HipKnits

July 03, 2008

Nothing for ya

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.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2008

A wee bit of spinning

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.

Posted by Kerrie at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2008

Good grief?

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..

Posted by Kerrie at 07:52 AM | Comments (1)

June 30, 2008

Woolfest

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!

Posted by Kerrie at 07:55 AM | Comments (4)

June 25, 2008

KAL Media Press Release

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

Posted by Kerrie at 09:53 AM | Comments (15)

June 24, 2008

Thought provoking

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.

Posted by Kerrie at 07:39 AM | Comments (2)

June 23, 2008

Feb Sweater

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!

Posted by Kerrie at 10:02 AM | Comments (3)

June 22, 2008

Mini Update

I finished my version of the Feb sweater today and as Lou and I are now not away until Thursday I'll be able to show you all pics tomorrow. Bet you can't wait can you?

Posted by Kerrie at 06:44 PM | Comments (1)

New Hair

What do you think? My super star husband dyed it for me last week Saturday morning. We did it all over in a dark brown ish colour and then he put 2 lots of highlights in, first the coppery / blondey ones at the back and then the red ones at the front. I like it, nice and bright and summery. Really reflects how I'm feeling right now :)

Posted by Kerrie at 07:45 AM | Comments (2)

June 20, 2008

That Friday feeling

I was the first one up this morning, that doesn't happen often. I have a big week ahead of me next week and the first specific stress dream happened at about 4.30am and that was it, no sleep for me after that. I've been having non specific stress dreams for a while now, you know the ones where you are dropping the kids off at school and suddenly realise that you forgot to get dressed that morning and are standing there naked in front of the whole school. Those kind of stress dreams.

This morning's one was a whole lot more specific than that which is why I've been here on the sofa for the last couple of hours waiting for the rest of the house to wake up. So far, nothing. Its kind of peaceful.

I decided to make the feb sweater into a short sleeved, cropped cardigan when I realised that my 3 most worn cardigans at the moment are that style. I was also getting a bit bored with the lace pattern and I have zero patience so just worked the garter stitch edge and cast off. Just the short sleeves to go now. If I get them done over the weekend I might be able to show you a snap of the finished cardigan before I go away on Monday. Maybe not though depending on everything else.

So next week is going to be a quiet week. There will be a shop update on Monday and mum and dad will be posting everything out and looking after stuff for me. I'll be around to check emails every now and again from Mon - Wed but then Thurs - Sun I'll be properly at Woolfest so that will slow me up a little.

I'm rambling a bit this morning. So much in my head that I'm trying to make sense of that I don't know where to start. I think I'll just sit here and carry on looking out the window and reflecting on life until someone from upstairs decides to come and join me!

I hope to update here on Monday and also on the YF blog, for those of you coming to Woolfest please come and say hello - one of the best things about the shows is getting to put faces to names.

Posted by Kerrie at 06:22 AM | Comments (2)

June 19, 2008

Thanks!

Thanks for all the comments, emails, birthday cards that came through yesterday - y'all are lovely. I had a great day, I went shopping in the morning and spent all my birthday money (and then some) on clothes and jewellry, KFC for lunch, then home for an afternoon nap. Wayne did the school runs for me and I chilled out and knitted more on the Feb sweater (have worked about 8 inches of lace on the body so far, have left 200g of yarn to one side for the sleeves and plan to work the body as long as I can with the rest of the yarn) and finished a book I was reading.

When the kids got home we had a birthday tea, chocolate cake and then played party games until bedtime. The only party CD Brooke could find was a Christmas one but it didn't matter, playing musical statues to Jingle Bells in June is a little surreal but sill a lot of fun. Best birthday ever I think!

Today I'm catching up with everything. I'm out of the office all week next week so I have lots of adminy bits to get straight first. There will be some magically appearing blog posts here and on the YF blog thanks to the wonders of technology, at least one of them will be a really interesting one. For now though, its time to get everyone dressed and ready and out of the house for our days.

Posted by Kerrie at 07:18 AM | Comments (1)

June 18, 2008

Happy Birthday to me

32 today. It still doesn't feel that old though...

I'm taking the day off work (yay!) but there is a special HipKnits update on the site with a 32% discount if you spend £32 or more in any one transaction not including postage for the rest of the week. The offer applies to everything on the site while stocks last.

For some reason the new yarns I put on aren't appearing in the new products section, I don't know why. Sigh. I mainly updated some sale seacell and merino and some new ophelia colours. There are lots of other yummy yarns still on the site though so go and have a rummage, see what you can find.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to go shopping, have lunch and generally be a lady of leisure for the day.

Posted by Kerrie at 07:58 AM | Comments (18)

June 17, 2008

New project club

The first HipKnits project club is just about over (I havent heard that all the packages have arrived but I hope that most of them have by now and I'll be refunding today all those that tell me they haven't arrived) and to be honest, it didn't run as smoothly as I would have liked. In fact, that may be an understatement. We had way too many people on it for me to be able to manage properly and we suffered hugely with postal problems. I totally over comitted myself. At one point there were over 60 people on the club in total, about half of them had blogs and keeping up with the colour choices each time and the changes of email address, postal address etc proved to be too much for me. I shouldn't have let people keep joining after the club had started. I'm really sorry that it didn't run as well as I intended it to, I learned A LOT of lessons from it = that's for sure.

Since beginning of May mum and dad have been managing most of the day to day HipKnits for me (dad is doing the majority of the dyeing and mum is doing all of the posting out of parcels etc) and things have been much easier. I should have given them the last batch of club parcels to post out but after making up all the little goodie bags I decided to drive to the nearest big town to post them, however there were about 1/3 of them that I still havent heard have arrived. Sigh. They'll come back to me at some point but its so frustrating for right now.

I thought long and hard about whether to run another version of the project club and despite the problems with the first one I am confident that I've made enough changes to the way HipKnits is run to ensure that the next club runs more smoothly. I had so many requests from people who wanted to join the first one that I have decided to stick with my plan to run another one but in a different format which will hopefully make it easier for me and more enjoyable for everyone else.

The biggest changes are that it is going to be run over a shorter period of time, with much fewer people and that all colour choices need to be made at the beginning of the club. Also, all of the parcels are going to be assembled in the first few weeks of the club so that mum can just post them out at the right time.

I sold a number of places to the newsletter list at a little discount a few weeks ago, the remaining places are going to be STRICTLY limited this time, I let too many people through after all the places had sold last time. I need to be tough this time to preserve my sanity! This is up on the website now here but will only be available for a few days, if you're interested.

HipKnits project club – round 2.

I've also made the decision to let the HipKnits project club blog go, it will be deleted later on in the week. A certain little mouse might have had something to do with that decision. Stupid and unnecessary anony "mouse" comments really annoy me.

Posted by Kerrie at 07:17 AM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2008

Feb sweater

We had a lovely lazy weekend, spent mostly at mum and dad's house. I napped, knitted, had my hair dyed, went to the cinema with Wayne, watched a film, read some book, played football in the garden (although only for about 5 minutes - Wayne lasted about 4 hours out there, much more energetic than me) and knitted some more.

I'm on my 3rd 50g ball of random unlabelled grey aran yarn that I'm using for the Feb sweater and I've finished the garter stitch yoke. Whether this means I'll have enough yarn, I don't know. I'm knitting the L size which should need 1050 yards and from the little note I had written to myself in with the unlabelled yarn I think I have 1080 yards. Im a fairly loose gauge knitter though so I'm a little nervous about running out..

I couldn't find a circ needle when I started and I've JUST about managed to squash all of the stitches on straight needles but it was close at the end - it is really squashy on there.

I'm just about to knit my 4 rows of the gull lace pattern and then I'll be separating for the body so there should be a little more room on the needles. I'm considering knitting the sleeves before the body as I really like long long sleeves and I only have 12 x 50g balls of this yarn and I don't want to run short. I'd prefer to have a slightly shorter body if I need to. We'll see though..

Posted by Kerrie at 07:22 AM | Comments (2)

June 13, 2008

Thursday pudding, will probably still be there on Saturday though

I'm no Michaela when it comes to cooking but I do love to make puddings. I have this magic power to make puddings out of seemingly nothing. When Wayne and I are sitting on the sofa after the kids have gone to bed and one of fancies an unhealthy snack I can usually make something yummy from the contents of our cupboards and fridge with not too much effort.

Last night was an unusual night, Brooke cooked dinner and made pudding for her and Trinity. The had cookery lessons at school and she came home with Greek Salad and a spinach and feta cheese pie made with Filo pastry. It was yummy. Then she made an apple crumble which was equally yummy.

