Well, the Spring show season is upon us. I’m replenishing my stocks and gearing up for the second show (after a fantastic first show at Unravel in Farnham at the end of Feb.). That’ll be Stitch and Craft  this coming week at Olympia, London, from 19 to 22 March. I’ve put a little section on the home page with upcoming shows that I’ll keep updated. 2 more shows to be added there soon (fingers crossed).

The knitting groups I run here in Grayshott are humming as well. Must find out how to publish those on Ravelry, to help people find their way to us…

In the meantime, the microwave is doing overtime (and so am I!) to dye a complete set of samples for next week in the 6 new colours I am adding to the range this Spring. So the Helen Deighan All in one Acid Dyes will now consist of a range of 12 colours rather than 6. I will add the new shades to the shop this coming week (as soon as I have some pictures of my swatches).

If you can, do come and see me at Stitch and Craft in London next week. I’m downstairs right next to the escalators!

Okay, first the bad: this site is looking sad, what with all the blurb running along the top (trying to sort that out today!) and no news, updates or dates posted….
I have kept my head down to finish writing the book that I am co-authoring.
Sincere public apologies to Eve (trusty knitting group member), who did not get my email about stopping the knitting group during the darkest months and turned up to an empty pub…
It turned out I had an incorrect email address on file (which doesn’t come back as undeliverable, so someone, somewhere will be wondering why on earth I keep contacting her about this knitting group….) but contact was restored at Unravel so I hope I haven’t done permanent damage.

And then there’s lots of good:

THE BOOK
We’re nearly finished! The book will be ready at about April/May time. I promise to shout it from the rooftops once i have a date and list it in the shop for sale.

KNITTING GROUPS
We will be resuming the evening knitting group on Monday nights at the Fox and Pelican pub, in the centre of Grayshott. First meeting: 2 March, from 7.30 pm.
I will also start a daytime group, at the new coffee shop behind the Post Office in Grayshott. Dates and times to be confirmed shortly.

FIRST SHOW OF THE YEAR
The first one was this past weekend, Unravel in Farnham. A new, one day event, which went down a complete storm, both with visitors and stand holders. Smiles all around. Due to the stomach bug that completely floored me on Friday (that was a first!), I wasn’t able to build the stand on Friday afternoon, so I made due with a very rudimentary set up that I quickly threw together on Saturday morning with help from my best pal in the world. By 11:30 (!!!), i.e. 90 minutes after the show opened, I knew I was going to sell out…I brought back some DK yarn, a couplle of sets of knitting needles and a handful of pots of dye. THANK YOU to the extremely patient customers waiting to be served AND the ones happily agreeing to only have their goodies sent out to them this week. I promise it’ll be worth your wait.

OTHER SHOWS COMING UP
March: Thurs 19 – Sun 22 Stitch and Craft Show, Olympia 2, London
April: Sat 25 – Sun 26 Wonderwool, Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells, Wales
June: Fri 26 – Sat 27 June. Mitchells Lakeland Livestock Centre, Cockermouth, Cumbria, CA13 0QQ
Aug: Sat 22 – Sun 23, Fibrefest, Coldharhour Mill, Uffculme, Devon (TBC!)
Sept: Sat 12 – Sun 13: iKnit London (TBC!)
Oct: Thurs 8 – Sun 11, Knitting and Stitching Show, Alexandra Palace, London
Nov: Thurs 19 – Sun 22, Knitting and Stitching Show Harrogate
I will change my home page to add a panel with upcoming events to keep these in the limelight and make it easy to find updates.

THE SHOP
More yarns, patterns and kits are on their way and will be added in the next couple of weeks. Yarn tasters: more Sock yarns, Boucle, Alpaca, Aran and Chunky weights AND 6 new dye colours!

PRESS AND PR
I have started talking to the magazines, who have all reacted with enormous enthusiasm to the concept of the book – the idea of combining dyeing the yarn and knitting the garment in one project – so in the course of this Spring, you will start seeing Tall Yarns ‘n Tales in the media. Do look out for it!

