, but here is Socktopus!

Second attempt!

Just trying out this mobile blogging lark.
Photos are of the apple store in Glasgow, and an advert I saw at Edinburgh Waverley last week.

At the airport.

Stuff...

I am off to London in the morning and won't be back until Friday.

I'm going to try and blog with my phone, but I'm not sure how I'll get on so here is a little bit of news.

Well, several bits.

1.    There are more spindles and niddy noddies on the way, and they will be here at the beginning of the week.

2.    I have also found some gorgeous "not-hand-dyed-by-natalie-fibre" which I have decided to stock to fill the "hungry gap" when the shop shelves are getting a little empty.
Pictures soon. The colours are lovely, and it spins beautifully.
This is also ideal starter fibre for when you have learned to use a spindle, and you'd like a little colour to play with, but you don't feel confident enough to use a hand-dyed fibre quite yet.

3.    Next week will also see the launch of "Design It Yourself 3 Ply". 
Hand dyed fibre in a choice of around fifteen semi-solid colours.
DIY3Ply will be offered in 33g (ish) lots, you choose three colours to build your own unique 3 ply yarn.

No-one else will have yarn like yours, it will truly be one of a kind.
If you have always wanted Key Lime Pie yarn in Lime Green, Biscuit and Cream, you can have it.
London Transport yarn in Taxi Black, Omnibus Red and Tarmac Grey? It can be yours.

New colours will be added to the shop several times a week. I have been dyeing everything from palest pink to deep aubergine, from periwinkle blue to daffodil yellow, from hot embers to bitter chocolate and just about everything in between. This is all hand-dyed characterful semi-solid fibre, not "flat" solid manufactured colours.

4.    I will be at the Woolfish Wool Festival on the 7th March in St Abbs, with plenty of yarn and fibre for fondling, so do put it on your calendars if you are in the Scottish Borders/Edinburgh area.

5.    I'm hoping to drop in on Alice at Soctopus tomorrow afternoon. She has promised me tea and cake!

I think that's enough excitement for one day so I'm off to pack my bags now, see you soon.

n
x

PS.  Lace Club sign ups close on Saturday, don't forget!

Letters and Numbers

With apologies to anyone who hasn't tried the Quick Crossword in G2 yet this morning.

11 Across:  T_P_R  - Regular drinker

14 Across:  H_R_L_  -  One making proclamations - harbinger

HELP!

I will be back with more letters and numbers later. Something new for you to try.

n

The Yarn Yard meme - Gimme 5

Some memes are huge long things and make you feel quite exhausted before you start (and they can take forever to read as well).
This is a very quick one I dreamed up at the weekend, with a final question provided (inadvertently) by another blogger.

1.    What can you hear, right now?

Starlings. They have taken up residence in the roof/loft, and my office is one of the bedrooms in the house, so they are right above me.

2.    What will you have for dinner tonight?

We are having flat green continental lentils, the kind which are about the size of an inside-out hole-punched hole, if you know what I mean. They will be cooked with onion, a little garlic, and some chicken and bacon. Most of the dish will be lentils though. And rice, short grain brown, cooked in the rice-cooker so it's slightly sticky, Japanese-style.

3.    Crossword, Sudoku or Boggle?

Crossword - I do the quick one on the G2 section in The Guardian. This is today's crossword, you can print it off if you want to try it. They make a printable version each day, just search for G2 and then look for it in "other services" at the bottom - which makes it sound kind of smutty somehow.
I can't do crypic crosswords at all.

Sudoku - yes. The Guardian G2 one (sorry). But only on Mondays when it's Easy. By Friday it has become Hard and by Saturday, Killer.

Boggle - yes. I am resisting the urge to download the iPhone app for it.

4.    Favourite biscuit?

Malted Milk. (I know, unbelievably boring).

5.    Which magazines do you read?

Spin Off, IK, Yarn Forward, Selvedge, and The Ecologist.
I guess I just don't have girly genes.
This question was inspired by The Knit Nurse.


Over to you.
Feel free to blog this (and let me know, so I can visit!)

n

PS     If you are blog-free, or simply prefer it, please reply in the comments instead. There is no truth in the rumour that I am a Jaded Cook who is just looking for culinary inspiration!

Sitting on a Park Bench

No, I'm not referring to the first line of "Aqualung"... I'm introducing you to the little guy sitting reading a very large book on a sunny park bench on the left.

The blog is now connected up to Feedburner. You can use Google's reader (which is the defualt option, because Google own Feedburner), or if you click to view other options there are plenty to choose from.
It's now also possible to subscribe by email.

Today I'm going to the cinema.
I'll report back later, but I am not taking my knitting.  ☺

n

Thank you, Aknita.

Just go and look at this blog post.
And then come back and we'll see if we can work out how best to use this fabulous piece of knitting to raise funds for MSF.

The original intention was to p/hop it.
But it seems altogether too wonderful for that.

It could be ebayed (MSF has an ebay account set up for just this sort of thing).
But again, how much would it raise?

So, we need your ideas.
Please contribute, and once we have decided - and it may be that a very well publicised auction on ebay is the way to go, we will need MAXIMUM publicity for it. It needs to be on blogs everywhere.

If anyone knows-someone-who-knows-someone who is famous and will talk about it or even wear it to the Oscars, please get in touch by email (the link is to the left) or in the comments.

n