Mirasol Book 4 – Children’s Collection

I have had a very busy week – I have booked this week off as holiday to stay home and spend time with Lewis and my sisters, but Lewis has been sick and poorly which means the Koala Bear effect has kicked in. Nobody else can even touch him! He would be screaming all day “Mummy, mummy, mummy is mine, you can not touch”. I think I might have a spoilt child?! You may have noticed that Lewis has been ill for a while with coughs, colds, temperature, a mixture of the three, or different combinations. He has not been able to shake it off completely and has not really made a recovery. Does anyone have any helpful tips to cure childhood sniffles once and for all?

Onto more exciting news – lots of new and wonderful things to be added onto the web site – there has just been a shortage of time. Mummy has been a tremendous help and wll be staying here tonight to help out! What a wonderful thing! I really do not know where I will be without mum!

Mirasol Book 4 is finally out (click here) and making its appearance. It is a book which Jane Ellison has dedicated to children.

In her words:

“For me, it has been a real treat to design for children. I love the idea of creating a knitted garment for the younger members of the family. They themselves are just as individual as the little persons they are being made for; knitted with love.

The patterns are organised into three categories for different ages: 1-6 year olds, 2-10 year olds and 10-18 year olds. There is an adorable heart fairisle dress for little ladies, a smart yet comfortable v-neck cardigan for the cheeky chap, in addition to a flattering shrug for older girls.

As always, my patterns are simple and easy to knit, so are perfect for those who are beginners, perhaps members of the younger generation, who may chose to knit their very first garment from this collection!”

Alexander Palace 2009

We have today confirmed our stand for Ally Pally 2009!

Now goes all the planning – it is a whole year away! I can’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All comments, suggestions, hints and tips are all very very welcomed!

Frabjous Fibers

We get a lot of packages each week. The one that must be voted the most exciting this week will be one from the US – Frabjous Fibers! Which litterally means Fabulous and Joyful!

We now stock the Frabjous Fibers – Banana Silk Yarns 

Banana trees have long been used as a source for fibers to make clothing and household goods. Before cotton became readily available banana fabrics were commonplace in Asia. FF’s Banana Silk yarns are created from modern techniques – yielding rayon type fiber and handspun from waste from weaving mills.

When you make an item with handspun yarn, it is made not only by you, but by you and the women who created the yarn. Often three women work together make each skein of recycled yarn:

one to prepare the fiber, one to spin and one to make the yarn ready for sale.

Once the recycled silk fiber has been sorted and teased, it is handspun on a drop spindle or charka spinning wheel.

When the yarn is finished, it is turned in for payment, where another group of women skein the yarn and wash it. After drying in the sun, the yarn is packaged and shipped around the world. FF believes in “fair trade” meaning the workers involved receive a fair price for their efforts. By spinning, women are able to use their traditional skills to support themselves and their family.

Charity Update – A Mountain of Yarn

The volunteers arrived on time tonight to help sort out the yarn to match the charity – Gebbies & Mummy, then followed by TT. Tonight we wrapped up over 60 packages going all across UK… Mostly baby charities – maternity units and neo-natal wards, but also some went to hospices and other children’s charity. About 3 or 4 went to charities abroad.

The call is far from over – if you have yarn to de-stash – let us know. And remember for all yarn donations received we are giving a 20% discount to the donar to spend with Yarn Box. Special thanks to the individuals for their donations and also a special thank you to Designer Yarns who were extremely generous in the yarn offerings.

Here is picture from the post-room:

It is going to take me a few days to get all of the packages posted. The local post office will not be pleased to have to post 60+ packages in one go along with the other Yarn Box mail to go out!

One last massive “THANK YOU” to everyone involved! All the donations are appreciated. We hope to see pictures of the knitted pieces soon!

Extreme Knitting Update

A long while back (March this year) I started an Extreme Knitting Project.

This involved knitting with 24 balls at the same time with gigantic needles. Well whilst Lewis was taking his afternoon nap today – I took the chance to finish it:

It was quite a masterpiece in my mind – given the (lack of) time problem I have. After discussions with Master Lewis we have decided that this will also be part of the charity giving and will be sent to one of the neo-natal units on our charity list. I think it is important for Lewis to pick up from a young age the importance of sharing and charity.

