This is the second project off my new wheel, (sorry Lesley no photos of my baby bean yet but it looks like this one). The weather has been so bad I feel lucky to get photo's at all!

Ok so here we have 340metres of aran weight merino, about 11 wraps per inch.

I've also lowered all the prices in my etsy shop to reflect the strength of the $, and added some more merino last night, I will hopefully upload some Bluefaced Leicester later in the week if the weather improves enough for photographs.

Beansprout!

This is the first skein off my new wheel, Jellybean...hence I gave it the name...Beansprout, I've also finished spinning the other braid, I have about 265 metres altogether.

I realised this week that I had probably dyed too much for the Knit Safari tomorrow, but that means I can take it easy for a bit and concentrate on spinning, knitting and filling a second order of Lavender bags, I also need to make some more sticks of rock too.

Pest!

Still I did manage a small update in the shop!

Arrivals and Departures!

During September and October I had been thinking about replacing my Ashford Joy with a double treadle version, and while I was humming and ahhing over the expense of a new wheel somebody on Ravelry posted that they were going to be selling their Majacraft Little Gem, and that it would be available for a pick up in London late October. I slept on it, thought about it, and got in touch with the seller, we chatted through Ravelry and the decision was made.

So early last Saturday morning I delivered my Ashford Joy to it's new home. My SP10 buddy Jon jumped in first when I mentioned I was going to be selling Joy, as he has well and truly caught the spinning bug! Then Jon accompanied me to Clapham to pick up Jellybean my new portable wheel.

This is one of the last projects completed with the help of Joy, and plied on PukaPuka. Watercolour Dreams was a superwash fibre, I started spinning it back in August, and decided to ply it with a silk thread to make the 100g of fibre go a little further!

I have already spun my first skein of yarn on Jellybean, early this week, so weather permitting, I should hopefully get some shots of that up soon too!

Party Girl!

Sorry to keep you in suspense, Rosie got it straight away, it is indeed a tea cosy! It's called Party Girl, and was designed by Loani Prior from the forthcoming book Wild Tea Cosies, which should be available in December! I've been asked to knit a couple of tea cosies in readiness for the book launch. Here she is in pride of place, sorry I can't take any credit for any of these beautiful cakes either!

A Mysterious Object!

Bigsock has been at Mew Mew's Yarn shop in Louisville, Colorado since Labor Day, September 1st, I just had to show you Mew Mew napping on the job, one of my favourite photos of the sock on it's journey so far! I've just had word that it has reached it's new destination....Alaska!!






This week I have been finishing off my Lavender Bags.

And knitting a mysterious object!

Hmmmmmm.......what could it be?

Special thanks to Rosie, she sent me a pompom tool in the first UK Ravelry Swap, and it came in handy while I beavered away on 27 pompoms for this project!

Can you tell what it is yet? I shall reveal all.......soon!

I'm also the lucky recipient of two 'I Love Your Blog' awards! First Victor and also Peri gave me the award on the last post, and if they hadn't been the two that nominated me in the first place, well they'd be up there at the top of the list as I love your blogs too! I had also recieved a reward ealier in September from Angie, I always enjoy reading what you've been upto too Angie, and look on in wonderment as you fit everything in!!

Its really hard to choose blogs to award because I love all the blogs that I visit on a regular basis, but I have picked a few out:

The first one I am giving to Caroline. I've alway found a visit to Caroline's blog brings a little peace and serenity, or just stops you in your tracks and makes you think or laugh!

The second one I am giving to Elsie Dinsmore, the 'Punk Pensioner!' I only found this blog this week, but how could you not love it!

Now according to the rules I think I'm supposed to nominate at least 4 bloggers for the award, but since I think everyone should get one I'm just going to stop there. If I'm a visitor at your blog, you can be sure of one thing, I do love your blog, and consider yourself a recipient of this award!

The Sweet Smell of

...... Sussex Lavender!

This week I've mostly been working away on some lavender bags for Aardvark!

There have also been some new colours added to the shop:

And I'm also busy dyeing a few braids for this fabulous FREE local event:

In other lives Kim transformed this yarn (which she purchased through etsy)

into this scrumtious chevron scarf:



and matching hamdwarmers:



It's always a thrill to see my handspun yarn complete it's journey, and also heartwarming to know it's so well loved and will be warming the neck and hands of a dear friend!

Competition Results and Sp12 Comes to an End!

Ok let's get straight down to business.....I took all the comments from the last post (yes you too Nicole because winning a competition doesn't excempt you from entering another) and put them into the List Randomizer.....in the order in which they were left....