However, I'd already made a dessert before she asked for apple crumble, a lemon and chocolate pie. Two desserts in the house is never bad thing though. It was a total experiment and I just made it up as I went along. It tasted pretty good though, both Wayne and I cleared our plates so that can't be a bad sign.

I'm not very good at measuring or weighing but here is the basic recipe that I used..

Biscuit base

1 packet of digestives
melted butter
half a dozen bourbon biscuits that were beginning to go a bit soft in the bottom of the biscuit tin (waste not want not)

make a basic biscuit base by crushing biscuits in the food processor and adding enough melted butter to make a sticky base. Pop in the freezer to harden while you make the pie filling.

Pie filling

1 284ml pot of double cream (I use low fat, not that it makes much difference!)
1 normal sized tin of condensed milk
1 teaspoon lemon essence (would probably use a little less next time)
Half a bar of chocolate, probably around 100g. (would probably use a little more next time)

Whisk the double cream until it stands up by itself. Add the condensed milk and the lemon essence and mix well. Melt the chocolate and stir into the pie mixture.

Spoon on top of the biscuit base and chill for at least 2 hours before eating. Yum. I'm planning a strawberry version of this just as soon as we make it fruit picking.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, we have lots planned as usual. I cast on for the adults EZ Feb sweater last night and got to the bottom of the garter stitch yoke before realising I'd messed up the stitch counts so I'm back to having just knitted 3 rows now. That'll teach me for trying to knit and talk to Fiona at the same time, I cant concentrate on 2 things at once!

Posted by Kerrie at 07:57 AM | Comments (3)

June 12, 2008

Mini cardigan

I wanted to make something for Trinity that was small, easy to make and hopefully used only just one ball of Rowan organic cotton. I was flicking through books for inspiration and couldn't find anything that was quite right until I remembered the February sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman. I didn't have my copy of the pattern with me but I remembered how the garter stitch yoke went from a previous incarnation of making the pattern and didn't think I would get further than the yoke before I got back home.

However, I did get to the end of the yoke and being eager to continue I decided to use stocking stitch instead of the lace stitch pattern that looks so lovely in the original. I hoped to have enough to make a nice little cropped cardigan and I "just about" managed it. I actually ran out of yarn on the cast off row 2 stitches from the end so I was forced to thread it through the last 2 stitches.

I think it looks lovely, the first ever Feb sweater I saw in real life was this gorgeous one that Trinity received as a present when she was tiny. It is still one of my favourite cardigans and I only wish that I could squeeze her comfortably into it still.

I struggled to get any good photos of her wearing it, I know that a striped bob the builder T shirt wasn't the best outfit to style it with but honestly, have you tried to get her to wear anything else recently? She is BOB obsessed, I blame Cameron.

Here it is on the floor, unblocked and desperately in need of a little love and attention.

In the split second before she tried to rip it off.

Get this thing off me, can't you see it's obscuring the BOB.

I have no idea what this is but I think it belongs to you. Here. Take it. Take it!!

If you make me wear it again, I'll eat it. I will you know. Yum, it tastes kind of good.

I tell you what, how about I take it over here, drop it on the floor and throw my ball at it for a while. That sounds like fun, don't ya think?

Trouble. That's the only word for her....

Its rare that anything I want to do is either fashionable or popular but as I was making this last week I was thinking a lot about an adult sized version for me. Lo and behold Flintknits has already written the pattern out for one and there is a whole Ravelry group set up for the knit along. I am soooooooo tempted...

In other news I fell in love with this in the new knitty. The day will come when my to knit list is for me rather than for the magazine or hipknits. Oh yes, the day will come and when it does I'll be making this. For sure.

Posted by Kerrie at 12:01 AM | Comments (6)

June 11, 2008

Knitting clubs

I had a lovely evening with the Roding quilters last night, I went along to their monthly meeting to run a knitting flowers class and it was great. Everyone went away with 1 or 2 silk flowers and I think they all had a good time. It was nice to see Fiona again who organises the club and also Jacqueline which was a surprise. (especially as she bought me goodies, thanks Jacqueline!)

It was a fairly late night for me (stopping off at McDonalds on the way home for McFlurry and milkshake didn't help) and this morning I'm shattered. I have a horrible day ahead of me today which I'm not really looking forward to. Plenty of admin to start with and then a little bit of accounts followed by some legal advice on a debt matter. This is my least favourite part of my job but it needs to be done. I prescribe an evening in front of the TV (child of our time and the apprentice) to get over it all. I also need to persuade Trinity to model her new cropped cardigan so that I can show it to you all tomorrow.

EDITED TO ADD

Today wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be for a number of reasons. Just a quick couple of bits.

- Have you seen the new Knitty? Do you like the Yarn Forward advert on this page and the HipKnits one here?

- Have you checked out the YF blog recently? Lou did me a fab jpg of all our designs from the summer issue, doesn't it look great?

- Its 7pm and I'm going to try and get all 3 kiddos in the bath and to bed in the next half an hour so that then when wayne comes home later on with my ice cream and wine I can just sit in front of the TV and knit all night. Wish me luck. xx

Posted by Kerrie at 08:20 AM | Comments (2)

June 10, 2008

Shop updated

The shop update is good to go and for the first time in ages I sent out a newsletter update with a 10% off doscount voucher. You can go here to see all the new items, here are some of my favourite.

Wool / Silk in experiment.

More yak

Pretty lace cashmere

Pastelly cotton and silk

Posted by Kerrie at 03:25 PM | Comments (2)

June 09, 2008

Melancholy

I've been feeling a little strange for the last few days, I was trying to explain to Wayne yesterday morning how I was feeling and couldn't think of the right word. I'm not really sad, or down, or blue or depressed but I'm not quite right. (no comments please!) I finally lay awake last night and decided that melancholy is the perfect word to describe my mood at the moment, "A feeling of thoughtful sadness."

There have been lots of happy things happening around here recently but with all the happy things come periods of change and I think that is what is making me look back on the last few years and has pushed me into this deeply thoughtful and quietly sad phase. You know that saying when your daughter is getting married that you should look on it as not losing a daughter but gaining a son? Some days at the moment I can only see the losses, the things that are not going to be there any more in the next couple of years and other days I can only see the gains and all the good things that are to come.

This week needs to be a week of reflection, of carefully making plans and finalising certain things and of shaking off this thoughtfull phase. I sat down yesterday and knitted something that I wanted to knit for the first time in ages (photos later on this week if I can persuade Trinity to model for me) and this morning I had a quick 5 minute cuddle with my neighbours newborn baby. Its the little things like that which will keep me going until I can shake the melancholy.

I also self prescribe home made cheesecake (its on my list of things to do today), an hour or so of strawberry picking with the kids, EVITA soundtrack this afternoon while I'm writing some job specs out and the thought of teaching knitted flower classes at a knitting group tomorrow evening. Focus on the little things.....

Plan for the rest of the week - big shop update tomorrow, finish some sewing that I started last week, lots of website work and a wee bit of experimenting with new yarns and dye methods.

Posted by Kerrie at 07:36 AM | Comments (2)

June 07, 2008

All about the yak yarn

The good news, a little shop update is in progress now and will be done by 1pm - not much on today I'm afraid but the first 20 or so skeins of yak are on there.

Specs - 100% yak yarn, 470 yards to 100g, sock ish weight. Beautifully soft.

Sue made this gorgeous scarf out of 1 skein of the yarn, it looks lovely doesn't it? She said that she enjoyed working with the yarn and that it was lovely and soft. Some of the dye did come off on her fingers while she was knitting but we tested another couple of skeins and they seemed OK so I'm hoping it was just a one off. I believe this is her daughter modelling the scarf, see how many times it wraps around her neck? I dont know exactly how long it is but it looks plenty long enough to me!

There will be a nice big shop update early next week. I'm currently suffering from a short period of TOO MUCH DO TO itis but it should be lifting in the next few weeks. (she says hopefully) I'm strictly limiting my fun time until I've got everything done - think it should take another couple of weeks before I can start to breathe easily again....

PS - I'm having problems with comments at the moment, I installed a new anti spam thing a few days ago and now cant approve comments. Sigh. Feel free to leave a comment, I'll see it and it will appear here at some point when I work out how to uninstall what I installed. You'd think I'd learn to leave stuff alone now wouldn't you?

PPS - Sue commented just now to say this

"The scarf measures @ 104"/265cm long and 9"/23cm wide. Now it's been washed, it's even softer and very cosy. It was lovely to knit and my daughter (as pictured) says it's lovely to wear, too!"

