Hello!

Almost there...

1225 - Last Month's Club yarn, just one skein of it in toddy.

1223 a variegated autumnal colourway in Clan.

I'm just starting the uploading, and hoping to have it all done by eight. Wish me luck.

n

Look at this!

If you look to your right you'll see a new photo album featuring this week's Shop Update. The link is for anyone reading this as an email because they don't get the sidebars.

All the photos can be embiggened with a click and I'll add to the album each day rather than in one huge session.

This is my favourite so far. I think it looks like a rooster!

 

1144 - toddy.

At the moment I have the album set up on a black background, compared to the Oatie Biscuits recipe which is on white. What do you think?

n

Free Yarn!

Special offer.

Buy two skeins of yarn or fibre or any combination and I'll send you a free skein of Croft semi solid until I run out of them!

There are lots of single colours which would take forever to put on the site and I need that bedroom cleared by the weekend...

New fibre, 70% alpaca and 30% BFL.... very, very soft. And more yarn at never to be repeated prices. The "bedroom" code is no longer valid, but many of the yarns have been reduced in price to make way for a young man who is bigger than I am... and for new yarns too.

n

OUCH!

As many of you know if you follow me on twitter or visit the shed on ravelry I have been troubled by a bit of "backage" recently. It started about ten days ago, lasted for 24 hours and then came back again on Sunday. Not fun at all. I've been munching the ibuprofen and keeping it at bay but it has slowed me down somewhat.

I wasn't able to do much yesterday but staying mobile (gently) seems to be helping. However, not working (much) yesterday has created a backlog and I have a simply HUGE pile of orders to process today.

Many of you have taken advantage of the 25% off offer. Some of you have chosen the dyed-to-order 1-6B and 1-6T Summer Collection colourways. Such is the love for Toddy that I have run out! A new delivery will be here tomorrow but it won't be dyed until Thursday at the earliest (depending on the backage), and possibly Friday. I will do it as soon as I can.

The 25% off will stay there for the rest of today and then things will be back to normal, I have more yarn (BFL-beautiful) ready for the shop update on Thursday and some brand new fibre too.

BFN n

Challenges

Challenge 1.

Get all Clubs in the post by Thursday.
Not as easy as it sounds, the admin and packing and all that takes ages and despite constant cross-referencing (sometimes VERY cross referencing) it seems that there is always a miscount between the parcels I think I should have and the parcels I actually do have. This is almost always in your favour, I have to say, and results in someone getting a parcel they didn't expect (and I just tell them to keep it).

Challenge 2.

The crossword.
8A, 7D, 20D, 18A, 22A, 17D, 16D, 23A
So many I'm not typing them all out today. Clearly I have brain-fug.
The grid is here.
Print and enjoy.

Challenge 3.

After much agonising (and twittering) I finally cast on for the Brainless socks from Yarnissima.
I'm using 689 which was in the shop but isn't any more (you had your chance).

These yarns, which I am beginning to call the Raindrop range, look, I grant you, like a dogs breakfast in the skein.
I simply don't have time to rewind them and prettify them, but I am working on making some of them as permanently available colourways so that will give me the opportunity to make them look a little more photogenic.

Brainless features several things which are new to me.
Judy's magic cast on.
I read this a dozen times before looking on YouTube.
I found this.
Now, I love Cat Bordhi's books and her designs are amazing, but birds flying in and biting the yarn?
Clocks with hands which tock-tock in two directions at once?
Beaks biting your thumb?
I went back to the Knitty article and just did it Very Slowly And Carefully until I got it right.

I have fudged with the pattern already and I didn't start with the side sections until I finished the toes instead of starting as I was still increasing. No point in making life over complicated.

I'm also trying to master (mistress?) socks-on-circs, and as a dpns Luddite it's not my favourite method.

And as if that wasn't enough, I'm doing cables up the sides.
CABLES!
Me?
It's not as if they will ever be seen because they are on the foot and even with sandals the leather on the side of my Birks will wrap them up and hide them.
You will be proud of me though...
... the pattern has them both twisting in the same direction - but I am making the one on the left twist one way, and the one on the right twist the other. Clever-clogs, huh?

This is a phone photo but you can just see the first twist if you look carefully.

