Summer School - 4 days and counting!

Can you tell I'm nervous? Timetable is now done, handouts almost finished, samples dyed, but still all the prep for the Trade Fair to do and my own exhibition work to sort out. Oh crikey! Off to wind yarn.....

ps. If you're in the Lincoln area on Sat 8th August, you can pop in and see the students' and tutors work and there is also a trade fair with some of your favourite suppliers (10am - 4pm) - free entry too! The venue is Bishop Grosseteste College, Lincoln.

July club pics - Kingfisher

In a feat of unprecedented efficiency, here are the club fibres for July before the end of July - amazing!

Roving medley this month was one of my fave fibres, British Bluefaced Leicester. It is so soft, sleek and lustrous.


For Fibre Adventure club members, this month was a 4-fibre texture-fest (try saying that after a few drinks!) with BFL roving, jacob fleece, silk noil and silk throwsters waste (above).


This month's colourway was kingfisher. I wanted to capture both the shine of the sleek feathers glistening with water with the softer-coloured chest feathers. The shiny throwsters (bottom right) reflects the jewel tones of the wet feathers, the muted tones of the jacob (bottom left) and silk noil (middle right) pick out the soft underfeathers and the BFL (top) brings the pieces together with both slight lustre and soft tones.

Indigo and Woad workshop - the pics

Finally found the pics from the Indigo and Woad workshop earlier this month. It was a great day, although we did rather surprise the scouts when they came to unpack from camp and found these strange women with brightly coloured hair huddled over steaming pots on a portable stove! Oddly enough, they were very well-behaved and moved faster than your average group of teenagers - Mmm, wonder why?????

If you're in the area in November (and particularly if you like scaring scouts into thinking you're some kind of witch), I have another course running on Saturday 7th. And if you can't make November but can get a few friends and a venue together, I can always bring the course to you - just email me for details : )

And in case you're wondering why there are lots of things which aren't blue in this pic, we did some really interesting overdyeing too. These samples are madder, cochineal and weld (not all at once!), overdyed with combinations of woad and indigo and/or modified with iron, citric acid and sodium carbonate. Nice work, girls!

June club pics

As July's club yarns and fibres dropped into the postie's bag yesterday, I thought I should perhaps show you June's goodies. I had an unusually subtle, muted thing going on last month, and Nasturtium and Moss were the result. Slightly embarrassed to say that there isn't a photo of Moss (the sock colourway), because they were all snapped up before I could take any pics, including all my extras. However, we do have Nasturtium.....

Fibre Adventure Club - Corriedale roving, Gotland x Shropshire fleece, and, as an extra special treat, baby camel/silk roving. You cannot imagine how hard it was to part with my last batch of that particular fibre!


And, Roving Medley: Corriedale roving

The recent newsletter offer was so successful I've opened up extra spaces in the Fibre Adventure and Roving Medley clubs, but once these places are taken up I won't be able to take any more until subscriptions come up for renewal. So, those of you on the waiting list are now "in" and I'll be emailing you shortly and if you're not on the waiting list but thinking of signing up, there should now be a couple of places left.

New! Hippy Chick headband kit and pattern

In the rush to get ready for Woolfest I forgot to show you my latest design, another fun project from the Kool Aid Dye-it-Yourself stable, but also available as a pattern.

Hippy Chick uses just 50g of pure wool DK yarn, I used this one for the Kool Aid kit, and it is also available hand-dyed by yours truly here. It would also look lovely in my hand-dyed alpaca DK. (And as always, you can choose any colourway on the site that takes your fancy).

Thank you to Liz who looks just fab - I think you've missed your vocation there, Liz!

Club dyeing in progress and new colourways

July's clubs are in the cauldron, cooking away nicely. They'll be ready to go out early next week, so watch for next week's update and pics of last month's club yummies.

As I've had the dyepots out, I thought I might as well make some new colourways while I was at it, so to speak. So there are some lovely new shades of my exclusive alpaca/nylon sock yarn coming shortly.

And remember, you can have any base yarn in any colourway, so if you don't see your perfect combo on the website, just ask and I'll make one up just for you : ))

Bolton's Naked Knitters on Youtube!

If you've been following the exploits of the Bolton Knitting Noras and their fabulous Naked Knitting Calendar, you'll love this YouTube clip which show the behinds the scenes process of making the calendar. The girls are raising vital funds for Christie's cancer hospital and you can now pre-order your calendar on their website here so be sure to check it out : )

Stop the world...

... I want to get off!

After a fantastic Woolfest last week, I had dreams of an easy week this week. Dream on! Unpacking (I've seen far too much of my searingly hot loft this last two weeks), catching up on pattern designing and orders, preparing for today's workshop, teaching today's indigo and woad workshop, and that's just the bits I can remember. This hasn't been helped by the weirdest dreams - last night's involved being at our local swimming baths with Princess Diana - I have really got to stop late night cheese-eating - too freaky!

When I get rid of the indigo blue hands (swarfega here I come), I am knitting this evening. Ok, it is a new design so doesn't really count as "me" time, but it is just the knitting bit, so should be nice and relaxing, especially as I have some issues of the Mentalist to catch up on - he is soooo hot!