Posted by Kerrie at 12:44 PM | Comments (4)

June 03, 2008

Reviews

The reviews software has been installed on the shop site, you'll see when you open an item that you have the chance to review it at the bottom. Go and have a play if you like! I'm out of here now until Friday so more on how the reviews are working then. xx

Posted by Kerrie at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

Extensions

I plaited extensions into Brooke's hair on Sunday for the second time, I'm still not very good but I am getting better. The trickiest bit seems to be starting off, see below how the beginning of the extensions has slipped back a couple of inches from the front of her head? They are supposed to be right at the hairline. Must practice that.

She loves them though, tells me that it makes her feel really grown up. I didnt get too carried away, I wanted it to be reasonable for her to go to school with and not crazy. I might try and do some funky ones for the summer holidays but these only took an hour which is not much more than it usually takes me to plait her hair so I'm happy with them for school type extensions.

Cameron was fascinated by what I was doing with the fake hair and sat enthralled for nearly the whole time I was plaiting! I am all out of fake hair now though so a trip to Finsbury park in London is in order over the next few weeks so that I can restock.

I'm working away from home for a couple of days so I'll be back on Friday with a big shop update and lots of news. I've had a really physical day today, lots of carrying of boxes and moving large furniture around. I ache!

Posted by Kerrie at 02:20 PM | Comments (2)

June 02, 2008

New magazine subscription

I used to give myself a yarn / fabric / fun budget each month and I used to be sure to spend it fully. This year has been much harder for me financially now that Trinity has started going into nursery a couple of days a week and my fun budget has been reduced to just £20 a month. That's OK really as I don't actually have much time to do anything other than work and family stuff these days so I really dont need to be expanding the stash.

What it does mean though is that when I really want something I have to save up a bit to get it. I recently took out a subscription to Ottobre magazine which took 2 months fun budget but oh my goodness, it was so worth it.

My first copy of my subscription arrived last Wednesday (right in the middle of magazine madness, which is still ongoing but should be finished soon) along with the free copy that I received for taking out a subscription. I saved them to read at the weekend and they are just amazing. So many patterns that I want to try out and lots and lots of inspiration just by looking at them.

Brooke has been through them and chosen lots of clothes that she wants me to make for her and Trinity and Cameron (typically for him) picked the most complicated design and asked me to sew him a shirt. Hmm, think I'll practise on some of the easier ones for a while first!

We had such a busy weekend, we got all of the HipKnits project club final packages out in the post (more on that later in the week), went shopping at Lakeside, then out to lunch with some friends, out to a BBQ with family in the evening and finally I spent all day yesterday working on the magazine and cooking dinner. I almost feel as though I'm half way into my week even though today is first day back at school after half term. Speaking of which, its almost half seven and none of the kids are up (why does this only happen in the week and not on a Sunday?) so I need to go and start switching on lights and waking people if I have any hope of getting all 4 of us up and dressed and ready for the day in the next hour or so!

Posted by Kerrie at 07:28 AM | Comments (2)

May 31, 2008

Procrastination

So Katya must have known that I was in dire need of some procrastination, this meme is the perfect thing to do when I really should be doing a million other things.

1. What I was doing 10 years ago:

Living in Ilford. Been seeing Wayne for about 6 months. In the process of buying my own flat. Working for Enron as Helpdesk Manager and putting in 15 hour days as we moved 2000 people from one building to another. Generally being young, free and single, working really hard at something that I loved and having a hell of a lot of fun. Sigh.

2. What 5 things are on on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Finish proofing some pages for the magazine
Make a picnic to take to Greenwich park at lunchtime
Go to BBQ this evening
Laundry
Buy birthday presents for various children

3. Snacks I enjoy:

I'm not really a chocolate eater (shock horror, I know) but I do love biscuits. I'd snack on digestives all day if they were in the house, which is why they are not!

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire:

Buy a house in the middle of no-where and one by the sea. Make sure family and close friends never had to work again, travel with the children a lot more and donate more to charities - making sure it actually got to where it was needed the most.

5. Places I have lived:

St Ives (Cambs), Cheshunt (Herts), Canonbury (Islington), Ilford (Essex), Dagenham (Essex)

So, Michaela, Marianne, WMK and anyone else who fancies having a go - consider yourself tagged!

Posted by Kerrie at 08:21 AM | Comments (1)

May 30, 2008

A recipe for disaster.

Take one almost 4 year old who seems to have totally lost his manners and has spent most of the last week or so on the naughty step.

Add one 14 month old girl who is obsessed with her dad (not overly interested in her mum at all) and has stopped sleeping properly at night.

Combine a busy deadline week with half term and sprinkle a twisted ankle and the inability to choose a photo for the front cover on top.

Place all ingredients in the same house together, mix and leave for a week to see what develops.

Posted by Kerrie at 02:32 PM | Comments (6)

May 29, 2008

Paypal

There are a lot of rumblings online at the moment about Paypal, has anyone here had problems with them? I think that on the whole they are OK but I have been looking around for an alternative for a while for both HipKnits and Yarn Forward and having read some of the forums, blogs and other news stories this morning I think I'll make that a priority for next week.

If anyone is interested then start here with the Statcounter blog and follow some of the links in the comments. They don't make very nice reading though, you have been warned.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:07 AM | Comments (1)

Modern (or not) Technology

This is one of the best buys I've ever made for HipKnits (the industrial multi cone to skein winder was THE ULTIMATE best buy) a mangle that I picked up from ebay for around £30 I think.

Its perfect for getting as much water out of the yarn as possible after it has been rinsed and before it is hung up to dry. The silk especially benefits from this as it is so dense that it used to take over a week of hanging up in the garden to dry, now with it going through the mangle it can be dry in just 2 or 3 days. Perfect.

I'm not sure I could face having to put a whole family's laundry through it though, it certainly makes you realise how hard housewives used to work!

Posted by Kerrie at 07:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

lovely photos of lovely kids

Seeing as it is almost midnight I thought I'd post this now. Lou and I are still up and sending proofs of the front cover of the summer issue back and forth between ourselves. This is so hard! Out of the 100 pages that Lou is designing the cover is the biggest decision, we have tried it with just about every pattern that we have in the magazine and still cant agree on it!

While we are going through the gorgeous photos that Marianne took and deciding which to use for the patterns, I thought I'd show you these 3 pics that she snapped of the kids chilling out at grandma's house during the photo shoot.

Brooke. Not sure why she was frowning, unless its because she was cold. She is wearing her grandma's coat so there must have been a reason for that which I can't remember.

Cameron. Laid back on the sofa watching the world go by. Lovely boy.

Trinity. Peeking around the side of Lou's skirt with lots of knitted samples in the background.

Lovely photos of my lovely kids. Now back to the Mac. x

Posted by Kerrie at 12:01 AM | Comments (3)

May 27, 2008

Shop Update

The shop update is going to be completed at 2.30pm today (about 2 hours from now), sometime before my nervous breakdown but after lunch. I'll share pics here later of some of the goodies but for now I need to carry on uploading pictures and writing descriptions. Its a big update today with around 70 different types and colours of yarn.

EDITED TO ADD PICS

Beautiful shade of aran silk that was a custom dye for someone. We had 3 skeins left over. I am more tempted by these than I have been any other colour of aran silk for a long while.

New Wool and Silk sock yarn. Love this colour, there are only a few different colours on the site but they are all gorgeous (and dyed by dad!)

Another custom silk colour. This one would make a beautiful Clapotis, don't you think?

One of 9 packs of Cleopatra silk and mohair yarn. These are the last ever skeins of Cleopatra I think, there may be half a dozen more somewhere but we're pretty much all out of it now.

Posted by Kerrie at 12:37 PM | Comments (2)

May 23, 2008

Adminy bits

I'm about to log off for the weekend and won't be back online until Tuesday afternoon (all things going according to plan that is!) We've got a busy weekend planned, lots of spring cleaning and sorting out and organising the house - its very overdue.

If you are still thinking about whether or not to subscribe to the magazine we've reduced the price of a UK subscription by 10% for this bank holiday weekend only, go here to be tempted if you like.

The HipKnits shop will be updated on Tuesday evening with lots of yummy goodies.

Apart from the shop update I'm not going to be around as much next week for 2 reasons, firstly its half term (hurray!) and secondly and with some particularly bad planning on our part its press week which means that Lou and I will be up and online at around 5am and not finishing work until about midnight most days. That gives us time to hang out with the kiddos in between. So it will be a week of photo blogging from me...

Have a lovely long weekend, hope the weather is kind to all of us. Its not looking too bad here at the moment but you just never know do you?

Posted by Kerrie at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

Summer stuff...

We took a wee trip to the forest the other night (when the photo for the new header at the top was taken) and for the first time we left the pushchair at home and let Trinity wander about as she pleased. The meadows were full of buttercups and Trin was happy just walking around with a buttercup in one hand and either mine or Wayne's finger in the other. Isn't she sweet?

