Showing posts with label ballwinder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ballwinder. Show all posts

Monday, 1 October 2007

Party weekend

OK, before you read on, I have to warn you, this is an (almost) yarn-free post - other than to say I've spent the evening skeining and skeining with a bit more skeining.

And to just say I'm planning on putting together a 12 Days of Christmas "collection" (the word collection being totally tongue-in-cheek) of yarns and here's the first. It's called Partridge Pear and is in the 4 ply cashmere/silk Lavish yarn:
Now onto other matters. Firstly, the Big New Haircut. It was rather more drastic than I planned going from long, light and a bit frazzled to short, dark and sleek.
My friend Debbie in the school playground said,
"It makes you look much younger"
My colleague Trevor said,
"Have you lost weight?"
And my Body Attack instructor shouted across the class,
"Debs, you could've been on Ten Years Younger!"
(Did I look that old and fat before? Probably, though I thought I was casually glamorous!)
So I think I like it, all in all! Made my day until I got so behind preparing for the party, then got a phone call from school saying Skein Princess had been sick, and then I got jammed in a parking space and reversed into a car with the mother watching. Then had to go back to school a second time to pick up Skein Prince.

After traumas sorted (SPss was fine - must've been running about too much after lunch), the party. Now I'm not sure I know my readers quite well enough to divulge what kind of party this was. I'll drop a few hints - there were 16 guests, lots of wine and nibbles, some games played (no, you're on the wrong track - it's not that pervy!), loads of laughs, a few renditions of "Bright Eyes, Burning Like Fire" (anyone remember Watership Down? And the kind of creatures that featured in it?), my friend Unity won the "Biggest Floozy" competition and £700 was spent. Got it? We're a classy bunch round these here parts! But what a laugh!

Our oldest friends from the New Forest - Guy and Jo and their children - stayed over for the weekend and my good friend Sarah came over with Dave and their girls for Saturday lunch and the weather was actually nice enough to sit outside - and have a giggle about the night before. We all kind of vegged out for the rest of the weekend and took the kids to the Discovery Centre and for a walk along the canal to get them out and about.
In case you're wondering, shadows of the kids fishing in the lake at the Discovery Centre.

I did my best to turn the conversation to yarn at every opportunity - because I am officially a fully-fledged Yarn Bore and proud of it - and even showed them my studio. Well, when I say studio, I mean an old kitchen cupboard (from when it fell off the wall in our kitchen laden with wedding crystal and Calpol) in the garage, an old table and some shelving laden with recycled plastic milk cartons and juice bottles. They did an admirable job at feigning interest.

And finally, I acquired this during the week - AT LAST, I hear you cry (at least if you read any of my earlier posts) - a vintage ball winder from ebay in full working order - please admire:PS The new skein winder arrived. Skein King offered to have a go at winding up a skein to help out... all I need say is that three days later, I had to scrap the yarn. Would he listen to my advice to avoid a tangle? Would he hell! I do have a photo but I don't think he'd thank me! He was only trying to help (I keep telling myself!)

Thursday, 16 August 2007

SkeinQueenery

I realised it was high time I invested in a ball winder after a lovely customer asked for some skeins to be wound into a centre ball pull. I did it loving by hand - what do you think?
Summer Bunting and Garden Party

Some weekend dyeing:
And drying:

And some labelled up skeins ready for America:Some Moo cards:
And Moo stickers:

Thursday, 9 August 2007

A little taste of what's to come

Since the kids are away staying with grandparents in Holywood for ten days (boo hoo, yay, boo hoo, yah - mixed feelings as you can tell), I spent five whole hours last Sunday trying to get a big batch of cashmere/silk dyed up.

All will be listed on etsy by the end of the week and I got an arrival of gorgeous laceweight merino and Superwash 4 ply merino today so another weekend of dyeing coming up.

Here's a taster:

We have Lovebird in vibrant shades of pink and gold: (UPDATE: this has now sold)
Here's a close up as I'm loving these shades (though you might need your shades as the colours are quite bright):
Then I went mad with autumnal shades.

Here's Golden Plum:
And here's another plumy shade - Marmalade Plum:

And last but not least (I've a load more to reskein), here is Granda's red, white and blue colour choice, which I've called Patriot - but there must be a better name... any ideas? I parceled up his green, gold and white one which I decided he should keep.
This is in the lambswool/cashmere/angora.

The night before the children left for N. Ireland, we went to see High School Musical the show at Oxford New Theatre as it was Skein Prince's birthday. It was fab - they loved it. Skein Princess was trying to do a wolf whistle at the end she loved it so much.

Myself and the Skein King decided to walk up to the pub at Cold Ash this evening. Took the country route on the way which took 45 minutes - I needed that large glass of wine when we got there. It was worth it to sit outside and watch the sun go down and it not to be raining!

Oh, and here's a photo of two orders ready to go out to customers in USA (it's at this stage I have to admit I need a ball-winder when customers request skeins be rewound into centre-ball pulls):












Finally, check out this little bit of etsy advertising I purchased from monsterpromos on etsy:

Perfect for the back windscreen of my car. Now drivers behind me can ponder "What the hell's skeinqueen?" At the very least, they might remember the etsy name. Gotta get it out there!