Another month, another winner and another giveaway

Time to pick a winner for my July Pay it Forward giveaway. There were hardly any entries to win the lovely braid of fibre, so I guess it tells me that not many of you are spinners! The random number generator picked post 2 - so congratulations to Christine65. I'll be getting in touch with you to get your details so I can post your prize off to you. It really is the most gorgeous braid of fluff and I look forward to seeing what you spin from it!

This month's giveaway prize has been very kindly donated by one of my fellow Stylecraft Blogstars Kathryn, aka CrafternoonTreats. We met up at Fibre-East last weekend; her stand looked fabulous, full of colour and so inviting. One of her best sellers was a crochet kit to hook your very own yarn bowl and I have possibly the last kit left that weekend! I very carefully opened it up so you can see what's inside...

Inside the kit is a gorgeously woolly cake of Kathryn's hand dyed yarn, crochet lace and cotton yarn for decorating your basket, a needle for adding decoration, three stitch markers, a gift tag to show your basket was Hooked with Love and of course the pattern. All you need is a crochet hook and a bit of time to sit down and make it! Thank you so much Kathryn!

To be in with a chance of winning, leave me a comment telling me what you're currently working on and I'll use a random number generator to pick a winner. The giveaway will be open until midnight on August 31st. Please make sure that it's easy for me to contact you by leaving your Ravelry or Instagram name or leave some other way for me to get in touch. If I haven't heard from the winner after a week, I'll pick another name. I'm happy to post world-wide so everyone can enter. Good luck one and all and may your crochet hook be lucky! xxx

Fibre-East 2017

I've just returned home from another year of volunteering at Fibre-East. It's my 'local' fibre festival, even though it's a good two and a bit hours of driving to get from Norfolk to Ampthill in Bedfordshire. But it's definitely worth it! It's a lot of fun being part of a team of friendly people and while I was there, I felt 'normal'. You also get to appreciate the hard work that goes into organising an event such as this. Flo had to go and stay in a cat hotel which didn't impress her greatly, but I knew she was safe and being cared for. When I arrived at the school where Fibre-East is held, the marquees were already up and marking out had begun. The spaces have to be marked for each vendor's stand and tables put in place ready for them. We got on really well and even started decorating the site with bunting that day. The following day, vendors started arriving from 10am; that's always an exciting time as you get to see little sneaky peeks of what delights they have brought with them. All the signs were stuck up and there was knitted and crocheted bunting hung from every possible structure. It really did look bright and cheery, ready to welcome the visitors at the weekend. Even though I was on volunteer duty at various points over the weekend, I still had plenty of time to browse and shop. My pal Snoopydog wasn't able to come so I had strict instructions to get her a couple of 'pretty skeins'! I was also able to meet up with my fellow blogstars, Jane Crowfoot and Kathryn Senior as well as a couple of Instagram friends. I took loads of photos throughout the weekend, so at the risk of boring you, here are some of my favourites. Go and make a yourself a cuppa before you start looking through them!

I have loads more photos, these only show but a few of the vendors that were there - everything you could possibly need for knitting, crocheting, weaving, spinning and felting and more. It really does cater for all fibre arts. As well as the vendors, a number of local guilds were also in attendance demonstrating their skills, so it was the perfect opportunity to have a go and learn something new.

On Sunday morning, I was excused from volunteering duties so that I could take part in a drop spindling workshop. It was really excellent and I learnt loads. I think the fact that I could already spin on a wheel was a big help because I was comfortable drafting the fibre. I'm hoping to use this new skill with the children at school next year.

So what did I buy? I bought some lovely bright merino fibre from Jon at Easyknits, a couple of skeins of yarn from Sparkleduck which I will use on very special projects, a rainbow skein from Babylonglegs, a hat kit that is a collaboration between Woollywormhead and Babylonglegs, a self-striping rainbow yarn cake from The Knitting Goddess and a gorgeous olive wood and sycamore drop spindle from IST Crafts.

There was a lovely floral tribute to Heather from Sparkleduck who died very suddenly earlier in the year. I signed the book of condolences, remembering my trip to Uunravel back in February, when Heather and I had had lunch together, and Heather was telling me all about the birds that had been visiting her garden. Her beautiful yarns and creativity will be missed. RIP Heather. xxx

Didn't we have a lovely time...

