HipKnits

Hi from Reid

Richard — 2009-12-04T15:10:56+00:00

Hi my name is Reid and these are photos of me and me with my brother and sisters and my dad when i was 1 day old,
Love Reid

Welcome Reid Mica Allman

Richard — 2009-12-03T09:54:13+00:00

Welcome Reid Mica Allman ,born 2nd December 2009 ,at 20.45 hrs ,weight 9lbs 10oz,Kerrie and Reid are both well and leaving hospital today.
Will post photo's later.

Alexandra Palace 2009

Richard — 2009-10-13T08:15:08+00:00

WOW, what a 4 days at Alexandra Palace. We were moved from our usual spot, as they had removed the last line of stands and made the eating area bigger, and was away from the Kalmedia extravaganza.
Thank you to everybody who came along to say Hi and bought some yarns and also those who just said Hi , it was good to be able to put faces to people who I only know from putting address labels on there orders ,thank you to the people who found us for the first time.
It was really busy and being on my own exhausting “but I love it “, a great place, atmosphere and people have already booked for next year, so see you then.
Am in the process of looking at new yarns for next year ,will still keep the Silk, laceweight Cashmere and the new Organic Merino , if you have any ideas for new stuff let me know either in the comments section below or at info AT hipknits .co.uk.

The Kal media show rolled into Ally Pally taking up what appeared to be half the hall. Thursday and Friday the Bristol Office-Dave, Nat ,Becky and Alice -were on stand one showing everybody how a magazine is put together ,putting the text, pictures and pattern etc on the pages ready for printing, also photographing some of the samples ad putting ads together ,from the comments I heard people thought it was great, I understand that Nat was a bit of a babe magnet .Thanks guys and girls for putting on a good demonstration and taking the time to talk to people about how it all comes together. On stand 2 the Takeley Office-Loretta, Kayleigh, Keren ,Jane, Shirley and for one day only (Sunday and with a dodgy hip) Wayne were talking to customers about the magazines( Yarn Forward, Sew Hip and Inside Crochet) and taking subscriptions, the targets for the show were met on day one, well done you girls and Wayne. My own thanks to you all for keeping me supplied with tea at regular intervals and holding the fort while dashed for the occasional loo break. The top banana no 1 sales girl by a mile was the gorgeous Kayleigh well done you.
Finally but not least was the Easy Knits team John and his companions Mike and Dave who manned the till taking the money and of course supplying the Cookies thanks guys.
So all in all a good Alexandra Palace for us all see you all next year

Alexandra Palace

Richard — 2009-10-03T14:53:05+00:00

Over 600 skiens labeled and packed ,only another 200 either drying,ready to be skiened or awaiting labels ,its now i'm wondering why i do this every year.Ah i remember now, i love this show.
The Hipknits site will be mainly closed down until 13th October as i am taking most of the stock with me , any orders after Tuesday 6th will be posted on the 13th.
If your comming to Ally Pally call round and say hi,i know a few of you ,but it would be nice to put faces to the names and addresses i send parcel.

If your comming along don't forget to call at the Kal Media display its going to be very different,all i can say is it's going to involve loads of wallpaper and some young men !!?
Hope to see you there

Self striping sock yarns

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2009-08-28T09:08:00+00:00

I know dad won't tell you himself but it was his 60th birthday last week and Wayne, the kids and I went to spend the weekend with mum and dad. We had a good party for him on the Sunday, bouncy castle, BBQ, lots of food and fun. The kids and dad were the ones who spent the most time on the bouncy castle, I only sneaked a few minutes on there when no-one else was watching or bouncing!

The day before the big party, I decided that it was time to involve dad in the winding of gigantic skeins of yarn and the dyeing of self striping sock yarn. Ha ha! As some of you may know, this takes huge amounts of time and effort but is really worthwhile because the effect is gorgeous. We ended up at the end of the weekend with 51 skeins wound and ready to dye, and 10 of them dyed and ready to wind back into normal sized skeins. These are the ones that we dyed :

This was the first time I've interfered in the dyeing of yarn for MONTHS and it was quite good fun. We have 8 of the brighter ones and 2 of the paler ones. All were done with the same dyes but the paler ones were the result of the bottom of the dye baths when a lot of the colours had exhausted already. I personally LOVE the brighter ones and think that socks with nice big chunky stripes in these colours would be great. Like any hand painted yarns, the stripes won't be the exact same number of stitches and there may be some overlap between colours but the shades work so well together I can't see how these could be anything other than gorgeous. What do you think?