Not sweet enough to co-operate and let me try this skirt on her that I made yesterday though :( Its out of some lovely Heather Ross fabric with VW vans all over it. Not very feminine I suppose but super cute. I used a red velvet ribbon for the waistband and left it long enough to tie in the back to fasten the skirt. I used a matching red cotton to hem the bottom of the skirt so that it matches the waistband. Kind of! This is the first time I've made a skirt from my own pattern that doesn't have an elasticated waist and I'm strangely proud of it.

I wanted a skirt that was long and full but I think this is a little too long. It probably needs to come up an inch or two but as she refuses to stand up straight while wearing it I don't really know! Think that I need to try it on her while she is asleep and straighten out her legs to see how it looks.

I also made her this other skirt which is a better length but I really don't like the pleats or the way that I made the waistband a little too wide. I used the Heather Ross fabric as before for the waistband and some Amy Butler for the main piece of the skirt but it just doesn't quite feel right to me. More practice needed with pleats I think!

I cut out some trousers and a dress for her too but haven't gotten around to sewing those up yet. Maybe over the bank holiday weekend...
I'm off out with the kids today to meet up with another knitting blogger who lives not too far from me and her kids. Yay!

Posted by Kerrie at 07:22 AM | Comments (6)

May 22, 2008

Superyak

You guys are lovely. Thanks so much for not making that big sharing of very personal thing yesterday either scary or awkward. All the comments and emails meant so much to me. I think it will stay there, at least for the time being. Its strange to be so open about someting which is so personal and that I would usually keep to myself but I'm going to try and post lots of pictures over the next few days so that it gradually drops off the page!

I ordered a few kilos of yak yarn recently, just to see what it was like. I wasn't convinced how soft it would be but it is just beautiful. It feels very much like cashmere, and is pretty much the same gauge as our cashmere sock yarn. With 460 yards per 100g you could have lovely yak socks that feel just as luxurious as cashmere but at a more reasonable price. Michaela and Lou were both introduced to the yak yarn last week and agreed that it was a lovely soft yarn.

We only dyed 2 skeins of it to start with, these were both experiment skeins to see how many yards we would need to wind to get around 100g. The green and yellow skein was 500 yards so its a little over 100g and the blue, green brown skein was only 300 yards.

If anyone wants to try out some yak yarn I'm happy to send the smaller skein over to someone. The yak has found a home, thanks Sue, but if anyone else fancies tryong out some new yarn in exchange for a photo and review just send me an email. I have another couple of skeins that could do with a home. You'll need to be able to knit it up in the next couple of weeks though as in return for the skein of yarn I'd like a picture of something that you've made with it (even if its just a partial picture, like the first half of a scarf or something) and a few words on what you thought about the yarn. I've just purchased a new customer review module for the shop which should be installed and ready to go in the next couple of weeks. I thought I would co-incide it with the yak yarn going on the site and it would be nice to have a review written of the yarn.

If any other customers are happy to write short (50 words or less) reviews about any of our other yarns please email them to me at kerrie AT hipknits.co.uk. I'll put each review that I receive into a prize draw to win a skein of the yarn that you reviewed, I'll announce the winner on the day that the review module goes live on the site.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:50 AM | Comments (1)

May 20, 2008

New Yarn

This is the first of a few new yarns we have to offer at HipKnits, it is a silk and cotton blend - approx 300 yards per 100g skein which makes it around a double knit weight. The yarn is gorgeous, dense and yet soft at the same time. This would make beautiful summery tops, shawls or anything else that you are inspired to make. I'm planning on starting a wrap out of this test skein later on this week.

I'm hoping we'll have some on the website early in June.

Tomorrow, a preview of our new Yak yarn...

Posted by Kerrie at 08:06 AM | Comments (2)

May 19, 2008

Shop Updated

The shop has been updated, see all the pretty yarns here.

As a special happy week offer there is a 20% discount until noon tomorrow if you enter the code BLOG in the coupon code field at checkout. This week has started off better than I ever hoped it would, thanks to everyone that had needles and fingers crossed for me this morning - I got the news I hadn't dared to hope for and things are looking up. I realised over the weekend that last weeks bad mood was almost etirely nerves about this morning's appointment and also a good dose of PMT. This week, this week will be fab now.

Tomorrow, some pictures of our new silk and cotton yarn that will be on the site next Monday. It is beautiful. xx

Over on the YF blog, Sarah has posted a sneak preview pic of some of the garments from Saturday's photo shoot.

Posted by Kerrie at 02:59 PM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2008

This week is not my friend

I don't know, it all just seems to be getting more and more out of control. I spent most of yesterday morning dealing with the aftermath of some stupid people and banging my head against the wall. At 12.30 I sat down and ate leftover curry from the night before then gave up and went to bed for a couple of hours which is something that I haven't felt the need to do for ages.

I am taking your advice though. After WMK told me to dye more yarn I decided that today would be a get your hands mucky day skeining yarn from cones, dyeing yarn and generally playing with yarn. I'm hoping it will be a big sanity check. And spinning fishwife, just as SOON as YF pays me any kind of salary at all the first thing I'm treating myself to is a cleaner / housewife type person. I'm considering stopping paying into my pension at the moment in the hope that I can better use that money to get someone to clean for me. What do you reckon? I must be one of the few people that has paid into a pension every month since they were 18, perhaps its time to take a break for a year until YF can pay me a salary and use some of that money to help me be less stressed. Hmmm...

Oh and yesterday I learned the phrase drama llama. I love it and will aim to use it in conversation every day. I managed it yesterday by telling Lou by text that she was a drama llama when she complained that a shelf full of magazines had fallen off the office wall and onto her. Drama Llama. Go ahead, see if you can use it in conversation today.

I'm going to be busy prepping for the photoshoot on Saturday all day tomorrow so I won't blog again until Monday at which point I hope to be able to share lots of lovely photos with you. Now won't that be nice? Have a lovely weekend whatever you are doing and if any Cambridgeshire people want to come along and help out at the photoshoot on Saturday drop me and email. Michaela, its at a place you know well only a few miles from your house if you want to pop over. x

Posted by Kerrie at 06:25 AM | Comments (5)

May 14, 2008

Things and Stuff

Thanks for the comments and emails yesterday, Ruth - I didnt get a box of anything lovely but if I had I would be rushing down the M11 with it to share with you right now. I hope you get the tooth / car stuff sorted out..

Its all feeling very mundane around here, I seem to be drowning under the little things. Data entry, laundry, checking and rechecking, laundry, stock takes, laundry, labelling oh and did I mention the laundry? None of it is a major problem, it just all seems to have hit at once this week. Usually my working week is full of exciting and interesting mixed in with the mundane and repetetive. Not this week though... This week we are all about the blah.

Next week promises to be more exciting. We have the yarn forward photo shoot on Saturday and 3 new yarns to launch next week. I'm also off to help shear some sheep at some point over the next couple of weeks (not sure that I'll be doing much helping though) which is really exciting. So I just need to get through three more days of blah before it all starts to get more exciting. I can do that, don't you think?

Posted by Kerrie at 08:14 AM | Comments (6)

May 13, 2008

Shop updated

Here

If anyone is in West Essex today and has a box full of cheer and good humour drop it off to me please would you? I'm sadly lacking in both at the moment.

Posted by Kerrie at 01:25 PM | Comments (4)

May 12, 2008

Big Weekend

We had a big day yesterday, Trinity was christened at our local church and then we had 52 people back to our house for a BBQ, party, general fun time. We were so lucky with the weather, most of us were sheltering under the gazebo trying desperately to find a little shade and the kids loved to be able to take off their posh church clothes and splash around in the paddling pool.

Trinity was lovely, she wore the same dress as Brooke and everyone commented all day on how similar they looked. She didn't sleep much all day (which became a bit of a problem at about 6pm) and was so good in church. She did have a good cry when the vicar took her from me and glared at him when he handed her back but apart from that she was so happy all day.

Its lovely to have so many friends and family over to celebrate the day. Lou and her family came over on Saturday and stayed over night (just so that I could have that extra pair of hands to help with the dessert making Sunday morning but don't tell her that!), this was the first time our kids and husbands had met and they got on just as well as we knew that they would. We all rather took over the church as there were only about a dozen people there who hadn't come for the christening!

Trinity was lucky enough to have 2 beautiful cakes. The first made by the ever wonderful Michaela (who had her own party yesterday)

and the second made by our lovely cake making cousin Kim.

If anyone wants cake including with their yarn orders this week that might well be possible as we have SO MUCH left over.

