Happy Halloween!!

Phil did these two

This is Joels

This fantastic spider was done by Dan the man!

And this one is mine....too busy cooking Pumpkin soup to do owt fancy ;)

ANOTHER hat???

This is Tamya, a fab beret pattern by my pal Woollywormhead...

I knit this in Rooster Almerino Aran as opposed to Cascade 220...

Not the usual kind of hat I go for, but I am getting used to it!!!

Birstall United

This yarn has been specially commissioned by my husband :) He needs a new hat for football training on a Saturday morning, and so I have spun about 100g of 3ply merino in the colours of the football club. One ply is solid black, another solid red, and the third has been space spun in red and black, so it will stripe subtly.

He wants a Tubey, but after seeing mine, and its little "ears" I may have to customise it a little...sighs....

Pumpkin!!!

The kids were given a packet of Pumpkin seeds, along with the sunflower seeds, at Christmas...I planted all 12 of them out, but only one germinated, yeilding this lovely specimen :D
Looking forward to eating it.....hehehe

Monkey Pal!!!

Look what arrived in the post this morning!!! Isn't he fab?
My lovely friend, who I sent a parcel to in the UKSpinner Swap on Ravelry, made him herself, and then sent him to me.....
This is what doing swaps is all about, making friends, and making people smile :)
Well, you certainly did that, Helen...thankyou sweetness!

Okay, so I reknit Tubey.........

Going out with a bang ;)

This is my last two customs for a while.......they didn't half turn out well though ;)

Shop update for Aran :)

Listing this in my shop tonight :)

Hypnotic wheels of loveliness :)

These lovely offerings are going into my shop tonight....
The bottom two are Wensleydale combed top, and they are beeeeautiful. I met a lovely lady from The Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Shop at Ally Pally, and saw some hand dyed top she had for sale. I just fell in complete love with how Wensleydale looks once it gets wet again, as it just goes all curly, like the natural state of the fleece......

Rainbow Brite!

I have done this colourway a few times on various combed tops, so I thought I would see how it worked on yarn......

I love it!!

A very pretty yarn :)

Look what the very talented Kiwigirl made from some of my BFL roving!!!

I love it, it's so very pretty :)

Massive Sunflower!!!

The biggest one is 11ft 9 inches tall.......
OOOOOOGE!!!
***grins***

And the Winners are.......

Seeing as how so many people came over and left a comment...I decided to get both my boys to choose a winner. So, Joel chose BelayBunny, who has won the custom dyed fibre.......and Daniel chose Noodles who has won some of my handspun.....
Thankyou to everyone who came and visited me, there was over 50 entries to the comp in the end!!!!

My Ally Pally Adventure :)

As you have already read, I was a little nervous about the whole travelling to and across London to Ally Pally...but it went fine!!! I left Leicester at 8.56 am, and was at the venue by 11am, which I thought was pretty good going!
I was there for 2 days, working on the Laughing Hens stall, and although you might think talking about knitting and selling yarn to people might not be "work" to the likes of me, it was the hardest 2 days work I have ever done.....!!!!
There wasn't really any let up until the show closed each day, and then there was work to be done afterwards too, reorganising the yarns, moving things that wern't catching the eyes of customers...etc etc. The stall was really a WIP the 2 days I was there, and probably continued to evolve at the weekend as well.

Having said that though, I had a really good time, met lots of people I knew from Ravelry and various knitting blogs, and spent some time drinking cider and smoking fags with Mr Wool, Jeni and Elly from Fyberspates and Amanda and Phil from NDS

I met the lady who won my handspun "Peru" 3ply yarn in Mr Wool's Mirasol raffle!!! It was one of the ladies from Knitwitches and she loved kintting with it, she made a garter stitch scarf... it was great to get some feedback about it ;)

I didn't buy a thing though, which is good really as there wasn't really anything I needed! I was so busy doing my usual job of enabling others you see, hehehe

A skein of Cascade Lana D'oro in Teal did fall into my bag off the stall though, as WoollyWormhead is doing a mystery Beret knitalong on her Wormheads Hats group on Ravelry....and you all know how much of a Wormhead groupie I am ;)

Right, I've printed out all the names of peeps who left comments, on here and on the UKSpinners group on Rav...just gonna cut 'em all out and put them in a hat....will post the winner a bit later ;)

Poor Joel....**smiles whilst shaking head**

We had parents evening this week, and both of my wonderful sons got a glowing report....albeit Joel's teacher expressing her mild angst at the amount of noise Joel tends to make. He always shouts out the answers to questions and is generally enthusuastic and full of life in the classroom. We had a little word with him about it, saying that he must sometimes give other children a chance to answer questions etc...