REGULAR UPDATES
As I no longer have to focus as much on the book, I will post regular updates both in the shop as well as on the blog, so do keep an eye out and I’ll re-introduce the Live Feed button, so you can subscribe to automatice updates. Tata for now.

We road-tested the concept of dyeing and knitting kits at the big Autumn shows and were blown away by the positive reactions! We’ve received the first pictures of scrumptiously dyed hanks of wool  from enthusiastic first-time dyers and then Christmas came and went in a flurry of wool, dye and needles.

Thank you so much for the big thumbs up from everyone to date. Please keep the feedback coming. We are rounding off the writing part of the book in the next month or so and some of your feedback has already led to changes in the instructions to make sure there is no room for different interpretation and all the roadsigns appear whn you need them when you’re starting your first journey as a yarn dyer.

We are finalising the new, complementary Spring 09 colours in Helen’s collection of dyes. Watch this space…
And yes, I know the website needs atention in the form of updates and mending of some broken links. I will attend to it as soon as possible. In the meantime, do drop me a line if you get stuck, whether it’s during ordering or once you’re playing with the dyes. Thank you for your patience and as always keep knitting…

Thank you to all who gave me such wonderful feedback at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace the last 4 days. The pre-launch of my knitting kits and dyeing starter packs was so well received and you voted with both words and purchases. It well surpassed my expectations, so I was on cloud nine. Not for long, as I discovered that my mini-webshop does not seem to be fully operational and I have no idea why. Please bear with me while I try to sort it out FAST! Pictures of the different dye colours on offer are also on their way. In the meantime, let me have your comments, thoughts, feedback. I’d love to hear from you.

I am THRILLED with this new look! Visiting friends from Holland (web developers – www.lefthandmedia.com) spent hours behind the screen yesterday after I asked them to help me add the necessary software that will allow me to start selling products. Not only did they do that, they agreed that things as they were didn’t look like the business I am launching. This new look was the result. So I have started putting all the info together to be able to add working product pages (with the option to buy on line!). It’ll take some days all together, but it should all be up and running by the end of this week (famous last words…)

And then of course there is the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace NEXT WEEK. Eeeek! I’m living day by day, not thinking too much about everything that still has to happen before then. Has anyone out there ever decided to start preparing a pre-launch only 5 weeks before THE DAY?

I spent 3 days at the Knitting & Stitching Show at the NEC and that was enough…we decided that it would be too good an opportunity to miss not to sell anything before the book’s out. Which would mean missing the entire sales period between now and X-mas. With my kits being he PERFECT present and Helen already having booked a stand at Ally Pally, how could we even contemplate not sticking toes in the water to test the temperature?
As for footfall, the NEC was a lot less busy than usual. Helen was doing alright, but there were lots of fallen faces amongst the stand holders. It just gave us more time to think, brainstorm and plan.

So, since the NEC I’ve been ordering stock, have commissioned the design of my logo and we’ve been able to get a bigger stand at Ally Pally. A corner no less! We’ll be in the Pavillion (where the workshops are and the cafe). I think we’ll be stand number RC F1. This last moment change means Helen’s stand details in the Show catalogue are not correct. She waves that away, but I know how fantastic it is that she’s happy to take it in her stride for the sake of our little venture!

We spent Tuesday all day doing dyeing trials to narrow down our dye collection for the Ally Pally launch. This means that this show doesn’t just see the launch of Tall Yarns ‘n Tales, but also the first ever selection of Helen Deighan Dyes! I am thrilled with this news. Helen is SUCH an experienced dyer and with such an eye for colour….and finally, after years of patience from her loyal following, they’ll be able to take some of her colour-whizz home.