The only problem with having a house full of people on a Sunday is that you don't get time to clear up properly before the week begins. everywhere I look in the house there is stuff. Clean plates to be put away, dirty things to be washed, piles of stuff in the garden etc. This is when working from home is not a good thing, I either spend a few hours sorting it all out this morning or I look at it all day. Ho hum. I have a sick boy with tonsilitis at home with me as well so add that to me being shattered and having drunk rather a lot of wine yesterday afternoon - I think today will be one of my least productive.

There will be a shop update later on today though. I'll let you all know what time later on this morning when I can see how the day is going. I'll add pictures here as well when I find the camera...

Posted by Kerrie at 07:17 AM | Comments (4)

May 08, 2008

Yarn Forward news

Another quick one this morning, my to do list is ridiculous for today and I'm taking this time to blog while the smallest one in the house is still asleep while the rest of us are tiptoeing around trying to get dressed without waking her. Lucky its not my day for the school run (I share with another mum) so if Trinity and Cameron and I are late getting where we are supposed to go that's no big problem..

Have you checked out the yarn forward magazine blog recently? Sarah is busy working on our blog for us and will be giving you lots of insights into what is going on behind the scenes over here. Go and say hi to her and if you have a Ravelry account you can join in the discussion on the Yarn Forward Magazine group over there as well.

Our advertising sales manager for the magazine started with us yesterday, you'll be meeting her on the blog very shortly. The magazine is beginning to feel like a great business with lots of people all taking responsibility for different areas rather than just me trying to do everything. We have one more person starting with us in June and then a small gap before we look for another couple to join us later in the year.

The summer issue is in progress, we have the photo shoot in a couple of weeks time and the garments are pouring through the doors at the moment. Its all looking great and keeping Lou and I very busy at the moment. We are hoping to have it out in time to bring to Woolfest so if you subscribe and are coming to the show you'll be able to pick up your magazine there.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2008

Very quickly

We're changing contact email addresses for HipKnits, for now please send everything to kerrie AT hipknits.co.uk and I will let you all know the new email to contact our posting manager very shortly so that you can email her with any order queries. I've put an auto reply on the other email addresses and I'll keep an eye on the inboxes for the next couple of weeks but (fingers crossed, touch wood and any other superstitions that you might have) this should fix our email issues. Lets hope hey?

Posted by Kerrie at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2008

Shop update

We have SO much yarn to put in the shop today, it is going to keep me busy nearly all day photographing, editing the photos and uploading it all to the shop. I'm hoping that the quality of photos will be much improved as I'm embarrassed to admit that months after buying my new camera I have FINALLY worked out how to put it onto macro setting which takes the best photos of yarn. How silly that it should have taken me so long to find that little button...

Here is a preview of some of the silk that we have on the site :

A new pastel colour that was a bit of an experiment. It didn't work out as planned but it is so soft and pretty

A custom dye that was just soooo pretty we couldn't resist dyeing more of it.

Knox. One of my all time favourites which is strange because usually I don't do orange.

Bracken. This is an always popular colour of silk

The shop update is done and on the site. Click here to see all the new products this time. The newsletter list is not co-operating so I'll try again in the morning to send out the notification. As well as lots of lovely summery silk we have some great sale bargains as well. Like these packs of cashmere sock yarn and lace yarn. 200g for just £13.

Pretty pink laceweight

Cashmere socks anyone?

There is also this months choose your own sock yarn club yarn. Cashmere. Yum.

And some ophelia merino sock yarn. Sorbet socks for me please...

Posted by Kerrie at 07:19 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2008

Bank holiday

Wayne asked me a few minutes ago how come I hadn't updated the blog today (he reads here more than I realise!) and I didn't really have a good answer for him. Its been a lovely day today, I had the 2 small people at home with me but I've still managed to get a surprising amount of work done.

On Tuesday I'm handing over all of the HipKnits stock to our new manager (yay) and there will be a humungous shop update at 9pm Tuesday night so that I can do the bulk of the work after the kids are asleep. The May choose your own sock club yarn will be on there as well, its cashmere this month. Yummy yummy cashmere.

Also on Tuesday the free patterns page and the errata page will go live on the YF website.

We've just come back from pizza hut for dinner with the kids and I'm planning on turning off the laptop now until Tuesday morning. There will be lots and lots going on next week with new yarns arriving and the last stage of the project club yarn being finished off and the little goody bags made up. I'm really excited about handing over some of the day to day work to someone else, I thought I'd be sad about it but I'm really not.

Have a lovely long bank holiday weekend, lets hope for some good weather for all of us. xx

Posted by Kerrie at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2008

School Trip

I'm going on a school trip later on today, this is the first time I've allowed myself to be roped in to help on a trip and I'm actually quite looking forward to it. I have my wellies and my rucksack and I think I may be the only one planning to knit on the coach.

The kids have to wear school uniform on the top half and jeans and wellies on the bottom half. I've decided to wear my Ravelry T shirt that says where my stitches at. I know where my stitches are, driving me mad at the moment. Not too sure what knitting to take on the coach..

Lucky the trip isn't until later on today which gives me time to be productive before I go. The summer yarn forward magazine is in full production mode, samples are arriving every day and pages are flying around being designed, copy edited and proof read. This is my favourite stage of the magazine production, I love seeing all the ideas and concepts come together. We're hoping to have it out in time for WoolFest at the end of June although the official on the shelf date is mid July.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:07 AM | Comments (3)

April 30, 2008

Send sleep

Why do things always happen when husbands are away? I didnt get anything done after 3pm yesterday as I was in hospital with a friend who thought she was in prem labour at 34 weeks. With her husband away on business Wayne looked after her 2 children together with our 3 (give that man a medal) and I spent the night in hospital with her on the other side of the giving birth fence. I've never been a birth partner before! Lucky for all of us things calmed down early hours and I think she is coming home today.

I'm just about to drop 5 kids off at various nurseries and schools and then come home for a much needed shower and couple of hours sleep. I havent looked at emails or orders since 3pm yesterday but I WILL be back online by early afternoon and will catch up then.

Its all good fun isnt it? xx

Posted by Kerrie at 08:11 AM | Comments (1)

April 28, 2008

Wonderwool, the review

(OK, I'm a little more awake now so have added some more detail below!)

The weekend at Wonderwool was absolutely fantastic, we couldn't have asked for anything better. I was slightly nervous about the show, having been a bit unwell the week leading up to it and knowing that I really shouldn't be driving or bending over and lifting anything up but I'm really pleased I made the decision to go. Lou and I met so many lovely customers and sold lots and lots of yarn and magazines. We actually sold out of issue 4 of the magazine and came home with only 1 copy of issue 2. We need to check stock to see if we have any more of issue 4 but I think that might be the first issue to have totally completely and utterly sold out. How exciting!

The response to the magazines was amazing, it was lovely to meet so many new customers who had not heard of the magazine and for them to buy all the back issues, a subscription and then come back a few hours later to tell us that they had read the magazine over lunch and really enjoyed it. That makes all the hard work and effort that we put in worth while.

We tried to keep a tally of all the lovely Ravelry people we met and gave discounts to, it was great to see sooo many badges. We gave up when we reached 60, we just couldnt keep up with them all. It was lovely to receive so many hugs and smiles and have so many friendly chats with people we only knew from online. The vibe at the shows is great, from setting up and chatting to the other vendors to the hours when the show is open and you meet customers that you've seen before, people you only know from emails and then people who have never heard of you before.

The last couple of hours of the show quieten down nicely, allowing stall holders the chance to sit and have a cup of tea and watch the last few shoppers go by. I like that winding down stage of the day, its something that you don't always get at Ally Pally and the other bigger shows but it really helps you calm down at shows like Wonderwool where you have had a few hours of mayhem with people queueing up to subscribe and pay for yarn.

That quiet time allows you to wander around and say hello to other stall holders that you dont see between shows. I caught up with Jeni from Fyberspates, Amanda from the Natural Dye studio, DT Crafts, Dee and Tony from Posh yarn, Eirwen from Knitwitches and probably many more who I can't remember off the top of my head. I love the way that although we are all competitors the overall feeling of the shows is that you are part of a big family. Of course there is always an element of bitchiness, of people who you know have said things about you elsewhere coming up and smiling and being friendly but that's real life isn't it? It happens everywhere so why should shows be any different? It was also surprising to me just how many people took the time to say that they had read some of the negative stuff that went on the other week and how out of control they thought it had all become. That meant a lot to me (and Lou) and we really appreciate everyone who took the time to come over and speak to us. Especially those of you who had been motivated to buy from us as a gesture of support.

