I'm empty today, I have nothing for you. I've been knitting a little, spinning some, planning some sewing and working hard on the magazine and other bits. Lou and I have been going through the notes we made while drunk in the hotel at Woolfest, some of our ideas after a few gins are inspired and others, well - not so much. We've given ourselves plenty to do over the next few weeks..

So tired though, so tired. I'm not sleeping too well at the moment and Cameron is still sick bless him. Today is a day on the sofa watching Scooby Doo and working on the laptop I think.

Keep an eye out on the YF blog and Ravelry group for details of our summer knitalong. Sarah is organising it for us and I think we're all going to be knitting the gorgeous Liz Lovick wedding shawl. Gulp. Its laceweight.

I really need to sort out the HipKnits shop update, its been a couple of weeks now since we did a proper one. I'll try and get that done tomorrow I think.

We had some sad family news yesterday and I have a sick Cameron at home with me at the moment so no shop update today and not much of anything else is going on right now. I'm planning on going into the office when Wayne is home later I think.

While Wayne was out last night I finished off the yarn I was making from the pink / chocolate batt I bought from Natalie and started knitting it into a simple top down shawl. I have just about run out now so need to get my hands on some plain pink or chocolate fibre so that I can spin more yarn and finish off the shawl. I have a lovely lace pattern all picked out for the solid section.

Can you believe that it is July already? Over half the year gone, every day is moving us closer to Christmas (sorry to swear!), closer to 2009, closer to YF being available on the shelves in my local Tescos - scary stuff... I must be getting old, I can't keep up with the months any more!

I'm starting something new this month, every Monday morning there will be a HipKnits stats post - telling you how many orders we processed the previous week, how many positive customer feedbacks we had, how many negatives, how many times we had a missing parcel, that kind of thing. I'm hoping this will make us nice and transparant and show you all how well we're doing at the moment and how all the improvements we've made have made a HUGE difference to the HipKnits world.

There will be a shop update later tomorrow together with a July customer feedback entry in the review section, this is the place for customers to post feedback on their orders which were placed in July. ALL feedback will be entered into a prize draw for July where you could win a £5 gift certificate and ALL feedback will be approved whether it is good or bad, as long as it fairly applies to an order placed in July 08. This is not the place to moan about old orders or other issues, OK internet?

In other news I'm spending much of this week unpacking as we've moved into a nice big shiny office at Thremhall Park which means that I get to go into a proper office to work each day instead of working from home. I think this is going to make a HUGE difference to the way I work, including the fact that I'm going to try and cycle the 5 miles in every day so I should start to get a bit fitter at the same time.

I've also been spinning lots. I spun up the lovely pink and chocolate batt I picked up from Natalie at the weekend, isn't it pretty? I finished it after taking this photo so it is now added to the basket full of little skeins of handspun that I'm saving for something special..

Lou and I had a great time in Woolfest. Again we sold so many magazines, we beat our subscription target for the weekend (which we had set based on Wonderwool and other shows) by 2pm on the first day. We met many of our subscribers as they came to pick up the new copy which was lovely and made so many new friends. At breakfast on Saturday morning it was really funny to see so many of the other people in the hotel with a copy of YF on the table with them!

Lou has photos of the weekend and will be posting on the YF blog later on today, I'm going to show you just one pic of the stash I bought for myself, I was very restrained I think. I narrowly avoided bringing 4 big bin bags full of raw fleece home with me, maybe next year...

I did treat myself to these though, some shetland roving (pink and green at the back already fluffed up and ready to spin) and a batt from Natalie at the yarn yard, some fibre from Krafty Koala, a lovely needle case from Nics knits and some white texel roving from Wingham. I had far more fun shopping for Twinkletoes though, I filled lots of bags of goodies for her from her list, I hope she likes them!

We stayed over Saturday night and drove home all day Sunday. It took over 6 hours and by the time we got back to mine there was jsut time for a quick cup of tea before I headed over to the school summer fete and Lou got back in the car for another 4 hours drive to her house. Both of us feel as though we never want to get in the car again at the moment!

KAL Media Press Release, Wednesday 25th June

KAL Media, publishers of Yarn Forward Magazine, today announce that from October the popular UK knitting magazine will be published 10 times a year and will be available to buy through leading newsagents and supermarkets.

Louise Butt, Managing Editor of Yarn Forward Magazine and partner in KAL Media said “the magazine has been really successful this year and we have been thrilled with the response we have received from our existing subscriber base and new customers alike. An increase in frequency of publication and making Yarn Forward more widely available to the general public is the best way to make sure the magazine reaches its full potential.”

