Vintage Purls

Wow, it’s almost the end of April already, it’s been a hectic year to date, so much going on – all of it great fun.

January saw the debut of a Summer Sock Club, which meant three new exclusive club colours and three new patterns to design. In order (January – March), Blue Sky Baby, Theodora and Daphne (all links to Ravelry entries):

No rest for the wicked (that would be me) when sock club was done though, it was full steam ahead for preparation for the Creative Fibre Festival in Timaru.

I’ve only been a member of my local Creative Fibre group for about 16 months and I’ve never been to a festival. I would have liked to have participated in all the wonderful lectures and activities but I knew I simply could not be a trader and enjoy the festival’s educational offerings. I had a ball though, the trade hall was bright and warm and it was so nice to meet hundreds of like minded people. I would not have survived the weekend without help from some good friends; Ngaire from Little Radiator and KB. A special thanks to Jenni for the much needed foot rub at the end of day one (Jenni is studying massage and is always on the look out for keen volunteers to practice on – everyone should have a friend like this).

A new wheel might have followed me home from Timaru. It wasn’t an impulse buy, I had told myself long before I went that if I did alright I’d bring home a Majacraft Little Gem. So, on day two I popped over to the Majacraft stand (it really didn’t help that they were just across the way and I had line of sight to all their lovely wheels all the time), and arranged to take one home. I just love “her”, the double treadle makes for much more comfortable use for me and I’ve been spinning all sort of little bits and pieces when I can to “work her in”. Is it wrong that I now think a Suzie Pro would make a nice companion wheel to Gem? It’s ridiculous, I’m so greedy.

Looking ahead I’m preparing for the Winter Sock Club that starts in June (look out for sign up info next month is you are interested).

Yes I’m a very sporadic blogger, I’m sorry. Unfortunately blogging gets pushed to the bottom of the list these days. The business is going well and I’m not really keeping up – not that I’m complaining, this is a good thing.

My scanner has also been dead (really dead, not a peep, not a single glowing light) for a good number of weeks – it was still under warranty and I took it in to the appropriate place but it needed multiple trips up country before it was repaired. A frustrating exercise but it is back home and just yesterday I got it back up and running (the fifth time I installed the driver I realised that for some reason after the installation process had run, it then deleted the driver files! A monumentally silly error in the program that I managed to circumvent).

The sock club is all over (as of last month), it was great fun but much work and it lead to my regular stock production suffering. Since then I’ve been focused on dyeing for a wholesale client and rebuilding my own stock.  I will do more sock clubs, the next is scheduled for early next year, but I’ll make sure to broadcast the details well in advance of opening sign up this time and I’ll also have more places – hopefully that will mean fewer interested people will miss out. 

I enjoyed designing the socks for the sock club a lot. All were toe up and all had different toe and heel constructions:

I’m enjoying knitting things other than socks though at present and have returned to Mr K’s Model T. It’s still black and terribly boring but it makes nice autopilot knitting and I’m determined to press on and get it finished. The body and one sleeve are done to the armholes and I’ve cast on the second sleeve. I’m excited at the prospect of joining all three bits up and working the top – I haven’t committed to a particular shaping for the top yet (though I’m leaning toward raglan) and the prospect of there being a mildly creative decision up ahead is motivating me through to that point.

Right, the dye pots beckon so I must away. Bye, bye for now.

Life has been hectic but in a good way. My sock club is up and running and participants got their first installment (called Toasty) this week:

And I’m busy working on the second and third installments.

I became an auntie! She was a wee bit early (6 weeks) but she’s done very well and was able to leave hospital for home yesterday (she was born on the 22nd of May). Introducing Anya:

My knitterly self is delighted to have a wee thing to make outfits for but I felt terribly unprepared when she arrived so early and so little. I’m also busy with work knitting so I’m not being the prolific knitter aunt I want to be. Stella helped out by making the worlds cutest booties:

Mr K has been traveling the world for work which leaves me lonely at home and with the entire fur mob to care for by myself. They take advantage of his absence and my weaker state to do special things like sleep on the bed with me at night, which I have yet to learn simply leads to poor sleep for me and is no substitute for Mr K at all. He’s off again this week, to the States this time so I’m arranging some School House Press books to come home with him since we have only limited access to Elizabeth Zimmermann publications in New Zealand.

Keeping up with yarn dyeing and the like has seen my ability to prepare new vintage patterns for the site impeded – there are plenty more to go up but they are time consuming to scan and then clean up into a readable state. More will come though, just bear with me.