The 5 hour drive home last night was exhausting so I'm taking it easy with my little people today. I can see now that from a physical point of view I should probably have stayed home and as much as I tried to be good and look after myself I'm paying for it today. Lou took lots of photos so I'll try and get some from her today that I can share on the YF blog later. I'm going to have a cup of tea and some toast and then have a paperwork / catching up day instead of a yarn dyeing / skeining / physical day. x

Posted by Kerrie at 07:54 AM | Comments (1)

April 24, 2008

Wonderwool

I'm heading off for wonderwool first thing in the morning, all the yarn is labelled, packed and ready to go. I won't update here again until mid next week now but I wanted to let you know about some nice special offers that we're going to have on the HipKnits / Yarn Forward stand.

- BOTH YF AND HIPKNITS - 10% discount for anyone who reads here or any of the forums where Lou and I post regularly.

- YF MAGAZINE - All 4 back issues of the magazine for £10 plus a free gift of yarn and pattern when you take out a new subscription at the show.

- HIPKNITS - Free pattern with every purchase while stocks last.

- HIPKNITS - special discounts on silk and sari silk.

We are also hoping to take part in the Sheepwalk so you'll get the chance to see some of the YF designs on the catwalk, we're really excited about that! If you're coming to the show we'll see you there, otherwise I'll be back here sometime next week when we're recovered from the long drive and all unpacked.

Posted by Kerrie at 05:18 PM | Comments (3)

April 23, 2008

Reading

I love a good read, I remember a few months back you all gave me some great book suggestions, I read a number of them which were great, and I thought that I'd share a list here of the books that I have read over the last two or three weeks. They are a bit of an eclectic mix...

- Penny Vincenzi, an absolute scandal. (lighthearted, trashy, chick lit. Quick and easy to read)
- Wilbur Smith, Quest. (Egyptian epic, brilliant. Have loved all in the series)
- Stephen King, Blaze. (lightweight horror. Average but easy read)
- Phillip Pullman, Northern Lights. (Fantasty, loved it)
- Harlen Cobe, Hold Tight. (Crime, thriller. Pretty good.)
- Richard Webster, Spirit Guides and Angel Guardians. (factual how to contact your guardian angels and learn about spirit guides. Fascinating)
- Brian Lumley, Necroscope. (Vampire horror, have read it countless times. Love a bit of blood and guts and gore every now and again)
- Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth. (religious cathederal building epic set in a monastery. Very good)

(oh and yes, for those of you who are wondering the kids have been locked in a cupboard these past few weeks while I read all these books. JOKE! Honestly, you'd think people would have something better to do with their time than to read this blog just so that they will have something to b**ch about elsewhere.)

Posted by Kerrie at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2008

Randoms

- I've said it before and no doubt I'll say it again, an hour in the forest after dinner is worth a million. We saw a big stag deer close up last night, the last time I saw one of those was at the side of the road and I had to phone the forest ranger to come and collect him. This was lovely, he ran around us in a big circle twice before disappearing back into the forest. I've never seen one so close like that before, the children were shocked into silence by it which is a big achievement in itself I think. Wish I had the camera with me.

- Wayne and I went to Marianne and Barrys wedding last week, even a broken down car couldn't keep us away. We took Michaela with us which was lovely, it was a good excuse to get poshed up and spend a few hours talking and laughing. I get all sentimental at weddings, ours was such a great day - 5 years ago this August. Now that has gone super quick.

- It was lovely to get home and see these funny three in the morning though. When we stay at mum and dads Trinity sleeps in a travel cot in our room and she pops her little head over the top and shouts at us when she wakes up, its really funny and almost worth being woken up before 7am after a late night for.

- The flowers are all done and I've moved onto a project for the magazine that I need to get finished this week. I seem to be back in the habit of knitting a fair bit these last couple of weeks, that makes me happy.

- Go and send Jo a big virtual hug. She had a rough day yesterday and really needs one. Jo is the sweetest person I have ever met, her little boy is lovely and she makes a great cup of tea! What better recommendation could I give?

- Today is all about magazine work, proof reading, editing and chasing up some contributors. A day in the office is just what the doctor ordered I think.

Posted by Kerrie at 06:21 AM | Comments (1)

April 21, 2008

Flowers

Sorry about the long silence, its been a funny few days around here with lots of things going on in the background that have needed my attention and have taken me away from the internet. Shock horror! I've been carrying around some nice simple pick up and put down knitting with me for the last week or so, its all about flowers over here at the moment.

I'm teaching yet more knitted flower classes in a few weeks time at various locations and having followed the same class format for the last couple of years I'm busy experimenting with some new flower "patterns" to use in the classes. I use the term patterns in the loosest possible way as they are really just little recipes that can be changed as required. The number of stitches that you cast on, rows that you knit, yarn that you use, cast off and cast on that you use are not written in stone. The reason that I love teaching flower classes is that everyone's flowers look different and yet they are all lovely. That's another reason that I love knitting flowers as well, they are quick, easy to pick up and put down and look so pretty when they are finished. Just what the doctor ordered.

I'm booked in to teach at a few knitting groups this summer which I'm really looking forward to. I'm happy to drive anywhere within an hour or so of Bishops Stortford to teach classes so if any other knitting groups want to get together and have me come along with some magazines, yarns and knit some flowers let me know. I tend not to charge very much for knitting groups, just enough to cover petrol and yarn really. Its something that I really enjoy as well, which obviously helps.

Posted by Kerrie at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2008

Chocolate Cheesecake

We have so much chocolate in the house and the kids don't really eat it which means that Easter has a habit of dragging on and on and on around here. Yesterday afternoon I did a terrible thing. I lined up these Easter guys, took off their wrappers and popped them into the microwave one at a time. When they were completely melted down I popped them into a bowl with some other good ingredients and turned them into a chocolate cheesecake.

It felt quite naughty to melt them down, poor little chocolately people. I didn't quite go as far as naming them before I zapped them though, I'm not that mean.

I've got a day of meetings today and tomorrow so won't be about too much. I'll check emails when I can and catch with all outstandings on Friday. Hopefully I should have some knitting related photos for you then, with any luck.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:10 AM | Comments (4)

April 15, 2008

...

I swapped places with my sister at the end of last week, she had my silly big car and all three children for a couple of days and I had her little car while Wayne and I had some time at home on our own. There were things that we needed to do which included going to Tesco at 8.30 pm and buying wine, steak and cheesecake for dinner. As you do when you don't have any children to look after, don't you?

As much as I totally love my children it gets really intense at times with 3 of them. Especially as I'm at home pretty much all the time, I get the brunt of the mundane day to day jobs (cooking, feeding them, brushing teeth, getting dressed, breaking up fights) which gets really wearing after a while. With all the stuff that has been going on recently (and this time I'm not referring to the internet hoo hah) it felt really important for Wayne and I to have some time on our own. We looked through old pictures of the kids, reminded ourselves how much they have all changed and grown up, talked about lots of things, made some plans and generally lazed around the house in our PJs and remembered what it was like to be able to do what we want when we want. That's something that it is easy to forget when you have 3 little people after your attention all the time.

It was only around 24 hours but it felt like a lot longer. We missed them terribly and wre both really pleased to have them back home again. I need to remember that feeling, especially on nights like last night when Wayne is out, Trinity hasn't slept all day at nursery, Cameron is grumpy for no apparant reason and Brooke is tired from her first day back at school. None of us were very nice people last night, I'm afraid. There were lots of tantrums, tears and tempers around last night. We all collapsed into bed at 8pm and woke up much happier this morning.

Trinity started taking her first proper steps over the weekend, she has been standing up for MONTHS and walking with help for almost as long but she has been reluctant to take those first unaided steps until now. This is probably not a bad thing, I'm hoping the fact that she has felt the need to wait a little longer is a good developmental sign for her. I'm hoping that they will discharge us from the hospital next time we take her in, the last few times they have asked if she is walking unaided yet - this seems to be a bit of a milestone that they are waiting for.

It reminded us of the other 2 and their learning to walk. Brooke was about the same age as Trinity but Cameron was much earlier. He met all his physical milestones nice and early. We found a photo of him playing football in the park with Wayne when he was just 1 year and a week old. He looked so cute, and so small. A little different to the way he looked on Sunday night when I finished washing and drying his hair. I was lazy and sent him into nursery with big hair on Monday which prompted him to come home and ask me to plait it quickly so that he didn't look like a girl. We've always said that we'd keep it long until he wanted it cut, I'm hoping he doesn't ask for that though. At the moment he seems happy with it long, he only seems to ask for it to be cut after spending too much time with his grandmas, both of whom I suspect apply gentle subliminal messages to him to ask for short hair. Ha ha...

