I have had quite a chaotic few weeks. I have made the decision to re-organise my life and to be honest with you, I think everything is finally falling into place. I have decided to take the plunge and start up my own fibre-based business and my time has been spent trying to set up and find my suppliers. In addition to that, I'm working on a new design for my website so I can give Chopped Tomatoes a little facelift for the new year, and incorporating a shop so non-Etsy members can have access to all the goodies I'm planning to stock!
I'm at a bit of a lace-loving period of my life and I have been searching high and low for the most luxurious lace yarns to stock in the shop. While it isn't very difficult to find lace yarn suppliers, it's proving quite hard to source a nice selection of blends that don't contain silk. Silk makes me itch like there's no tomorrow, and seeing that I will be handling the yarns quite a lot, I don't fancy being the 'Scratchy Yarn Lady'.
I've been listening to The Mavericks all week; laid back and friggin' awesome, just like my mood lately!
The past few days have been quite busy, I have been making some journals to restock the shop, hence the slightly cluttered workspace. I'm working on some different styles of covers, incorporating some photographs and artwork into the designs, I'm really loving the outcome so far and hopefully it will translate into customers loving them as well!
I'm in a blasé mood today; my foot still hurts and I'm waiting for some inspiration to finish off some patterns I've been working on. I have, however, managed to finally take photographs of 2 shawls that I was working on, finished spinning up a hand-dyed alpaca/bfl top, and updated the shop with some new journals.
I began working on this shawl a few weeks after I won the yarn at the Knitwitches Party, and despite it's apparent complexity, I found the pattern up to the edging extremely easy and simple to follow. I whizzed through the body of the shawl in a week, but when I got to the edging chart... I put it down for a while. The pattern repeats for the edging weren't as predictable as they were for the rest of the shawl, and I found that I couldn't concentrate on it for more than a few rows at a time; it took me another week to get the edging done. Although beautiful, the edging charts gave me a hard time! I love this pattern, and it's soul-sucking edging, and will definitely make another one!
The past few weeks have been a bit mad on both the life and 'craft' ends, and with all the craziness I haven't had the inspiration to blog about anything. I was happy to see that my handbound journals have made a good impression on the people at The Knitter...
The great review really lifted my spirits and I'm hoping that this little mention would boost my Etsy sales a little! I'm in the market for a new camera (this one's just about ready to die), so it would really help!
My weekend was quite chilled out, I went to my friend Alison's house and picked up my HOT PINK niddy noddy...
Small but oh-so-handy! It makes 1 yard skeins which is perfect for me since I will be using it to hold 'frogged' yarn and my handspun samples.