Knitting Club week two - quick learners!

Today was the second week of Knitting Club at the DS's school. An excellent turnout of enthusiastic girls (no boys yet, but maybe next time!). After casting on and a bit of knitting last week, this week everyone was making great progress on their garter stitch i-pod/i-phone/mobile phone covers (what did we make before electronic gadgetry?). Even tho' the girls couldn't take their needles home last week it was  amazing how quickly they picked up garter stitch and started producing their knitted fabrics. I am seriously enjoying this teaching thing....

Website back up : )

A quick update to say that we appear to be back to business as usual with the website and emails. I've checked various "clicky" buttons and everything seems to be working, but if you are having any ongoing problems, please don't hesitate to get in touch (details in the previous post).

Many thanks and sorry for any inconvenience : ))

Website down : (

Huge apologies to all our customers and visitors to the website but we have just discovered that our website is down. We can still access your order information via paypal so orders already placed are being processed as normal. Please note that all payments are handled by paypal not through our site so your payment details are held on paypal's secure website and are not accessible via our site. This applies whether you ordered with a paypal account or by putting in your card details online.

We can still accept orders and if you have any queries at all please don't hesitate to contact me either by posting a comment here, by telephone on 0161 718 3818 or by email me at hueanddye@googlemail.com.

We are currently in contact with our webhosting service who are doing all they can to get us back to business as usual.

My apologies again for the inconvenience and I'll keep you updated with progress.

Secret Santa - (yes, I know it's January)

In all the flurry of Christmas, snow and poorly family members, this post found itself trapped in my drafts folder. So, with deepest apologies to my lovely Secret Santa (well, Santas actually), I am sharing the beautiful gifts sent to me by Helen and Angelica (best known to some of you as the creative spirits behind My Heart Exposed). I shall be spinning up these lovely fibres into a pair of socks for which my feet will be eternally grateful! Thank you!  : ))

December clubs - Winter Jasmine

 For the final club of 2010 it was difficult to ignore snow when it came to thinking about an appropriate colourway. Of course, snow being white it doesn't make for a good colourway on its own (!) so I had to be a bit creative. Whilst there isn't an abundance of colour at this time of year, there are one or two brave plants that flower from now until Spring, standing out amidst the snow and grey weather to remind us that there is still life under the frozen soil. One of my favourites is the winter jasmine. Its vibrant yellow flowers seem almost to be defying winter to crush their spirit as they spring from woody grey stems that look all but dead. And so, Winter Jasmine inspired December's colourway, with a roving of Whitefaced Woodland for roving medley members, Adventure Club members received a lovely braid of kid mohair,

gotland fleece (below) and Whitefaced Woodland roving. (Apologies for the lack of roving photo, somehow all the parcels were posted and extras sold before I had chance to photograph it, so if anyone has a pic do send it in as it's nice to have record of all the fibres for my recipe books!).

For sock club members I chose a lovely high-twist merino.

And I couldn't finish the year without saying a huge thank you to all my Club Members! Your emails, photos and projects are truly inspiring and I hope you'll continue to keep me up to date with your plans and pictures next year! : )))

Rounding off 2010 - Clothes Show Live

Braving the wild weather and traffic chaos, Julia and I joined Ness and her team on the Sknitch stand at the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham. I didn't take my camera so couldn't get any pics (and I'm sure Ness won't be persuaded to part with the pic of her with Jeff Brazier!), so I hope Natalie who keeps a lovely blog here won't mind me borrowing hers. We had a great time teaching people to knit. It was especially nice to see so many keen young students - hopefully lots of knitters and knitwear designers in the making! Thanks to the organisers for providing the space, to UK Handknitting for materials and above all, to Ness for sterling work organising volunteers and making sure everything ran smoothly - you are a superstar!