February clubs on the way!

It's club day! All the club yarns and fibres are on the way, so get ready to stalk your friendly postie! I won't spoil the surprise but look out for pics in a week or so when everyone has their goodies....

P/hop sock

Have you any idea how difficult it is to photograph your own feet? Well, I wanted to get this pic up on the blog so, rather than wait for DH to do a "proper" pic, I just stuck my foot out and snapped this quickie so you can see the design I'm working on for the p/hop project. I promise there'll be a better one to go with the pattern!

For those of you not familiar with p/hop, this neat idea to raise valuable funds for Medecins sans Frontieres is the brainchild of Natalie at The Yarn Yard. Rather than try to explain it myself, here is the idea in Natalie's own words from the Ravelry p/hop group.

"p/hop (although it sounds like a rapper’s name) means pennies per hour of pleasure. It is a fundraiser for the international medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Fontieres (Doctors Without Borders). Lovely designers from all over the place have pledged to donate patterns to MSF, which you can download for free! However, once you have your newly knitted/crocheted scarf/socks/sweater in hand, we ask you to donate an amount that corresponds to the amount of pleasure you got from making it… I think I’ve made this sound more complicated than it is! Hopefully you know what I mean…"

To keep up with the latest p/hop news, Ravelry members can sign up to the p/hop group . Not on Ravelry yet? Check out Natalie's blog. You can also make a donation and find out more here

Natural dyeing at the hut

Not Pizza Hut, the scout hut : )

Saturday was the first Natural dyeing workshop of the year and we got off to a great start with everyone going away with over 70 different colour samples from our expanding range of Hue & Dye and Earthues natural dye extracts.

It was a busy day with a myriad of colours emerging from bubbling pots, and exciting clingfilmed parcels being carefully unwrapped to reveal their gorgeous, hand-painted hues. We dip-dyed, squirted, painted and colour-modified and, as you can see from Kate's luscious plummy merino boucle sample (above), natural dyes need not mean pastels!

A big thank you to Kate, Kathleen and Margaret for coming along (and I hope you all got to put your feet up when you got home! You all worked very hard!).

And good luck with your finals, Margaret : )

January Fibre Adventure and Roving Medley Club

Just a couple of quick pics of the lovely fibre selection members of the Fibre Adventure Club and Roving Medley Club received in January.

This month's Roving Medley was a luscious, blended merino/silk. Fibre Adventurers received a scrummy parcel of merino/silk, silk hankies and Shetland fleece. The Shetland comes from a small local flock in Cheshire and the lady who keeps them is an excellent spinner so she really "knows her onions" when it comes to a good fleece for the handspinner. February's package will include fleece from another small, local flock but I won't spoil the surprise! If you'd like to join a unique experience and expand your fibre horizons, there are just a couple of places left and you can sign up here.

(Oh, and as I've had lots of interest from customers outside the UK, look out for an International membership coming soon).

Blankie - finally started spinning!

After losing the pattern for our new living room "blankie" I thought I was going to have to re-think the whole project. Thankfully, Judy came to my rescue and lent me her copy, so I'm back up and running again - yay!

So I scooped up my big pile of batts and spun up the first couple of bobbins. I specifically want this yarn to be "art yarn" (lumpy-bumpy) as some of the fibres are quite old and some is from the "less desirable" parts of the fleece (think daggy areas!). I know everyone says that once you've learned to spin fine, it's hard to go back to lumpy yarns, but it is so true! It took ages to persuade myself to let all those lumps and clumps disappear into the orifice. But it was worth it! Here are the first couple of skeins, some of the batts and the yarn on the bobbin. The skein in brown is from a local jacob flock and will be the contrasting smooth yarn to complement the lumpy "57 varieties" yarn.

This is the first "me" project I've made for absolutely ages and it's really nice to have a proper hobby project on the go.