woolly wednesday again

 Woolly Wednesday

well, what have I been up to since last month? well I taught a Drop Spindle workshop  at Knit Nottingham, usually we have 4 maybe 5 beginners but just two this time. The shop is really small ( we need somewhere bigger ) and rather full of yarn so 5 newbies, 2 spinners 2 wheels and countless spindles can be rather interesting to say the least :-) So to have just the three of us made a pleasant change, more relaxed and more space to play with things.. We chatted about fleece, processing, texture, all the usual topics and touched on dyeing so I suspect that at some point I may have a kitchen full of fleece and dyes so that one of the participants can have a bash at it.

Angela and myself did a spinning demo at The Framework Knitters Museum, more about this in this post.

The oxford fleece from last months post is rapidly becoming fingerless mittens, confession here....I generally knit shawls so this is my first attempt at thumbs!! or any real shaping etc

but I'm loving the rustic feel to these and they are thick, very warm and remind me of knitted garments when I was little.

The shawl is slowly growing still and  another pair of mitts are on the needles for a friend.

umm....I seem to have acquired this to add to my winter spin collection....please note that I am not stating which winter!!

which reminds me that I was gifted a Jacob earlier in the year and have been slowly, very slowly spinning it up over the last few months between other projects.

 ok not my best photos ! White, light grey, medium gray, dark brown and a gradient skein.

I'm busy sorting out the remainder to spin at a demo on Saturday to show how many different shades can come from one sheep.
Well, I'm going to be really busy today as I was given a large bag of fibre last night which I need to sort through and I have some Swedish fleece samples to have a good look at. Will update through the month and hope to see you all for the next Woolly Wednesday next year!!

Ist Birthday party

I nearly missed the party, in fact we should have been in France but problems with the bike meant that I had an hour or so to spare on the first Saturday in September to help celebrate the shops first birthday.

For those of you that are not regular readers, I am one of the partners in a knitting shop called Knit Nottingham and we opened a year ago. The shop has grown over the last year and we are now on line with knitting yarn, hand spun yarn and accessories including drop spindles listed for sale. This is mainly due to the hard work of Eleanor, the shop manager. I have no idea where she gets the energy from to put in the hours that she does!!!

As I work full time elsewhere, my role has been very much one of giving what support I can from attending craft fairs,

teaching the occasional workshop

writing the odd blog post

taking part in charity fund raisers

and counting stock.

Maybe one day this will be my main job, but for the time being I'm loving being involved with this enterprise.








So due to the bike mishap I was able to deliver some chocolates to the shop and even have my photo taken with the other partners ( well nearly all of them) but was soon dragged away by a phone call to  say that things were OK and we were going to head south to catch a ferry.....more of that story in a later post.

still a knitting newbie

I have been tried to improve my knitting skills since being involved with the shop, just seems to make sense that if you are a partner in a knitting shop, you at least need to have some knitting ability! I conquered magic loop last year and made a hat but DPNs have been a sticking point, too many needles at the same time. So on Sunday I sat down with 4 needles and some hand spun that had turned out to be a bit of a disaster and started to knit,I did pull out the wrong needle a few times but eventually I found my rhythm. This is not going to make any thing, just a tube but I feel a little more confident on 4 needles now.

The yarn is over spun wenslydale and quite coarse to the touch but I am liking the colours so may rescue the finish piece and use it somehow.

they've landed!!!!

Wandering through town yesterday and spotted this.......is it a spider.....war of the worlds alien?..No It's the big wheel being prepared ready for Light Night on Friday and then remembered that one of my photos had been used on Twitter recently to advertise the event.

I was on my way to the Heart Art event being held to raise funds for British Heart Foundation and being organised by Knit Nottingham and Davenport Shop of Originality. We were asking people to make a donation to either knit a square or chose one that a busy bunch of knitters were making and pin it to a big heart.

 Kate sat in the doorway greeting customers

 passers by intrigued by the wheels being used in the shop window

 These are now known as my spinning trousers!!!

 the heart is filling up

coffee break?