... the day we went to Slaithwaite?! The weekend before last I was up in Yorkshire at Spa Mill, Slaithwaite; home of Stylecraft yarns. Some of the Blogstars went on a guided tour around Salts Mill on Friday afternoon to look at the David Hockney exhibition. It looked amazing and I wish that I had been able to go too. Pesky day job! I arrived later that day and was able to enjoy the breathtaking views from the hotel. Did I mention before that the hotel has a helicopter landing space? Rather impressive. I wonder if it ever gets used?!

That evening, we all met up in the bar, each of us with our current knitting or crochet project in tow. It's so nice to be able to spend time with people who don't bat an eyelid when you start knitting. And of course, we carried on crafting between courses at the dinner table. 

From left to right- Juliet Bernard, Annabelle Hill, Sarah Shrimpton, Heather Leal, Lucia Dunn and Catherine Bligh

From left to right - Edward (Catherine's brother), Sandra Paul, Kathryn Senior and Phil Saul

Clockwise from the left - Sandra, Kathryn, Phil, me, Juliet, Annabelle, Sarah, Heather, Lucia and Catherine

Before I went to bed, I spent an hour making yarn pegs as you do! Lucy from Attic24 had been at the art exhibition in the afternoon and had very kindly sent me samples of all the colours I was missing in the Special DK range - how lovely was that?! My little yarn pegs are such a delight to me and are really useful when it comes to planning colour schemes.

The next morning, we headed down to the Mill where first of all we chatted and caught up with each others' goings on, before sitting down to a presentation of all the new things that Stylecraft has in the pipeline for the coming season. I can't reveal too much yet, but let me just say that there are some seriously gorgeous yarns heading into the shops. There are a few new yarns that have just been released though...

Tweedy is a new DK weight yarn made up of 74% premium acrylic and 26% cotton in four lovely colourways. We saw some garments made up in the yarn and they did look good. I rather like the bluey-green one on the right. 

Three, yes three! new colours in the gorgeous Head over Heels sock yarn. I say sock yarn, but it could equally well be used for shawls and cowls as the wool is really soft. I am a total sucker for self-striping sock yarns and the Head over Heels socks I've knit so far have washed and worn very well. Can't wait to cast one of these on!

And finally, four new colours in the Batik yarn range. From left to right, silver, lupin, mint and rose. I really love the soft, colourwashed look of this yarn. You might remember that I used some last year to make a scarf when Batik was first launched. I'm already thinking how nice another scarf would look in more muted shades - you can never have enough scarfs in my opinion!

And just look at how gorgeous all the colours look together. I want to start playing with them NOW!

We were joined by Emma Varnam and Julia Marsh on Saturday morning as well as the overseas Blogstars Angela, Zelna, Polly Plum, and Anne and Michelle through the wonders of technology. Sadly Jane Crowfoot and Lucy from Attic24 weren't able to be with us and we missed them. 

Over a tea break, we were able to look more closely at the new yarns and some of the designs because there was a huge display set up ready for the the following day (more of this later) and we also got to admire some of Lucia's beautiful blankets that she'd brought along with her. Annabelle took the laptop with her so that our friends on Skype could see everything too!

Then, every yarn lover's dream, we got to play with all the colours of Stylecraft Special DK! I can't reveal too much at the moment, but you will get to find out about it later in the year. Needless to say, it was tremendous fun picking out different colour combinations.

After lunch, we were lucky enough to have a visit from a member of the Ring of Tatters who taught us the basics. We were all given a starter kit and DVD to take home with us too. There were lots of beautiful examples to inspire us ...

I didn't find it very instinctive and had to concentrate pretty hard, but Kathryn was a real whizz and had the basics mastered very quickly. 

Before people started heading off for home, we had a group photo taken...

From the left, Heather, Sarah, Phil, Lucia, me, Sandra, Kathryn, Emma, Julia and Catherine in the front. It really was an absolute pleasure to spend time with this wonderful group of creative people and I can't wait for our next meet up! We all left laden with bags of yarn to play with - my mind was buzzing with ideas and I'm sure it was the same for everyone! 

But that wasn't the end of the weekend for me! Lucia and I had been asked to stay on for another day as Stylecraft were holding their first day for Retailers at the Mill. So I set up a display of my knitting designs next to Lucia's blankets.

It was an odd but proud moment when I saw a giant poster of my Foothold socks that I designed for Stylecraft earlier this year. 

The retailers were given a tour of the Mill, and also got to watch the same presentation that we'd seen the day before showing all the new yarns and designs for the coming season. It was great to talk with them about our role as Blogstars and we met some lovely people. I was amazed by how far some people had travelled but I think they had a worthwhile trip. All too soon it was over and I returned home, high on yarn fumes! xxx