I'll be popping back from time to time with the odd blog post whenever I can sneak in without dad noticing, at the moment I'm just counting the days until the kids are back at school and my chaotic life can get back into a nice semblance of order again!

New organic yarns

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2009-08-24T15:53:37+00:00

Here are some of our newest yarns, organic merino in lace and aran weights.

The aran weight is really soft and springy, with almost 200 yards per 100g there is enough for a hat out of one skein and a good sized scarf out of two skeins. The colours are bold and vibrant in this yarn.

The laceweight is almost as soft as cashmere, enough for a small shawl out of one skein of approx 725 yards. We picked nice soft muted shades for the laceweight so that whatever shawl pattern you choose won't be overwhelmed by the colour.

What are your favourites? Kerrie likes the blue / purple / red in the aran weight and the caramel / gold colour in the laceweight. We've had some great feedback from customers who have bought these yarns already, there are not many left of each colour.....

August already

Richard — 2009-08-05T10:15:54+00:00

Where has the year gone already we are in August, and yet again in the UK we are still awaiting summer to arrive? Still August is a good month as both Brooke and Cameron have there birthdays in the next couple of weeks, although I cannot believe they will be 9 and 5 years old, they are growing up to quick.
On the Hipknits side I am currently dyeing some of the new Organic Merino ready to go on the site ,the laceweight is 736yards to 50g almost the same as our normal cashmere ,and is so soft and some Aran weight that is 196 yards to 100 gram , Cashmere 2ply 354 yards to 50 g and Cashmere 270yds to 100g Also have started to think about Alexandra Palace and what to take also must start some dyeing for it, I have to admit I still find Ally Pally very exciting and get a real buzz the nearer it gets ,not only for all the lovely people that come to the show ,both other stand holders and the shoppers but also for the place its self ,its very grand ,has a long history and the views of London from outside are spectacular, just a pity its not easier to get to.
The girls from Kal Media will be there also and after them wallpapering the stand, and adding a fireplace last year I hate to think what they are planning for this year, but time will tell.
Well time to get dyeing again just remembered I have to finish off a custom order

8 months later................

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2009-07-19T15:12:27+00:00

A first attempt at doing the blog, (hopefully not my last), will try to get you up to date first with what’s happening,
Kerrie is still working hard along with Lou and the rest of the Kal Media team producing Yarnforward , SewHip and Inside Crochet magazines which seem to be going from strength to strength, and I hear there maybe plans for more to follow.
I have taken over the day to day running of Hipknits , dyeing ,posting, doing the updates and now attemping the blog, we have some Organic new yarns just arrived which I will let you know more about soon .

The Family update, time goes so fast and the kids seem to grow even faster,
Brooke concentrating on doing what every young lady has to get right, painting her toenails

Cameron having just bounced himself out of breath on the bouncy castle

Trinity enjoying the sun and what every girl enjoys a bowl of Maltesers (chocolate)

And
“Sandwich “

Yes no 4 is on the way due 7th December the nickname came from when Kerrie showed the kids the picture, Cameron tried to explain to Trinity that mummy had eaten to much food and it had turned into a baby, they were then ask what they thought it would be Brooke thought it is was a boy, Cameron went for a girl and Trinity thought it looked like a Sandwich.
Somebody told me this was easy,no way ,have spent so much time adding the photos to the the blog am going to have a lay down and de-stress ,perhaps the next one will be easier,OH NO have just committed to another one

Broken shop

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-12-01T16:20:08+00:00

I broke the HipKnits shop.

We're fixing it this week.

We have tonnes of goodies ready to go on the shop as soon as I fix it, I think that it should be up and running properly tomorrow.

Hello, and goodbye

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-11-12T16:05:41+00:00

This poor blog has been sadly neglected, like so many other things, recently.

After nearly 6 years of blogging I've finally decided that I just can't do it any more. Too many other demands on my time, too many days of feeling guilty because I can't post here. Maybe that will change, maybe not. I'm going to leave the archives up for a while but no guarantees how long they'll stay here for.

We're making some changes to HIpKnits so that the blog will be part of the shop over there, keep it all nice and tidy and together. Dad is planning an update for Friday this week and then every Friday after that, give you something to look at over the weekends!

I'll still be uploading pics to flickr, on Ravelry every now and again, posting on the YF and SH blogs as time allows and coming along to all the shows. So its not like I'm disappearing completely is it?

All HipKnits queries should go to infoAThipknits.co.uk all Kerrie queries to kerrieATkalmedia.co.uk but be warned, the kerrie email address fills up pretty darned quickly these days so bear with me. There is mucho going on behind the scenes that keeps me from emails these days.