Yarn Forward is a 100-page magazine containing brand new and exclusive knitting and crochet patterns, price bracketed yarn alternatives for every pattern, realistic sizes from 30-50 inch bust and only 10 pages of advertising per issue. Each issue also contains in depth articles on topics that will be of interest to our readers - for example features on both small independant suppliers and larger yarn companies together with reviews of brand new products and books, interviews and technical features.

For more information, email feedback@yarnforwardmagazine.co.uk

For advertising, email shirley@yarnforwardmagazine.co.uk

How about that then?? You may already have seen this press release if you are a Yarn Forward subscriber, we thought it was important to let those people who have supported us through the first 6 issues know the news first.

So what does this mean for me personally? A huge amount. I can't begin to explain to you how it feels for the magazine to be a viable business, with cash flow forecasts and a business plan that has impressed everyone we have shown it to. For too long I struggled with it and was told a number of times that it was not financially viable and that it was worth nothing and would never make any money. The idea of it being on the shelves in WH Smiths, Tescos and other newsagents and supermarkets in the autumn is at once scary and totally thrilling. It is a major validation of all the hard work and time and effort that I have put into the magazine. I couldn't have done it without Lou, she has been the catalyst behind this change and we are both sooooo excited to take the magazine to the next level.

We are busy recruiting for more and more support staff to work on the magazine with Lou and I as we both know we cant do it on our own any more. I'm also taking more of a backseat with HipKnits, I think I'll be more of a creative manager while mum and dad are the general managers. They will deal with pretty much all of the dyeing, packaging, emails and other day to day running of the business while I will continue to be involved with choosing yarns, patterns, designs, colours, kits, promotions, and photographing the yarn. Its going to work out really well I think.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have a country to travel around distributing press releases, media packs and sample magazines to lots of lovely people before we make it to Woolfest to meet lots of lovely subscribers.

Catch you next week. xx

Wayne and I watched some interesting TV last night, from 8pm we watched Windrush on BBC4. This is the story of HMS windrush that sailed from the caribean to the UK after the 2nd world war bringing many black immigrants. Just watching what they went through when they arrived here was amazing, the mixed race couples who were spat at in the street, the signs on boarding houses saying rooms for rent, no blacks, no dogs. Frightening.

They showed some of the TV adverts from around that time. With well dressed upper class white people explaining that they were not racist, one of them said something like "its not that we don't like black people because of the colour of their skin, its because they smell bad that we don't like them" WTF???

Then we watched a panorama programme on Primark and how their cheap clothes are made in India, with children as young as 10 hand stitching sequins onto clothes for something like 14 pence a day. The average daily wage is £1 so 14p a day is ridiculously low.

It really makes you think about how lucky we are in our particular time and country. I can't imagine living in any conditions other than the ones we live in now, its sad to think that there are parts of the world where children can't be children because they are too busy working hard for pennies a day to give to their families..

Do you believe in miracles? Or Karma? Or fate? I do. I believe that everything that you do comes back to you, whether it be good or bad. I also believe that we can never understand the consequences our actions can have. I've done a few things that I thought were being helpful which turned out to cause more problems than they were worth and recently a very pants situation turned out to have a huge silver lining to it that I would never have expected. You just can't predict what the universe is going to do.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about miracles, I've seen a fair few of them around here recently with lots of babies being born, a friend being undiagosed with cancer (what a mistake to make!) as well as a horrific accident on the motorway that no-one should have walked away from, but they did. It makes you feel really good about life when things like this happen doesn't it?

A smaller example of fate happened over the weekend when Wayne and I were sitting around talking about buying some new furniture. I had seen some that I liked in Habitat and wanted to show it to him but we'd both turned off our laptops and I couldnt be bothered to get it out of the cupboard to turn it on and google it. We also couldnt be bothered to get dressed and drive to our nearest habitat and just as I was saying to him "damn, we should have picked up a catalogue last time we were there" the post dropped through the door containing by some bizarre twist of fate a habitat catalogue. See? Karma. I love it when things like that happen, don't you? Makes you realise that you are not alone in the world and that someone somewhere is looking after you.

I really really enjoyed knitting this little sweater. I decided to make a sleeveless, cropped version as that seems to be the style I'm wearing most often these days.

The pattern was from here and I made the size L to fit my UK size 16 self. It used 238g of aran weight yarn which means that I have plenty left to use for something else one day.

I don't know why the self timer photos I took came out so bizarre, I am such a novice when it comes to my camera. Lets pretend they were supposed to be all whited out and artistic shall we?

I love this photo because you can see the gorgeous photos of Brooke and Cameron in the background and man it makes my hair look red!

I did manage to take a couple of pics without the scary white out effect but I look so cross (and fat!) in them that I'm not going to show you!