Wonderwool Wales

Where shall I start?

I had the BEST day yesterday at Wonderwool.

I was so giddy with excitement I forgot to take photos of the stalls!

There were some rare breed sheep.

A Manx Loaghtan with their strange double horns.

A Leicester Longwool - I've not come across these before.

There was a huge array of fibre, fleece, dyeing equipment, spindles, notions and loads and loads of hand dyed yarn.

Would you like to see what I got? of course you would.

Here we go.

Some Lego stitch markers from The Bothered Owl.

I don't really need any more stitch markers but I knew that DS would love these, and he did!

Three skeins of 100 per cent wool to make a felted bag. I really like the shades of grey.

Two skeins of Colinette Point 5, the colours were so lovely I couldn't resist. I think this will be a chunky scarf in a plain stitch just to show off the colours.

Two skeins of ready to dye sock yarn.

This is an Alpaca, Merino, Nylon mix. I've been promising myself some Alpaca socks for quite some time, soft and warm, my tootsies are wiggling already at the thought of it.

Some merino laceweight to dye as well.

Also in my bag, two new dye colours, a set of 2.5mm dpns Knit Pros and a little cotton bag. As Romain and me tootled around, you could hear from us "Look at that" "What a good idea" "Have a squish of this" and "Ooooo" ~ we had a fabby time.

Romain got a new drop spindle and some fibre and we got a nice man to give us a demo and some pointers about where we were going wrong. Romain says she won't be beaten by a spindle, but I'm leaning more towards felting the fibre that I've got. We shall see!

I met Vikki of Wild Fire Fibres who is a Phoenix Forum member (so I feel like I know her!) and also Little Red Dragon ~ who I really do know ~ for a lunch time chat.

Romain and me agreed we enjoyed it more the Ally Pally in October ~ it was much less commercial and more about British Wool, not too big, not too small and both came back with lots of ideas. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Well, school finished on Thursday for everyone, as the village had no electricity on Friday. When I got in, I set up my steamer chair, in my favourite place with a cup of tea. Bliss.

You'll notice a sock OTN. I decided to dye a skein just for me.

I've finished one sock and the other is about half way through.

It is being helped greatly by those new Knit Pros I got so I think we'll be having a ta-dah soon.

Well I must go and get in the garden ~ to enjoy the glorious sunshine (sorry Teresa! she just had the first sunny day since Jan 25th) and do some tidying as well.

Have a good time whatever you do..............Clicky Needles.

We have a winner!!!!!!

Hello.

The draw has taken place!!!

I put everyone's name into the 'hat' this afternoon ~ well more of a plastic pot really....

...and then I got Master CK to pick a name ~ he had his eyes shut!

Drum roll..........he pulled out JennyA.

Well done Jenny, if you send me your address I'll put your skein of Raspberry Ripple in the post.

Thanks to everyone who left comments or became followers ~ I've found some new blogs to look at which is always great.

You may have seen some references to a 'pink bag' in last week's comments.

Here it is.

Found by a fellow knitter from the Butterfly Group (and I'm blaming her for buying it) in Tesco. It was being sold in the Mother's Day section, actually a gardening bag, loads of pockets for putting in bits and pieces, but ~ obviously ~ gardening is not what she and I intend for it. A cracking good project bag.

Also included these lovely gloves.

On the gardening front the rhubarb is going a bit mad, so we had a crumble today.

Flowers looking pretty at the moment, Snakes Head Fritillary.....

a cowslip/primula cross....

a pretty primula

and a pulmonaria

My squares for March arrived for the friendship blanket.

Mine are just blocking and will be sent this week.

We're on the 'home run' at school and then a big sigh of relief and holidays. I'm going to Wonderwool on Saturday ~ what a lovely start that will be.

Have fun, whatever you get up to this week.

Byeeeeeeeee............................. Clicky Needles.

Giveaway!

Hello!

I've been dyeing more yarn and it's gone in the shop.

Here's a mosaic.

In celebration of the shop launch, I'm having a giveaway.

This is one of my favourite from this batch ~ Raspberry Ripple.

To have a chance of winning this, leave me a comment, if you'd like to be a follower that would be great too! The winner will be the first drawn out of the hat on the 3rd April.

Today I've been taking advantage of the spring sunshine and had a potter and weed in the garden. I love this time of year ~ finding shoots of things that had been forgotten.