Posted by Kerrie at 07:09 AM | Comments (3)

April 14, 2008

Orenburg Lace

The first batch of our orenburg lace is dyed and ready for sale. We have decided to sell it at £12 per 50g which is a pretty good deal considering some other companies are selling the same yarn for over £20 per 50g skein. Remember each skein is handspun and each spinner can only produce 2 or 3 skeins a day. This is gorgeous yarn, 1 skein is enough for a small lace shawl - 2 skeins would make a gorgeous large shawl. There are 600 yards per 50g skein.

We dyed it in solid and semi solid shades so that any lace projects that you use it for will look gorgeous. Some multicoloured or variegated lace yarns can confuse your lace pattern if you are not really careful with the choice of your yarn.

I was thinking about saving the yarn to take to Wonderwool, what do you think though? Should I put it on the site today or save it for Wales? I'm out and about for the next few hours but will check back in at 3 and if enough people vote for it to go on the site then I'll do that at 3.

The yarn is on the site now, or at least some of it is. See?

Posted by Kerrie at 07:36 AM | Comments (5)

April 12, 2008

Mad Woman

Sometimes I do crazy things just for the fun of it. Other times I do crazy things for a very very good cause. I like to think that this occasion falls into the second category, but I'm not totally sure yet.

On 6th July this year I'll be running (walking, staggering. delete as you think is appropriate) 10k around London to raise money for SAUK. My donations page is here. Please give if you can, SAUK is a great charity to support and is one that means a lot to me personally.

I'm sure lots of people who know me in real life are now rolling around on the floor in laughter at the thought of me running anywhere. Its a small thing for me to do though in comparison with what other people go through and one that deserves a little support, dontcha think? I firmly believe in doing what I can to support the people that I know and love without just sitting back and relying on the kindness of others in donating time and effort. Surely I can cope with 10 kilometres of running in order to raise money to support a charity that is helping out a very close friend of ours?

Thanks in advance to anyone who manages to donate. Every little counts and each donation will mean so much to me. Wayne is also running it with me, bless him - so if you happen to be there watching on the day make sure you shout nice and loudly to us. We'll be the exhausted but determined ones somewhere near the back!

Posted by Kerrie at 03:15 PM | Comments (1)

April 11, 2008

Shop updated

What a beautiful afternoon it is here, the sun is shining and the sky is bright blue and virtually cloudless - how can anyone be unhappy with weather like this?

I have just finished the shop update, lots of lace yarns today. Click here to take you to the new products page where you can see everything I added. The newsletter group have been given their weekend discount code as well as some other bits of information that I'll share here throughout next week.

The kids and I stayed overnight at mum and dad's last night. When it came to 7pm Brooke and Cameron were happy watching a DVD and Trinity was shattered so I took her up to bed and stayed there with her. That has to be the earliest night I have had for ages and I slept all the way through until this morning. Maybe that's why I feel so cheerful today, a GOOD nights sleep and sunshine. Perfect.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend whatever you are getting up to. We don't have too many plans which is unusual for us. We're saving ourselves for the wedding of the year next weekend, I can't wait!

Posted by Kerrie at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2008

Thursday

I'm a tad early with Thursday's post but I can't stay awake any longer so here it is! Thanks for all the positive emails and comments, I really appreciate them. I did hold back on 2 comments that were negative, there are plenty of places for those views to be aired but not here. Ho hum, lets hope this all blows over soon.

Friday's shop update is looking like a bumper one, I'm not going to be online Friday morning so the update is likely to be earlly evening, around 6 ish but as usual the newsletter list will be the first to know with their usual discount code included in the email.

The yarn forward website makeover has had a bit of a back seat since we started it a couple of weeks ago. We have the subs pages all fixed and up and running now and the back issues page is currently only available from the blog (until I get that sorted in the morning) but you can pre order your copy of issue 5 which will be posted out on Monday there.

I'm thrilled to hear of so many of hte magazines arriving already, 2nd class postage and they arrived the day after being posted. That says a lot for our new postage system I think, thank goodness. Its great to hear that people are loving the magazine, thanks for all the comments and emails so far - keep them coming!

Posted by Kerrie at 10:29 PM | Comments (11)

What to say?

I know there are many many people out there who are disappointed about MagKnits no longer being available and I am not going to defend my decision here too much other than to say that for the first time in MONTHS I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

I can't tell you how soul destroying it is to work so hard on something and get very little back, no money and just a tad of positive feedback. Then when it appears as though everyone is out to complain about what you do to the point where every time I looked at my emails there would be more piling up from people who didn't like the new magknits look, didn't like the patterns, thought they saw copyright issues where there were none. It got really spiteful over the last 10 weeks ever since we took a break with the Feb issue and you know what, I have had enough. No more.

This was NOT a spur of the moment decision, I have been talking about closing down MagKnits for over a year now - yesterday was just the right day. All the designers payments are still going through and there are no advertisers to be paid so we'll be all square in a couple of days. Lots of the designers are republishing on Ravelry and various other places which is brilliant. If I could have given them all notice I would have done but it wasn't possible at the time.

While this was not a spur of the moment decision and was one that had been coming for a long while the timing was 100% caused by the nastiness on a particular forum that I'd appreciate if nobody named in the comments. For those that don't know don't need to know.

This can only mean good things for me. More time and less stress, how can that be bad. Remember when I said at the end of last year that 2008 was going to be about me doing things for me? This is one of many big decisions like that which are coming up. I'm tired of spending so much time helping other people who quite frankly don't always deserve the help. This year is about me making decisions for me and my family and doing what is best for us.

In other news there will be a big HipKnits update on Friday and I'm hoping a nice big announcement at the same time. I've got poorly babies here at the momemt so while all 4 of us are on the sofa with high temperatures watching DVDs I'll be labelling and photographing yarn in preparation for the update. Here are just a few of my favourites from the batch

Posted by Kerrie at 06:34 AM | Comments (47)

April 08, 2008

April choose your own sock club yarn

I keep forgetting to show you April's yarn, it is so lovely I actually wanted to keep it all for myself. Not sure what I'd do with so many skeins of yarn though!

This month it is the turn of Desdemona, a lambswool, cashmere and angora blend. This yarn is so lovely and squashy it makes beautiful socks, shawls, children's clothes - anything you like.

Only available during April to those who have joined the choose your own sock club yarn, if there is any left in May it will go on general sale.

Posted by Kerrie at 09:25 AM | Comments (1)

April 07, 2008

What a weekend!

Ugh, that's pretty much all I have to say about it. What a spectaculary craptastic weekend. It started off with some bad news on Friday and disentegrated into a total mess by the end of the weekend. I'm sure most of you have seen the negative stuff that's being said, for those of you who haven't I'm certainly not going to send you to them. What you haven't seen is the emails and notes and downright nastiness that both Lou and I have been subjected to. What has really shocked me more than the nastiness has been the response (or not) of people who I considered to be friends. This kind of thing really makes you find out who your friends are and by god I know who mine are now. I think I've told each one of them how much I love them but this is just to tell them again. xx

Not wanting to dwell on the whole thing too much at the moment, I just wanted to say (because I know people will be clicking here desperate to see what I'm going to say on the subject) that if anyone has a genuine reason to want to get in touch with me about a problem they can leave a comment here. It won't necessarily be published on this site but it will be actioned.

There have been tonnes of changes this year to the way we work at HipKnits and many many more are in the pipeline. I was really excited about telling you about some of them, now slightly less so than on Friday, but they are still happening and you'll find out more later this week when the contractuals are signed and everyone who needs to know first does know.

Its the second week of spring holidays here so I'll be out and about a bit more doing non yarn stuff with the kids for the next few days. That will be including Dougal the dog who seems to go everywhere with Cameron these days, he cracks me up. Everywhere I turn there is Dougal, good job I have a car with enough seats for him to have his own chair and seatbelt isn't it.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:55 PM | Comments (13)

April 03, 2008

For sale

All the destash has gone, thanks to those of you who helped me clear out some space.

x

Posted by Kerrie at 04:39 PM | Comments (2)

Orenburg lace

One of our many new yarns that we have coming up this summer is this beautiful handspun mohair and silk Orenburg lace yarn. The yarn is handspun in the Ukraine, each spinner can only produce 2 or 3 skeins a day and it is beautiful. 80% Kid Mohair/20% Silk hand spun Orenburg Lace Yarn and 500yds per 50gm skein.

I know that Cherry Tree Hill sell this yarn (expensively though I think!) and that a few other hand dyers have also got some in stock. We're busy dyeing up our stock to take to Wonderwool wales at the end of the month.