In the meantime I also want to ensure that people have somewhere to go AFTER seeing my wares at Ally Pally, so I’m pushing to have a webshop up and running in time for the show. Of course all this has resulted in me chucking my new health routine by the wayside…not good. I haven’t been to Pilates in 3 weeks and I can’t see me returning before the show either. Okay, enough lamenting. On with some site building!

…there IS lots of action, but it’s not very visible here yet…

I’ve changed computers and I kept telling myself that my next post should be written on my “new” (secondhand) gadget, believing that what was stopping me was having to re-install the blog software on my new computer…only just found out that OF COURSE NOT, it sits on a remote server and all I had to do was type in the correct URL on my new pc and log in….one of those typical stumbles when trying to start up a business without any upfront capital…

Okay, enough with the … already. This was not meant to be a reflective piece, but a quick update. My first Chinese order of bamboo knitting needles is winging its way here as we speak, so I’d better get a move on setting up shop here, as my knitting group on Monday evenings will probably reach saturation point on the needle front long before I run out of needles!

We are remortgaging and my friends keep reassuring me that a knitting shop in our little village would be commercially viable, so in my bravest moments I dream of having the courage to increase the mortgage amount and pump money into my own little retail niche. That’s as far as I go though, despite the number of people who tell me that “I’ll manage to make a success of it”.

Apart from that, I am making good progress on the design front and have started the design of a lacy shawl yesterday evening. I am trying to write down my trials as I go so I’m not left having to write up everything at the end. That posed my with the choice between doing a chart for each section vs. a verbal write up of the different stitches. I went with the chart so as to give at least SOME visual clue of what one is knitting. I hope it works! (nearly went for … again there. Maybe I’m just in a reflective mood and didn’t know it yet!) Tomorrow I’ll pick up my parents from the airport. We’re all looking forward to seeing them again and it means we’re THAT much closer to the KNITTING CONFERENCE in Winchester next week. Check out www.intheloop.soton.ac.uk/ - 3 days of knitting immersion, I can’t believe it. Really looking forward to it! I’ll probably come back with 3 times as much inspiration as I can ever turn into action or design. Yippee!

I’ll hope to post again before I go there. As well as work out how to post my Knit in Public picture. If ever! Until such time: happy knitting and remember, if you do live close to Grayshott, come and join us at the Fox & Pelican on Monday evenings between 7 and 9 for friendly faces, stitches and chat!

I’m either too busy or part of me has entered a state of mind I usually associate with middle age… how do I know? I currently say “Oh-deary-me!” a number of times a day. Every day…
Truth of it is that I really HAVE been rushed off my feet lately. I’ve represented both my better half and myself on most days in the course of the past 2 weeks to help my in-laws to get ready for their house move. The good news: they’ve moved. The bad: they’re both so exhausted from the upheaval that I think it’ll take them months to get properly settled…so I’ve kept going and kept helping after the move as well. Which I really can’t afford. In terms of time stolen from the rest of my life that is. Even my better half commented that, “although I really appreciate all my hard work you do for my parents, I wish you were as motivated  do that kind of work in our own place…” Bit of jealousy there, how funny! Still, the man’s got a point; we’ve had a list of things to do in and on the house as long as my arm for as long as I remember. And he very nearly DID run out of ironed shirts last week.

More importantly though and a bit closer to my heart, I “borrowed” a knitting machine from a friend of a friend MORE than a year ago, with the solid intention to try it out and, if it’s in good working order, buy it. The owner of the machine is an elderly lady. I’ve now had the machine for so long that even I am starting to give up on the mere idea of even finding the time to try it, let alone keep it to work with it. But, what’s more worrying, I now wonder whether I have kept it too long to even contemplate giving it back, but paying for a machine that may not even work seems daft. And what if she dies before I stop procrastinating about it…?
So just before I go mental, talking myself into a complete tailspin, I rejoice in the fact that, if this is the most important of my problems, I’m still a very lucky, spoilt brat. On that note, I count my blessings and distract myself with a happier thought…
My new toy for example; a second hand laptop that I scored on eBay. As I’m rushed off my feet, I still haven’t finished installing all necessary software on it (most notably, the software that drives this blog!), let alone transferred my most important files, folders and emails. Hence the dead silence here on the blog since my WWKip celebration – and, no surprise, I have not figured out how to upload my Kip-pic!

