Outcast knitters

Good news - I have some yarnie goodness to show you. It's been in the shop for a couple of days (I need to sort out the time-lag between shop updates and blog updates), but here you go:
Lovebird in Lavish - 4 ply cashmere/silk (Sold)
Check out the difference with this Mellow - 6 ply cashmere/silk - which I did for a custom order at the same time:
The Mellow seems to soak up the colour much more than the Lavish. But guess it's down to personal taste if you prefer the vibrant colour or the gentler shading.

Here is Fragrant Stocks (Sold) - rapidly becoming a favourite with me and customers alike:
And a new colourway inspired by the book cover for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. This is Desert Dune - was thinking would make beautiful scarf if combined with other Lavish colours:Here we have Dewberry - it came up a little pinker than the last time I did this colourway.
And finally, some Plushness in Foxglove - I created this colourway for a Dear Customer and made two skeins at the time, loaded this one into the shop this week and suddenly realised last night that the item was "inactive" - I had forgotten to click "Final" when I was playing about with it on etsy. Anyhow, here is the second one (Sold):
I have been a busy little bee yesterday and today and have a further 25 or so skeins to prepare for next week in almost every yarn type. I have to keep some back in preparation for the "Christmas at Hillcrest" craft fair - which is at the end of November at Rachel's (soon-to-be-Etsian) sister-in-law's gallery/workshop in the West Country - but it's soooo difficult deciding which to keep back and which to list. (Did you notice I've forgotten if it's Dorset or Devon again, Rachel? Goldfish memory, I am. It's Devon, isn't it?)

It seems like so little to offer but thus are the limitations of being an evening/weekend indie yarn dyer. For the time being, SQ shall have to remain small and exclusive! What I can say is that I'm delighted with how it's going, by the customer support and wonderful feedback, by the new people I've met and by the fact I had set an original goal of 50 sales by Christmas from when I started in June and achieved it by September. So thank you to everyone. (Oooo, I hope I haven't jinxed it now by saying all that.)

Bearing in mind, I usually start around 9pm and finish around midnight or 1am, here's a rundown of what I did this week:
Monday night - skeining
Tuesday night - labelling yarn to bring along to knitting group - how did that take so long?
Wednesday night - first time at Outcast knitting group - got to do some ACTUAL knitting.
Thursday night - preparing base yarn for next day; more skeining
Friday night - preparing more yarn for dyeing; more skeining

Plus Ravelrying, blogging, Etsying, photographing... Didn't make it to one gym session, Body Attack class or circuits either - usually manage to fit in at least two if not all three.

So instead of flabbing about the house, on Wednesday night, I took myself along to the Jelly Leg'd Chicken gallery/workshop in Reading to meet the lovely Suzanne, a Dear Customer who owns the gallery, and the rest of the knitting group. They made me feel very welcome and were a really friendly bunch of people. It was so nice to meet fellow Etsians and yarn-obsessives. I particularly enjoyed chatting to Sarah who was an archaeological illustrator and knitting her first pair of socks - in cable. How brave is she!

I must admit it felt really strange to be knitting in a group at first - I don't know why - maybe because I don't like anyone to see the speed I knit at, or when I fudge bits, but after a while it was fine; everyone else was concentrating on what they were doing and I became less self-conscious. They wanted to see the yarn I'd brought along - here's a photo and another one here which Suzanne put on Flickr of it and they even bought a couple of skeins.

And finally, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to show this yet, but I'm guessing no international Yarn Yard customers read my humble blog, and assuming that UK customers have already got theirs, here's Natalie's offering for my first month's merino club:
It's called Doodle, is 50% merino, 50% tencel and so tempting that I'm considering making a scarf out of it before I begin my Chevron scarf since the STR second batch hasn't yet arrived. I saved a sample from a stitch library at the back of a knitting magazine that may just do the job. Right must be off before network crashes again... I need to pick your brains in the next post.