Posted by Kerrie at 09:06 AM | Comments (1)

April 02, 2008

Spring is sprung

I love it when spring is finally here, the evenings are long and bright and the weather is starting to get warmer. The kids and I had our first after dinner trip to the forest last night, it bought back a lot of memories. I remember this time last year with Trinity only a few weeks old in her sling, with me sitting on tree stumps breastfeeding her.

I remember spring 2005 when Cameron was only a few months old and he fell asleep in the forest. I lay him down on a blanket on the grass while Brooke and I climbed trees and then had to run quickly to him when a passing cow came within a few hundred yards and I panicked that it would step on him.

This year I had the big kids running and jumping and climbing trees while Trinity and I chased behind them with her in the push chair. Fast forward to next year and I can imagine her running with them, I love the way that some things remain constant while everything else changes. Next time we go I'll try and remember my camera.

On another spring like note, isn't Michaela clever? I sent her my pile of tangles to take on holiday with her and she turned them into these, how lovely? They look so pretty in the basket, its almost a shame to turn them into skeins but I will. They will all be at Wonderwool with me in just a few weeks time.

Thanks Michaela..

Posted by Kerrie at 06:54 AM | Comments (3)

April 01, 2008

Shop updated

The shop is finally updated, with a special offer on cashmere.

MagKnits is also done for this month, with a fresh new look.

YF Magazine website will be up tomorrow, with a brand new look and feel.

Am I sick of playing in Dreamweaver yet? Almost.....

PS - Fran, my emails to you are still bouncing. Can you email me your phone number please?

Posted by Kerrie at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

Yo Yo Brooches

I taught classes again at Olympia, the yo yo brooch one was the most popular. I loved seeing how 15 people could take the same set of instructions and leave the class wearing a brooch that looked totally different to all of the others. Teaching is a great way to get to meet lots of new people (and also have a chance to sit down for an hour or so)

This is one of the brooches that I made, Brooke has claimed it now. I still have a few of the kits that I used to teach with in the classes, you get some little pieces of fabric, some ribbon, a safety pin for the back and some instructions. They will be in the shop update later on today, after MagKnits is up and running.

Posted by Kerrie at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2008

Olympia recap

We're home! As usual the worst parts of the show were the set up and break down, there is nothing worse than having to take the whole stand apart and get it back to the car at the end of 4 or 5 days of hard work. Set up isn't so bad as the hundreds of vendors have a 12 hour slot in which to arrive at the venue and set up. We all want to leave at exactly the same time at breakdown though which leads to chaos.

The show was great, I sold enough yarn to keep me happy and the magazine sales were amazing. Lou is a brilliant saleswoman, Mandy, Jo and I learned a lot from her and the subscription target that we set ourselves at the beginning of the show was met and exceeded by the third day. So much for it being a stretch target that we didn#t really expect to achieve. We rocked. Probably about 90% of people that we saw hadn't heard of the magazine before so it was lovely to meet so many new people and see their interest and excitement. We also made some great new contacts for designs, product reviews and advertising so all in all it was a fab show. There was only one negative instance where one of the other vendors who came over to look through the magazine decided to be incredibly rude to us instead of give us a polite no thank you when we asked them if they might be interested in advertising. Manners cost nothing you know and none of us will be spending money with them or recommending them in the future, I can tell you that for sure.

Its good to be back home, a day on the sofa is planned for today. I looked at my emails this morning and saw over 500 waiting for a reply so I'll gradually work through those today and then hopefully get a website update in tomorrow.

I'll pull the pictures off the camera this morning and get them on here as well.

Posted by Kerrie at 08:40 AM | Comments (2)

March 26, 2008

Off to Olympia

I had hoped to get more done today but alas, there just weren't the hours in the day. I still have emails outstanding but I won't be able to get to them all until Monday, please bear with me. I left home before 6am today to set up and will be doing the same for the next 4 days so Monday is definitely a day for catching up on the sofa.

If you're coming to Olympia make sure you stop by and say hello.

x

Posted by Kerrie at 06:02 PM | Comments (1)

March 25, 2008

Ethical yarns

There is a LOT of talk out there at the moment about ethical yarns. It is something that has always been important to me, our environmental statement has been on the site for many many months now and its something that we get lots of emails on and questions about.

Jeni and Amanda have both posted recently about ethical yarns and I'm looking forward to chatting to them both more about it at Wonderwool.

Posted by Kerrie at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

Easter weekend

I hope that the long Easter weekend bought you lots of chocolate and happiness, it certainly did for us. We had a super busy weekend (as usual!) - here are some of the highlights :

- a trip to the cinema with AJ and the big kids on Friday morning to see Horton hears a Who. Loved it!

- lunch at pizza hut afterwards, yum.

- Village Easter disco and egg hunt for the children on Saturday, the rain and sleet didn't put us off that much, it just turned into indoor fun instead of outdoor fun. Afterwards I served dinner for 10 adults and 5 kids, thanks to both grandmas for bringing along their speciality dishes which meant that the cooking I had to do was minimal.

- Snow day snow day! It didnt last long but we had a good 3 or 4 inches in the morning which the kids loved playing in, building snowmen and throwing snowballs.

- Wee trip to IKEA. Love that shop.

- Tea and yarn playing with Jo. The kids loved playing with her little boy (and all his toys) and Brooke now wants to learn the piano, nice expensive hobby she has got in mind there then.

And lots more. Today is all about getting ready for Olympia. Packing and checking lists and the last few skeins of yarn to label. What did you all get up to over the weekend?

Posted by Kerrie at 08:06 AM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2008

Thank you!

Thank you all for the offers of untangling, I was in Bath all day yesterday for meetings and when I logged on this morning I found over 50 unmoderated comments offering to help. You guys are amazing, I'll work out today what will be easiest to do and email the person / people today or tomorrow.

Don't forget, big site update tonight at 6 ish. 9pm ish.

Sorry for the 3 hour delay, I won't moan too much about what has led me to have to change my plans but the shop update will still happen (with a nice Easter discount for newsletter subs) albeit a little later than I had hoped.

Posted by Kerrie at 06:58 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2008

Great British yarns

Sharon from Great British Yarns was one of the new wholesale accounts that dad and I have been busy on over the last few weeks. She has some amazing yarns on her site, go and check them out.

Unfortunately, this pile of tangled cashmere sock yarn here was also destined for Great British yarns but it blew off the washing line at dads and turned into a big pile of tangles. Le sigh. None of it is unsaveable but it will take some time to work through it, untangle and reskein. :( Definitely not in time for Olympia but maybe for Wonderwool...

Does anyone out there (apart from mum!) love untangelling yarn? All offers of help in return for cashmere sock yarn would be welcomed!

Posted by Kerrie at 08:28 AM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2008

First EZ

I must be one of the few knitters in the world never to have knitted anything by Elizabeth Zimmerman. That all changed last night when I started a February cardigan for Trinity. I'm following the basic pattern but using aran weight yarn and 5.5mm needles in the hope that it will be large enough for Trin. I'm still on the garter stitch yoke so nothing really interesting to see but my plan is that she will wear it to her proper birthday party on Saturday. Anyone like to place a bet?

Thanks for all the Happy Birthday comments yesterday, we had a lovely birthday tea. Brooke and Cameron both wanted to wear special clothes for the celebration so we had Brooke in a bridesmaids dress and Cameron in his firemans outfit. Perfect. Lots of cake was eaten, presents and cards were opened, played with and chewed and songs were sung. They all went to bed early and exhausted. We love birthdays around here!

Posted by Kerrie at 08:00 AM | Comments (5)

March 17, 2008

What a difference a year makes...

One year ago today I was laying in hospital with my head on Wayne's chest, fast asleep. I was sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, the sleep of a brand new mum who had been awake since 2am busy giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. Trinity was born at 5.20am after a nice quick labour with no pain relief, weighing in at 9 pounds 6 ounces. Big girl. Beautiful girl.

The NHS hospital where she was born has a policy of private double rooms and allowing dads to stay with mum and baby afterwards for up to 5 days. In fact we left 8 hours after she was born to get home to the others but those few hours in the morning where I slept and Wayne lay with me resting on him and Trinity in her cot next to us were priceless. An hour after she was born all three of us were snuggled up in bed, with Wayne and I eating toast and drinking tea and Trinity having her first feed. The midwife came in to check on us and help out with breastfeeding, took one look at us all, smiled and left us to it.

When we showed Brooke some of these first pictures she asked us why we were in a hotel, she didnt think it looked like a hospital room at all. She is right, the NHS did us proud - it was a million times nicer than the experience we had at the hospital where Brooke and Cameron were born, although again - they weren't really bad experiences, just not as nice as the third time.

We were lucky though. It could have all been so d