The Art of Time Frittering and Other Bletherings

How to Time Fritter: Ravelry, Facebook, looking at Knitting Stitch Dictionaries, blogging, chatting on email, looking at potential spinning wheels.

How to Time Fritter on Ravelry: Check forums, check SQueenery forum, answer PMs, see if anyone's uploaded any new projects to drool over, check other 41 groups I belong to, check if any more hearts on projects (very sad but it means so much!!), check activity of SQ members in case I'm missing out on anything exciting and then do it all again x 50 each day. Is it just me?

What I Should Be Doing: Putting washes on, feeding next door neighbours' rabbits, cooking roast dinner, sorting out workshop, coming up with pattern designs for Unravel, putting in orders for yarn, putting in orders for business cards, writing cheques for Brownies, housework.

Well, at least I've weaned myself off Plurk!

And I can't stop knitting this - I'm loving every minute - but I think the recipient may well have spotted it on Flickr.

The lovely Yvette who is going to be my spinning guru has disappeared off to India for a well-earned holiday. In the meantime, I'm in the process of acquiring a new spinning wheel. Due to requests for hand-dyed fibre, I always said I need to learn how to spin first so that I get a feel for how the fibre will spin up and how best to dye it. It was my one and only New Year's Resolution and I can't wait to get started with encouragement from the Queen of Spinning and Crochet, Rockpool Candy too. Twas lovely to catch up with her this week and be in total awe of her gorgeous batts and handspun.

Oh and the international parcels for the second installment of the Winter Clubs were posted out this week. UK ones going out next week. It was at this stage that I was going to show you some photos of the December installment but looks like I was in such a rush to get them out, that I didn't take any. If anyone's got any spare...

We spent last weekend in Bristol in this hotel. The plans to go to Get Knitted were somewhat scuppered by the fact that there was water pouring through our bedroom ceiling at home at 6am on Saturday so we had to sort that out before we went. The hotel was very nice if a bit Faulty Towerish in decor and residents and of course, didn't look like this in the storms and gales, but we had a massive family room and it was just nice to have a change of scene (and a full English breakfast!)

SQ x

Why no yarn in the shop? Well, this little feast of Plushness will be on its way to Socktopus and will be for sale at Ally Pally.

The first installment of Squee! Sock Club went out and seems that all the club members have received their little purple parcel, so here's the Plushness club yarn based on Stately Homes called Secret Garden.


And here's some of the Encore club yarn based on the Lemony Snicket novels called Baudelaire Mansion:



I've been in the SQirkshop dyeing today and the weather is beautiful - the yarn is drying in the garden, so we can have a shop update next week.

Yesterday, my good friend Rachel came over from Old Windsor bearing gifts and check these out:
She made this pencil pot and I love the personalisation (is that a word?) Perfect for my Paperchase pens which I use for writing SQ labels.

She made this SQ x charm for my Thomas Sabo bracelet. Perfectly compliments my birthstone, lemon, Cinderella slipper and dragonfly and a bit more personal than the Fab at 40 ones available in the shops. Love, love, love it.

And she commissioned someone from Etsy to make this paperweight. Beautiful.

Hands up who thinks Rachel should open an Etsy shop?

Knit Fest

Life is running away with me again - no time to say hello, goodbye. What news, what news?

Loads going on in the yarny world this week. All I can say for now is that there will be a bunch of Plushness on sale at Ally Pally at the Knitting and Stitching Show which runs from 9th to 12th October courtesy of the lovely Alice at Socktopus. It's the first time SQ yarn will be making an appearance at a proper, big show and the prospect is very exciting, especially being stocked by Socktopus. It's not readily that I wholesale my yarn, but on this occasion, I just couldn't resist and look forward to seeing it in person (if I can peek above the the stand on my tiptoes, eh twinepixie!)

The autumn Sock Club yarns are all dyed up, dried up and I'll be skeining and packaging them up tomorrow to be sent out early next week. Very exciting and I'm hoping those expecting a package will be delighted with September's offering.

Over the weekend, I finished my Licorice Allsort (thanks for the name, picperfic) Spring Forward socks in Encore BFL/nylon:
Love these socks - the pattern was excellent and I never got bored with it though I KNOW I should've chosen a less vibrant colourway to show off the delicate lace detail, but I'm a sucker for colour - I am weak!

And made a little more progress on my Catherine Wheel crocheted scarf in Wisp:


The reason I got a fair amount of knitting and crochet done over the weekend was that me and Elsa (the party-girl's older sister) turned the camp for a friend's seven-year-old daughter's birthday into a knit fest:She wanted to learn to knit something other than a rectangle, so I taught her the only pattern I had in my head - a Chevron scarf! And it was coming out beautifully by the end of the camp. While I was knitting my socks, I had one too many comments about "Couldn't you buy those in Marks and Spencers" from fellow campers (ok, the men) for my liking, but I will educate them in the ways of knitting...

More camp photos (not literally camp, but you know what I mean):