And speaking of challenges, have a look at this.
Especially Edna and Dorothy.
And I thought MY life was challenging...

n

Hide and Peek

Last weekend I had a table at the Woolfish Festival, I met lots of lovely people and was very fortunate to have the help all day of Lucy, who just plonked her knitting down next to the table and pitched in. She brought me tea and more tea (and you know how I like a cup of tea).

In return, I taught her to spindle. It seemed like a fair swap!

The table next to mine was full of the most delicious stuff.

How could I resist?

Ginger fluff.
Pure Alpaca.
Sooooooo soft.

And not content with fluff...

Cairndinnis Alpaca 4 ply.
More specifically, Daniella's 4ply.
336m of it.
No idea what I will use it for, but I love it to bits.

And this is a selection of fibre which will be in the shop over the weekend sometime.

705 (merino silk)

706 (BFL)

707 (BFL)

708 (BFL)

709 (BFL)

710 (BFL)

The difference between 709 and 710 is this.

710 (and 706 and 708) on the left is a random dye which will spin a blended yarn.
709 (and 705 and 707) on the right is dyed in a sequence so it's more "organised".

Have a lovely weekend.
I'm going back to stroking the ginger fluff now.

n

Semi...

There is, it seems to me, a move towards semi-solid yarns and fibres.
There will always be a place for the variegated yarns, for the stripes and the semi-stripes, and the swirls and whooshes of colour which cheer us on a gloomy day. These brights and not-so-brights are somehow the equivalent of wearing naughty knickers under a very formal business suit.

I wear these - knitted from Club yarn from a long time ago - under my navy trousers with black lace-ups and unless you happen to be glancing at my ankles as I walk, or glimpse me getting into a car or sitting on a plane, you'd never know they were there.

Yes, I love my brights (and I know you love them too).

But sometimes I want something a little plainer. Not necessarily less bright, but perhaps less busy, you know?
So I was delighted to discover that all four of the sock patterns in the new Twist Collective collection have been designed with semi-solids in mind.

Barber Pole

Blossom

Netherfield

Laeticia

I'm experimenting with a new search widget for the blog. The categories are relatively recent and don't reference the whole blog, but you can now search for MSF or Primavera for example and the search device will find all the posts in the last year or more for you, so if you are looking for a pattern or something and can't recall how far back it is, the widget should find it for you.

Right, I'll be back later today with fibre pictures.

Happy Monday!

n

What's in a bag?

Today is a very exciting day.
I have joined the ranks of those who get a veg box delivery. In my case it's a veg BAG delivery from the lovely people at The Whole Shebag, which is based near where I live. There a number of these schemes around, and several of them deliver to this area, but I picked TWS because they actually grow much of the produce themselves, or they swap with other growers locally. I'm less concerned about the organic bit and more interested in the local bit after browsing the the web last week and finding a link to The Fife Diet, which was also reported by the bbc last year. A few weeks ago it was on The Food Programme as well and you can "listen again" to it.
bbc iPlayer only keeps things for a week but this is a pre-iPlayer broadcast, so it's still there.
The Fife Diet was inspired in turn by the 100 Mile Diet, a movement which started in Vancouver in Canada in 2005. You can see your own personal 100 miles by clicking on the link. I live in Kirknewton in Scotland, so you can see that mine covers a huge area as far north as Aberdeen, south to Newcastle and west to the Mull of Kintyre. There is a lot of sea!! I forsee much fish on the menu.
I could have berries from Perthshire, lamb from the borders (although Mrs Hamilton's is about ten minutes away so I would probably go there), and I can have wine from Cairn o' Mohr who make an elderberry wine which is better than anything else in the world. (And Asda sell it, or I can get it at the Edinburgh Farmer's Market so I don't have to drive to Perthshire.)

In Nice, a trip to the market would have produced all sorts of things.

Beautifully plump baby aubergines, arranged on giant cabbage leaves, and yes they really were that shiny.

Bouquets of fresh chillies.

And small mountains of sun-dried tomatoes.

But I am just as excited about the bag of locally produced potatoes, onions and other goodies which will be arriving soon.
I'll let you know what I get tomorrow.

I'm about to post off a large heap of Club yarns this afternoon, so I'd better go and deal with those.
I do wish the veg man would hurry up though...

n

PS. Maybe I should rename the yarns in the shop as recipes?

462 could be Tapenade

463 looks very like those sun-dried tomatoes... or maybe just Heinz Cream of Tomato. Comfort food for a cold day.

n