Knit happens (and Yarn Yard Merino Club spoiler)

First of all, click on Etsy, (only until Thursday 22nd Nov.) now scroll down to the bottom - yes, featured Etsy artist - that's the wonderful Suzanne, owner of Jelly Leg'd Chicken gallery, aka Alabamawhirly and maker of the finest gloves in knittingdom. And I know, because I own a pair of her Dark Love gloves.
I LOVE these fingerless mitts and they have been much admired at school picking-up time.See how the contrasting stitches make cute little hearts? Lovely.

I acquired them from Outcast's lovely, eclectic-looking stand at the South Hill Park Christmas Fair where I met a lovely lady who produces and spins Alpaca yarn and is based in Hampshire. Could be a new yarn base, methinks. Perhaps better use up what I have already.

I also made another purchase from a fellow Etsian last week. The lovely Nina at artquirk sells the most gorgeous original artwork and prints. I already have Four Little Houses and A Row of Colourful Houses and just had to add these to my ever-growing street:
They still need to be hung, which will happen as soon as we stop having power cuts so I can get out to the garage and actually find the hammer! Anyway, she was kind enough to send me one free for being her 100th customer. Check out her shop - she does free delivery and is based in Southsea.

Chevron Mark II is off the needles, but not yet blocked or ends sewn in:

And finally, some yarn which winged its way to me over the last week or two:
This little beauty is from Kerrie at Hipknits and I'm ashamed to say, I've forgotten what I ordered and no label! I think it has silk or seacell in it - I can't even remember the quantity and it's gone from her site now. It was one of her more expensive yarns and I'm afraid it was love at first sight!

And this is from Natalie at Yarn Yard from the second installment of my Merino Club membership. It's based on moorland and the yellow represents gorse bushes, which so reminds me of my childhood running about on the Pentland Hills:
Finally, I just listed some sock yarn in my shop tonight:

Foxglove in Plushness

Frogpond in Plushness (sold)
Octopus in Endure

Dr Seuss in Endure

Chevron mark II

OMG, so much has been happening that I have neglected SQ blog.

First of all, I'm about 2/3rds through my second Chevron scarf using SQ Lavish in Fragrant Stocks and Turtle Dove. This will be winging its way down to Devon for the Hillcrest Studio Opening next week as another example of how my yarn knits up.

The shop shelves are looking a little bare as I've been concentrating on getting enough stock together to send to Maggie for the big event. Good luck to her and Jeremy for the weekend after next.

I've also got involved in a little copy editing of Yarn Forward magazine run by Kerrie of Hipknits fame. All I can say is, what a fab read for the next issue - if you don't have a subscription, it's well worth getting - it comes highly recommended.

Here's the artwork for my advert which is to appear in the next issue:Obviously, not quite readable in this format, but just to give you an overall impression.

This is my advert which appears in some Ravelry forums:
When I first saw it popping up, I kept squeeing for about the first ten times - how daft am I!

I have also found a wonderful pattern designer who has agreed to design some socks for my yarn for a forthcoming magazine article. Can't wait to see how they turn out.

Plan for the weekend is to make my way over to South Hill Park in Bracknell for the Christmas Craft Fair where some of the outcasters have a stand.

Met the lovely Machi for a Diet Coke over in Caversham this week as she wanted to buy some of my yarn. She has a B-E-A-utiful jewellery shop over at Etsy called MagpieNest. I love, love, love her Cross Over Sterling Silver ring and covet it. I will have it... one day...

As I had my yarn in that day, and as I'd been going on and on about it forever, my lovely colleagues wanted a look and they kindly bought loads! I think the men were almost as interested as the women and one male colleague thought it looked like a candy shop and asked if I dyed each strand! (If only I could - that would be beauteous!)

And as for yarn, I've been skeining and dyeing and skeining and dyeing and posting out and skeining. Here's a couple of custom orders I dyed up last weekendThis is Calling Birds.

And this is Chocca Mocha:
I've also dyed up some gorgeous Plushness yarn and can't quite decide whether to put it in the shop or send it to Devon... one skein is in pinks and purples and the other in shades of green. Was thinking I might just send the cashmere/silk to Devon as it will look lovely in a display.

Can you believe, yet another knitting reference in a Year One reading book - as Rolf Harris would say - Can you see what it is yet? The children in the story found it in their cellar and nobody knew what it was and it ended up in the museum - shame, I could've used it.


And finally, a gratuitous basket of yarn shot:
Oh, and the boobage situation - I have been called back for an ultrasound scan.

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.