Bye bye ice!

I’m so glad the ice has finally melted – the world has regained a bit of colour and lost a lot of slippiness!  I love snow, but I hate the thick sheet of ice that it inevitably becomes if it doesn’t melt quickly.  It makes going out so difficult, and it’s been around for over a week.  But for those of you who miss it, here are some photos to remind you what it was like:

New colourway!

Yes, I have a new colourway, Woodland Glade, which will be available online as soon as I can upload it!  I'm waiting on the weather a bit for some more pictures, but here's one:

This particular skein is available at the Smithy Studios (unless it's gone already!) and more are on their way.  In fact there is a whole new basket there so go down and have a look!

New stock!

New stock is coming soon to a website near you (and a shop as well)!  Look out for the re-stock, it should be up in the next few days, and there should also be more yarn at The Smithy Studios.  I've been busy - and here's a sneak preview:

The hospital wool room...

We've had a slight hiatus in life due to Hannah being called in at short notice for her op (which went well).  I'd just dyed some more yarn so I turned one corner of her room into a reskeining space, complete with swift attached to some shelves!  I did get a few funny looks - I was right by the window and it looks out over the main corridor of the hospital so there were plenty of passers-by.  I got quite a bit of wool reskeined over the week she was in so it was well worth doing.  I did some plain too from cones, so I now have plenty of wool just waiting to be dyed!  The break has put my restocking plans back a bit but hopefully I'll be back on track soon.

I also managed to get some bookworms knitted for my book group which were duly distributed at Thursday's meeting.  We call ourselves the League of Bookworms, so a bookworm each made sense.  Unfortunately I forgot to take photos before I gave them away, so I'll just have to make more; besides which, I need one too!

Back to the dyepots!

Yep, I finally managed to get a little dyeing done tonight, for the first time this year!  I was experimenting with a slightly different technique so we'll see how they turn out.  I'm still struggling with this chest infection (now on antibiotics) so I only did a couple of skeins but it was fun!  Mmm, the smell of wet wool...

Darkness and light: taking time to look

I took the younger two to the Whitworth Art Gallery on Wednesday afternoon whilst Hannah had an appointment at the hospital.  I love the Whitworth and especially for going with little ones, they are so family friendly.  The current exhibition is all about light and shadow and when we first went in I was a bit disappointed because it looked like there wasn't as much to see as usual (and I couldn't find the Art Cart), but then we got to looking.  Really looking.  It just shows how much we don't see in a first glance, and how rewarding taking the time to look can be.

The two exhibits that we really liked were one where there was a projection of white 'snow' on a dark background and when you stood in front of the camera you appeared in the snow - it kind of coalesced into an image of you.  The other was brass half-butterflies stuck into the wall and lit from above, so you got a whole butterfly reflected in light above and in dark below, depending where you were standing.  From a distance it looked like someone had left loads of fixings in the wall, but when you got your eye in it was beautiful.  [If you follow the link above, pictures 1 and 3 in the slideshow are of these.]

The children enjoyed running through the areas of light and dark, and watching themselves in the 'snow', and then we found the Art Cart so we were set for the afternoon.  And then Rebekah was sick, and that was the end of that.

Happy New Year everybody!