He crept into bed with me this morning, as he does almost every morning, for a pre-school cuddle. Only today he held me a little tighter than usual, telling me he felt a bit sad, and that he wanted to stay at home with me today.

I asked him why...

"Because I want to be loud today...the sun is shining and I need to be loud"

And I can't say I blame him!!!

Feeling a little nervous...

I am off down to the smoke on Thursday, to do a two day stint on the Laughing Hens stall at the knitting and Stitching show (or more affectionately known as AllyPally)

Its been a long time since I ventured that far away from home on my own, having to cross London on the tube on my own.....

I am getting all agorophobic in my olde age....

So its nearly my one year anniversary....

.....since I've been spinning......
So, I think a little blogversary competition is in order, don't you????
Leave me a comment (between now and Sunday 12th October) and I'll put your name in a hat (probably Rainbow Warrior hehehe) and one of my sproglets will do the draw on Sunday 12th, 2008, the first anniversary of my ebay purchase of Louie!!!!

The prize will be some of my handspun, for a knitterly winner, or some custom dyed fibre for a spinnerly winner :)

Spread the word, I want lots of people visiting!!!!

Some Woolly content as well....

This is the first pair of pants I've knit for a while, in the "Sophie" colourway.....leg trims are cashmerino...

I think these turned out really well, I think the waistband, frills and pockets all in white make them look ever so pretty and girly :)

I have two more custom pairs of Longies to do, and then I am going to take a 6 month break. I am worn out from knitting woollies....I've been doing it for nearly 3 years now!!! I SO want to knit for myself and my family more. I think a 6 month break is called for....

Okaaaay...so I made another hat :)

I've been wanting to knit this one for a long time, ever since I got to try the test knit of it on at Woolfest 2007.... its from WoollyWormhead's Book Going Straight and it's called Rainbow Warrior......
I've finally got to knit it as part of a Ravelry Forum Knit-a-long......and I am so pleased with it!! I knit it with some gorgeous squooshy handspun I bought from Kari (Up the Mud Creek) on etsy especially for this project....as she designs her yarn especially to do the job of striping wonderfully :) Perfect for this hat!

What's in the bag???

Here is my new baby, a Louet Victoria!!! I've been feeling the need for a travelling wheel for a while now, as I miss being able to spin when we go away, and also when I go to my knitting meetings. As you all know, I bought a Drum Carder a while back, but I really am not feeling the love I should for it, so i decided to sell it on, and use the money to part fund a travelling wheel. This also meant I could buy a new one :)

We were going over in the direction of The Threshing Barn yesterday, so I rang Janet up and made an appointment to see one, and to have a go...just to make sure it was going to be the right wheel for me, as its a lot of money to pay on a whim!!! Well, as you can see by the pictures, it was the right wheel, I took to it straight away, and I can spin thinner on it than I can on my S10 !!! I was also in two minds about it, as I didn't think I'd like the beech version of it, and that was all she had, they do an oak version of it too. But, it wasn't as light as I thought it would be......

I bought another 2 bobbins for Louie, and Janet gave me some lovely fibres as well. You get a whole fleece when you by a wheel from her, as she breeds her own sheep, but as I don't really want to get into fibre processing at the moment, she let me take my pick of the processed tops she had in the shop ***grins***

So all in all I is a very happy bunny....

There's a really interesting and comprehensive review of this wheel on Abbys Yarns Blog

The Co-ordinated Bag Lady ;)

I have this really talented friend, who makes me the most beautiful bags !!! I gave her a design brief a few months ago, as I love denim, especially patchwork denim, and I a little bit of a sucker for skulls too. And this is what she came up with!!! Its made from a pair of patchwork jeans she got from eBay, and lined with fabarOOnie Skull fabric !!!
The cross body bag fits me perfectly, and the shopping bag came this morning...so now I am a totally co-ordinated bag lady :)

Thankyou wonderful sewing laydee :)

Fluffy goodness and a poorly finger!

Had lots of fluffy post this week :) Which has cheered me up no end, as my youngest son mistook my wedding ring finger as a football earlier on in the week and I was rather afraid it was broken :o(
It s alot better now though, I have tons more movement in it...but it still really hurts nontheless...

This is Corriedale, from Spindlefrog on etsy, "Alleluia" its called....its so lovely, i couldn't resist it...

And these two beauties are from LindaLee also on etsy, above is "Rainbow's End" and below is "Midsummer's Dream" Both are Merino/Cashmere.....drools...

I have quite a stash of merino/cashmere now, maybe I should think about spinning it up...hehehe