My chronic lack of hours in the day takes its toll though. I even got cranky with the head of the school, who was fretting about the sex-ed video for the year 5′s as he’d had some critical feedback from some of the parents and wanted my input as a Governor. “I’m from Holland, where the teenage pregnancy rates are one fifth (!) of what they are in the UK. I consider my 6 year olds ready for this year 5 material. I’m not the right person to ask. I can’t get my head around these British hang-ups!” Oh-deary-me, indeed. I’ll have to find out his shoe size and knit him a pair of socks as penance at some point.

Oh, talking about (finally!) knitting – I’m working on a design for a Throw (or an Afghan, as I’ve seen them called in the US) to put in the book. Because despite not having enough hours in the day, not spending enough time on the costumes of my little boys for their Class Assembly and wondering whether the dustbunnies in the corners of the room have started rivalling our daughter’s bunnies in size, I somehow manage to find just enough time every day to push on at least one of my book-knitting projects just a little bit. If my better half were to read this, that last sentence would probably be met with an end-of-tether remark on his part about how nice it would be if my motivation to work out would abe as big as my motivation to work on this book…

Coming back to my choice of daily priorities, I may have to try to bluff my better half into believing that the solid coloured sock yarns I’ve had on that knitting shelf in the living room are two tone self patterning yarns…Hmmm, little white lies…a form of creativity? Or desperation? Middle age? Oh-deary-me…

Despite the diabolical weather forecasts earlier in the week, despite the fact that I didn’t publicise the event enough, despite the fact that life completely ran away from (with?) me in the last 3 days leading up to it, we had a WONDERFUL afternoon on Saturday. The sun was JUST warm enough not to scorch anyone, Mo had mobilised some keen-to-knit friends and Eve had spotted us on the WWKip site where I had managed to log the event just in time…phew! Everyone ooh-ed and aah-ed over the gorgeous Fyberspates yarns (thank you Jen!) that I had managed to secure just in time and I convinced some knitters to give bamboo needles a go. We even had some passers-by sit down with us and knit a couple of rows, just for the sheer fun of it. Which is EXACTLY what WWKiP is all about. So it won’t surprise you to know that I’ve already told the local papers that there will be another WWKiP in Grayshott next June…hurray! In the meantime, locals to Grayshott are all invited to come and knit with us every Monday evening between 7 and 9 at the Fox & Pelican. All agea and knitting abilities welcome, no need to join or make any form of commitment, just turn up with a smile and some change for a drink. For those of you further afield, please watch this space…I will be adding my wares for sale soon! And thank you to all who made my day on Saturday….

p.s. As soon as I’ve worked out how to upload it, I will add a picture from Saturday.

I am getting very excited for tomorrow: the FIRST Knit-in-Public day in Grayshott!
Got some gorgeous yarn to sell: check
Got some bamboo knitting needles to sell (in 2 choices of lengths even): check
Got some bamboo DPN’s (also in a choice of 2 lengths): check
Have finished the silk bags for the DPN’s: eh….not JUST yet….
Got tomorrow morning to get things ready: eh…not exactly….!

And before that: a Governors meeting at school this afternoon and a wall painting session at the in-laws tomorrow morning…. (inner voice: “and we’re smiling, we’re smiling, we’re smiling…..stop gritting those teeth!”) Right…time for a coffee then….?

Please come along: Saturday 14 June, 2 pm at the Fox & Pelican in Grayshott: come knit, come chat, come have fun! And IF the weather doesn’t want to play, we’ll just run inside, needles at the ready. See you all there…