With regards to the needles… seeing it took me over 6 months to get a mini rug/blanket done, I do not think I will have much luck with the gigantic rug I had planned. So I have decided to ebay it – along with lots and lots of knitting magazines I have acquired over the past year or so… so it has been a busy ebay day for me today. If anyone is up for a bargain – do take a look!

After having failed my mission to pack the charity yarns – tomorrow will be the day – I promise myself – a must have it done day!

Charity Update

It will be done this week end – I say! We have had some donations come through – not a lot, but a HUGE thanks for those who have sent in wool. These coupled with our Baby Yarn will be sorted out this weekend and posted to the over 50 charities who have written in. Most of which are Baby Charities for local neo-natal units, we also hae so going abroad, and some for the elderly.

It is still not too late to donate to us. And remember we are offering a 20% discount to all those who have donated. If you have wool to de-stash – please let us know! All yarn is welcome. As we have such a wide array of charities any type of yarn can be accomodated. They do not need to be full balls, half balls, oddments, bits and pieces… everything is much welcomed and I would say a big thank you on behalf of all the charities to all!

Yarn Box Classes are back.

We have classes back on the agenda…

Both one-to-one knitting classes for Chigwell and classes run by Aneeta Patel in London. For more details click here.

I know there have been a lot of requests for sock classes – Aneeta is looking into this and we will have more details posted here and on our site when available.

Knitting & Stitching Show 2008 (Ally Pally)

I took the whole family with me to AP this year… Mum, Tiff, Cass, Gebs and Lewis. Like a family outing! Lewis was thrilled by the bus ride from the car-park to the venue and I think that was the high-light of the trip for him!

For me – I made myself carry cash for once and promised as soon as the cash finished I would spend no-more. It actually worked. I was very good and acquired a needlepoint kit (as Lewis’s request – it was a train), and a crystal nail file kit. That was it!

The main point for the trip was catching up with knitting friends and it was great (Lewis fell asleep in the pushchair). We had a lot of fun – I hope you did too! Here is a cute octopus TT found. I have not yet found time to look it up in our Amigurumi books – but will be looking for something similar to make…. Let’s think Christmas present time!

Lewis’s Scarf

He finally modelled it for me this morning before we left for Ally Pally! (Ally Pally update to follow tomorrow – sorry run out of time today – quite litterally – 30 mins to midnight and need to be up at 6am for work tomorrow)

Surprisingly – the scarf only took a day to complete… I do like the “divided squares” and will again – blog about it on another day! nite nite x

My weekend

I finsihed Lewis scarf hoping he would take a pic in it so I can blog it. But my weekend started with Friday night in A&E. When I got home from work on Friday his temperature (which has been on and off) shot up to 40.7 C, both Calpol and Nurofen did not manage to get it down, so I called the doctor – where are the good old days when you can get a call out?? Gone! The response was – if you have such a sick child – you should take him to hospital. So we got there at 7pm and left there just before 4am the following day. Diagonised: throat infection, is on antibiotics and temperature is now normal! What a scare! His temperature was so high he was “shivering” when I tried to explain that to the doctor – he told me he was actually having convultions because his body can not handle that sort of temperature. I swear – never again! I think I would be happy to drop everything at the office and stay home with him if he was ever poorly again!

I then spent the rest of Saturday with the ear thermometer with him. Leaving me quite shattered. But I did get a lot of Yarn Box work done… A newsletter went out with the Noro Sock Yarn offer as well as the Quellon.  Then I spent the rest of today waiting for the rain to stop so I can dash to the supermarket – but that did not materialise and I ended up doing an online shop.

I hope your weekend was more enjoyable. And I can not believe it is back to work tomorrow already!

But I am looking forward to it. We have quite a few new lines lined up to come. So I am busy with colour charts and discussions with suppliers (sadly I worked through the weekend on this and busy with emailing them etc, but they have a life and will not be responding till tomorrow). More news to come soon!