More sewing

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-10-28T05:31:16+00:00

I seem to have been sewing lots and lots recently, as well as knitting tonnes. Most things seem to be for the magazines but this one I think I can share with you. its a review pattern that I did for Sew Hip 2 so just to be fair I think i should not tall you what pattern it is or anything about the review. Only that I'm super super proud of it and how the gorgeous Trinity looks in it. She wore it to nursery the other day and I was slightly surprised that it had lasted the day without falling apart. I'm going to make her lots and lots more of them to wear all winter I think!

I love her cheesy face in this picture, if you can ignore the hula hoops then I think its pretty much a perfect picture of the funny little girl. I got to visit a very tiny little newborn this week (well, he is actually quite large for a newborn but you get the idea) and oh my goodness it made Trinity look like she should be old enough to drive. I'm feeling very broody about little babies at the moment, I think I need to borrow one for a while to remind myself how little they sleep and how much they cry.

New Editor announced

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-10-27T14:57:07+00:00

See?

Quilty fun

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-10-27T07:57:46+00:00

It was my gran's birthday at the weekend and I made her a quilt. Inspired by Manda's charm pack quilt in the current Sew Hip, I used a totally different colourway and its a bit lumpy and bumpy in places, but I think she liked it. I used the new Amy Butler fabric that I bought when I was in New York together with some charm squares that have been hanging around in my stash for a while. I seemed to have hundreds of the charm squares, I made a mini quilt with them, then this one and I still have a whole pile of them left. What to do with them?

The kids have been quite attached to the quilt as I've been making it and I'm wondering whether to make more for them. I think that there's a limit as to how many quilts you can have in one house though and I'm sure that Wayne would say we're close to nearing that limit. Maybe I'll make them for other people for Christmas this year and then wait to make more for us. Or maybe not, its a little addictive.

Oh what a week

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-10-26T21:21:27+00:00

I thought I was getting to grips with everything last week but something turned around and bit me in the bum. I'm not going to go into all the details here (you'd never come back if I did!!) but the finale at the end of the week involved 2 disasters - firstly my lovely car breaking down on the M25 on the way back from an 18 hour day working in Bradford with Lou and the team. I had to be rescued home on the back of a truck at a cost of far too much money, but what could I do? My Green Flag cover is part of my car insurance and I'd never looked at the details closely enough to see that I only had a small radius of recovery, so I had to pay per mile to get home. What choice did I have though?

The second disaster was discovering on Friday that someone had kindly cloned my debit card and spent almost £10,000 of my money that I don't have in Amsterdam over 2 days. So until the fraud report and investigation have gone through I have no money and a whole pile of legitimate payments (mortgage etc) that have been returned as unpaid. Don't get me started on this one though...

Tomorrow I'm going to post a happy post, with lovely pictures and a press release announcing our new YF editor. See, ignore the bad and concentrate on the good. I feel like that's all I can do at the moment!

A wee while

Richard (kerries Dad) — 2008-10-22T17:04:38+00:00

Its been a wee while hasn't it?

Ally Pally was great, we met so many lovely people that I can't begin to tell you all about it. Over 2 weeks now since we started its already becoming a dim and distant memory. It is always a great show, this year was a lot quieter sales wise than previous years have been, but i guess that's the economic climate at the moment isn't it? It is still the best show of the season, although we have Dublin next week and Harrogate at the end of November to look forward to as well so they will be good I'm sure. We're looking forward to meeting more and more of our customers at those 2 shows, Lou is doing one of them and I'm doing the other.

As well as the excitement of seeing YF on the shelves in Tescos et al I picked up a copy of Essex life last week which has an interview that I gave them on running a small business out of managed offices. They managed not to make me sound too silly and 2/3 of a page on KAL Media in a nice glossy county magazine can only be a good thing.

On the subject of magazines, does anyone know what happened to Adorn?

I'm still not properly around until next week sometime, I'm hardly home at the moment and when I am home I'm hanging out with Wayne and the kids so the blog has been badly neglected. Next week is the week when huge amounts of work are lifted from my shoulders as our new Yf editor starts on Monday and surely it has to get easier from then on, right? I'll share some pics of all the bits and bobs I've been working on recently soon as well, my camera is getting good and full of yummy things.

Oh and I need to set dad up with a HipKnits update, that will be Monday I think. HipKnits is now totally his really, he did all the work for Ally Pally and I'm happy to be photo taker / site updater from now on. Its odd handing things over sometimes, but always for the best.