And I pressed the Randomize button and tahdah.....

There they are in the order of randomisation, and the winner is Kim! Well it is fitting that Kim was my first ever swap partner, in a swap organised by Miss Knightingale, she's also recently celebrated a birthday, which almost co-incides with my blogiversary, which I'm pretty sure makes us fraternal twins, ;-) I'll be talking to you pretty soon Kim about which colour STR you would like me to have sent from Blue Moon Fiber Arts! Thanks to everyone for the comments, there were some great suggestions for colourways for me!

This week also brought the arrival of my final Secret Pal 12 Package, here it is before unwrapping, we knew my pal was in Finland, but everything else this far has been kept a Secret.

Unlike my downstream, because I stupidly managed to reveal myself before the second package arrived with him, but luckily he took it in good humour!

First up is a pair of gorgeous handknitted socks that were tucked away in this great little project bag, I've never recieved handknit socks as a gift before, and even better they are a perfect fit!

Edited to add, this sock pattern is called Autumn Lace Socks from the six sox knitalong (ravelry pattern link)
Here we have lots of sweet treats, some chocolate covered bilberries and lingenberries, some tea, ravelry pins, and some special chocolates, very yummy!

A ball of Noro Sock, in gorgeous greens, perfect!

More Finn sheep!


And some Bluefaced Leicester Fibre! This round of SP has been most enjoyable and my dear spoiler has finally revealed herself to be Hanna. Thankyou so much Hannah for being a such a great Secret Pal!


Had to show you that even Willow loves the package, Hannah!

Yay, I've been spinning again! I do love the subtle colour variations in a two ply yarn, lots of purples, violets, lime and green through these two skeins!

This is Superwash BFL, one of my favourite fibres to spin, it's just so sproingy!

So the blogiversary is Thursday, hard to believe it's been 2 years! I've decided to have a little contest, I was looking at colourways over on the Blue Moon Fiber Arts website, there are so many lovely colours to choose from I've been finding it hard to pick one, so to win a skein of STR for yourself all you need to do is pick one out for me and leave a comment on this post telling me why you've picked that colour.

I'm going to leave the contest open till Thursday 25th September, I will either pick my favourite comment or I'll put all the entries in a random number generator, it really depends how many entries I get!

Obsession is Normal!

Edited to add this photo of me and the braids hanging too!

Here's Jon, sitting behind our stall just before the doors opened and everyone arrived! For most of the day the stall was surrounded by people fondling fibre and yarn and Jon was rushed off his feet all day as people went wild for his 'sushi sock rolls' a machine knitted handpainted roll which is then handknitted as you unravel, and his bamboo mix too!

At 2pm sharp I left Jon to it, as I hightailed it over the road for the Harlot addressing the masses. It was pouring with rain as we all queued outside Lindley hall, but thanks to my new best friend, whoever you are, who didn't mind sharing her umbrella with me while we waited to get in, I didn't get too wet as I was only wearing a t.shirt!

As I was on my own....I managed to nab a stray seat 4 rows from the front, and who should be there directly infront of me but my friend from City & Guilds Knitting, Heather, and just infront of her Celtic Memory Jo too!

After the talk (it was hilarious and so true, of course) I went for a wander around the other stalls, and settled back with Jon for a bit, but the above photo is just to show you, that Stephanie was seated right behind within almost touching distance, for the rest of the afternoon doing the book signing.

Eventually towards the end of the day, as the queue started to dwindle Luke and I took our places.

Here is Stephanie writing Obsession is normal in my copy of Things I Learned From Knitting! hence the title of this post.

I had a wonderful, wonderful and busy day, not only did lots of nice people come and buy my braids, I got to meet lovely UK Swap Pal, Rosie, blog friends Cassandra, and Jen (again), I met Natalie from the Yarn Yard, and Probably Jane, and even a lurker who reads here, lovely to know I have lurkers! Hi Caroline, and a special hello to Larissa who we queued with for the book signing, and who took the photos for me, and who was lucky on the draw and won a spindle and a whole pile of gorgeous fibre and didn't spin, it was fate, she had to learn and a quick spinning lesson was the order of the day! and hello to anyone else I met in the excitement of the day who wanders in here who I may have forgotten to mention.

So all the excitement doesn't really stop here: I need to get dyeing and get some more fibre up in the etsy store, my 200th post is coming up aswell as my blogiversary, and I've also had a brilliant idea to start Bigsock from the toe up to travel around Europe and the UK, so that when the top of the sock comes back from the US we just need to unite the two parts by grafting!