Unfortunately I don't have photos of the knitters downstairs but they will appear on the shop page on face book and the shop blog. The heart is nearly full and we still have to add squares donated at the shop. Guess who has the job of making some sort of sense of it all?

Calling embroiderers, what do you think?  a bit of sparkle needed? For the background I'm thinking of using words as people were encouraged to leave messages on a board giving the reason for the donation so maybe embroidered small heart shapes. Also need to colour the background, and stabilise it...seems ages since I've had my stitch head on!!!

The local paper turned up and took photos...fame at last ? doubt it but it was a fun day.

Playing again

I seem to have a bit of a dilema, I'm a spinner and I always knit with handspun mainly because I am a slow knitter which sort of matches my spinning speed/time at the moment. Anyway, I am also the co-owner of a knitting shop which stock lots of lovely knitting wool that I don't knit with.....are you beginning to see my problem?
So, it's my turn to write on the knitting shop blog about knitting and the shops yarns...HELP!! I've already written 3 post about spinning as we stock basic drop spindles and small amounts of fibre so now its out into the big world of shop yarns.
So today I've been playing with some oddments from the shop and my embellisher just to make a start and I'm going to make a list of crafts other than knitting that I can use the yarns for. This is where you, my friends ,come in. Any ideas, I've been thinking braids, tablet weaving, maybe lacemaking I would welcome any suggestions.

Todays efforts......

will keep me going for a bit :-)

Cold but Bright

I think this best describes the sort of day we have had today, nippy but clear blue skies. I managed to steal a couple of photos before a meeting this morning during which I managed to make a bit more lace.

 the view from outside our shop this morning

 a rare shot of me

Sunday 2 Jan

I don't intend this to be a daily blog but I'm trying to get back into the habit of being on here. I do seem to live on Facebook and Ravelry a lot :-) I'm on Ravelry as Guzzisue and tend to hang around in the spinners forums..no surprise there then!

First up today, I managed to block the shawl last night so its now finished and I've no idea what to do with it. Knitting it really was a stash busting exercise as I spun the yarn last year and the whole thing was part of a dyeing session last summer.

I had forgotten all about the Archers special on Radio 7 today so I have now re tuned the radio so I can catch a few hours whilst trying to do a bit more sorting out.

I've been thinking about what to do this year, I'm afraid that embroidery etc sort of got abandoned in favour of spinning and learning to knit. I still have a lot to learn and being a co owner of a knitting shop means that I need to know a lot more! However I have a friend who is desperate to learn bobbin lace and I fancy doing a bit of felting again so Its looking like a busy year, again.

I hope to knit some small stitch samples as although I enjoy knitting other peoples patterns, the City and Guilds part of me keeps nagging and saying inspiration, design etc so I would like to try and either design my own shawl or maybe just combine knit, felt, embroidery in some way.

Spinning gives me the chance of creating my own threads/yarns and remains as much of an obsession as ever.

I'm Back!!

Firstly, thanks for all your wonderful comments about the shop. It's going to be hard work especially for the girls running it but it's a really comfy friendly place and four of us sat knitting after a spinning session there yesterday. We had the wheels set up near the bus stop so spent a lot of time waving at bemused passengers :-)



The reason that I've been a little quiet for the last two weeks is that we had a little run out on the bike, around 2500 miles around Germany and Austria....more about this later.



Will have to dash, dyeing to do, computer ink to buy and bobbin lace equipment to pick up.
Hope you having a great weekend!

SCARY!! but nice

We all have to do scary things from time to time, get married, divorce, buying a house, having children(missed that one out). Today I signed a partnership agreement with friends Eleanor and Liese for a knitting shop, scary but exciting!

The shop knit nottingham opens at 12 tomorrow at 91 Mansfield Road, Nottingham selling wool, knitting and crochet accessories and some spinning fibres and accessories with more to come.

I will continue to work full time at my usual job and help out at the occassional workshop, Eleanor and Liese are the backbone of the company and will be running the shop etc.

The shop sign went up today and the stock is being sorted and displayed

AS I said, it's all a little scary but nice.