One of our cherry trees has come into flower ~ later than some in the valleys around here ~ being 'up on the top' really does put us back a few weeks.

Only a short post today ~ I need to go and soak in the bath to get rid of my aches and pains.

Have a lovely week and don't forget to enter the giveaway!

Bye for now.....................Clicky Needles.

P.S. I've now amended the date, shows how tired I was from the gardening last night! In case anybody is wondering who the cryptic message was from it was my Mum!!!!!

We Have Lift Off!!!!!

Hi There.

I am VERY pleased to announce that ClickyNeedles.com is up and running.

Pop over and have a look ~ I hope you like it.

Now I know I said in my last post that I would FINISH my Autumn Cardi BEFORE I started any thing else but I've caved in and cast on that Cotton Bolero.

I just couldn't resist ~ maybe it's all the lovely sunshine we've been having over the weekend.

The garden is coming into bloom.

Primroses.....

........double primulas (these are a family plant, my Mum and Dad have this one too)....

miniature daffodils....

hellebores (I've got loads of them)......

and in the 'pond'...

...tadpoles.

It isn't really a pond, just an old tin bath in a hole! the birds use it as a bath and we have lots of frogs in it too.

All of this sunshine and springness has had Mr CK and me washing the cars. You could be forgiven for thinking the colour of the family car is 'mud' rather than black but I can now confirm that after much washing and polishing it is now sparkling.

Let's hope the sunshine keeps up this week ~ although it is showing up my dirty windows ~ never mind I'm sure I can find something much more interesting to do.........

Have a great week............Clicky Needles.

A Basket of Yarny Goodness.

Hello all!

Here we are, a preview for you!

All my yarn ready to go onto the website. I'm having some problems with the 'add postage' element, which is really frustrating for me, but hopefully I'll get it sorted soon.

I'm feeling a bit frazzled this week with work and home but I have managed a bit of the Autumn Cardi knit. Yes, I have decided that it is a cardi, I've done the fronts and back and still have 5 balls left so the sleeves are on the go. I hope to get it finished soon because I got some cotton for the pattern I showed the other day. I couldn't decide which was the best out of this 100% cotton in lime green .......

.......or this blue so I got them both.

The Sirdar Simply Recycled is made from 51% waste from T-shirt production and 49% acrylic. It feels lurvely and soft. A big incentive there to get the Autumn Cardi finished then. I've been REALLY good lately, not letting myself cast on for new things before finishing the current On The Needles Project.

Today has been a bit mad, our friends B and S dropped by on their way back to London from Wales, well they were passing, and a quick cup of tea turned into lunch. It was so lovely to see them and have our usual giggle.

Ah well, must sign off now.

As always have a super week............Clicky Needles.

Blimey!

Well everyone, just a very quick interim post.

JosieKitten has had a count and 'fessed up.

She has 100 pairs of socks to make.

Oh gosh.

Do you feel better Louise?

I wonder if M can come near?

Sunday again!

Hello all.

Hope you've had a good week and got some of the sunshine that's been around.

Time for me seems to have whipped by ~ where does it all go?

Mr Clicky Needles picked up some more undyed yarn for me and this weekend has been spent making it look pretty. It's drying at the moment.

DS has been getting creative as part of a science project. He's made this volcano out of Mod-Roc which is a bit like the Plaster of Paris bandages used for broken bones. I gave him a hand painting it this evening.

I thought I should show you the extension at my school as I keep going on about it. Before half term it looked like this.......

..............and now this. The excitement is mounting!

Back to knitting!

I'm about half way through this waistcoat/cardi, in Stylecraft Signature Chunky, a bargain from (where else!) Kemps. I say waistcoat/cardi because I can't remember what I decided to make when I bought the yarn. I think I should have enough for a cardi ~ we shall see. Notice it says easy knit, which is about all I can manage at the moment ~ it's on 6mm needles so growing quickly.

I received February's squares in the Phoenix Friendship Blanket swap.

And so another week starts.

Oh! I nearly forgot. Did anybody notice JosieKitten's comment about sock yarn? She said she wouldn't tell us how much sock yarn was in her stash after I thought Louise's enough for 82 pairs was, well, a lot. Some come on JK ~ TELL US how many socks can you make? We all want to know.

Well I hope you have a good week.

Byeeeee.....Clicky Needles.