On My Way!

By the time you see this I will probably have left for London, I have 7.4 kilos of dyed fibre, that's about 15lbs, and equates to 74 braids!
It would be nice to show you the vast pile of fibre but it's all labelled packed and ready to go!
See you on the other side!

Not More Fibre?

Yes, indeedy, sorry to be such a blog bore, but all I seem to have to show you at the moment is another instalment in the great fibre mountain that I am in the process of dyeing, infact I've dyed another 1200g in the last 2 days, and will be dyeing at least another 1200g by Weds, but then that's it, as it will all need labelling ready for Saturday!

This is actually last weeks fibre, but we had a short break down to Dorset, so it had all been braided but not photographed. I may get around to showing you some snaps soon, although we've also been entertaining a houseguest from across the pond! I'm hoping we're both going to get to meet the Yarn Harlot on Saturday!

There is a sock on the needles, I'm working on a toe-up Baby Backward Ribs, (ravelry link) in S.R Kertzers, On Your Toes, a gift from Jill, which was all wound and ready to go, perfect for a holiday project!

Fibre Fibre Everywhere...

But not a drop to spin?!!

Ok I may just have to keep one of these but can you guess which one? Maybe the clue is in the name!!

Edited to add: If you click on the photo it will take you to flickr, I have been naming all my fibres after song titles.

This Weeks Colours

This weeks colours! Dyeing is beginning to feel like an Olympic Event in this house! I have dyed another 1200g this week. I am preparing stock for I-Knit Day on the 6th September, where I will be helping my lovely SP from SP10 Jon Dunn from Easy Knits.

Bits of Blah!

Early last week, I recieved a sweet little message in a bottle from my secret pal, isn't it cool!

Then later in the week I had a surprise package, inside were these lovely spinning tools, a wraps per inch gauge (one I can tie to my wheel so I won't lose it), a diz and a plying tool! What a great SP this is turning out to be, thankyou very much pal, hope the weather is being good to you so you can keep on with those knitting picnics!

Last Saturday the 1066 Spinners had been asked to demonstrate at a local fair. The weather forecast had been for scattered showers, but there was a good patch of blue sky when I got up so I set off, and we arrived and set up our stand, unfortunately the blue sky was hiding another outdoor peril, high winds, just after we had set up our table blew over, luckily there were heavier trestles around so we managed to secure one of them! After a couple of hours spinning and being buffeted by high winds I was chilled to the bone, but luckily had my wooly hat in the pocket of my waterproof jacket, have to keep reminding myself that it is August!


We were rained off the field by 1pm, but I had almost spun most of this pretty merino!

I came home divided the last of the fibre, spun a thin single to ply with the thick and thin, and this is what I ended up with! It weighs almost 4 oz (112g) , it's a bulky, about 6wpi, and 70m!

Summer Snippets!

I have been at the dyepots again this week, I now have a whole bump of merino to play with and I'd forgotten just how much I love merino!

Mosaic Matters!

I found this over on Angie's and knew I just had to make time to put this together, unfortunately my first attempt this morning timed out while I was visiting the dentist, so I had to do it all over again.






This is how it's done:

1. What is your first name? Joanna
2. What is your favorite food? Fillet steak
3. What high school did you go to? Holbrook
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Christian Bale
6. Favorite drink? Tea
7. Dream vacation? Actually I made a mistake with this one and have done my favourite vacation which is Iceland, my dream vacation would be Mexico (oops)
8. Favorite dessert? Angel Delight
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Here
10. What do you love most in life? Colours
11. One Word to describe you. Fluff Magnet (I know it's 2 words but it's so me!)
12. Your flickr name. Limegreenjelly.

Here’s how you do it:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

Go on - you know you want to!

I'm knitting more booties, as they are quite small, and easy, and quick to knit, ready for some craft fairs that are coming up at the end of August and in September.

I've ordered the yarn for my first sweater design and just have a couple of details to tie up before I cast it on!

Nothing has really moved me into going to the cinema since 2005, the last film I saw then was War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise), until now. I've lost count of the time's I have seen Batman Begins as Neo being a typical boy loves superheroes! But it did count up in the heights of my favourite films, up until now that is, Saturday night we booked seats for The Dark Night, and I was on the edge of my seat all night, yes it's DARK, and menacing, and certainly should have a rating of 15, instead of the recommended 12A (going to be a while till Neo sees this one!), but oh what a magical movie, can't wait for the DVD! So I can watch it again and a again in the comfort of my own home!