Lovely Post

I got some lovely post yesterday. It arrived with things I didn't have to pay for, which is always nice, but the things that came were also very lovely.

The first thing I got was from Nadia at Abso-Knitting-Lutely. She had a give away for a braid of Malabrigo Nube in the Arco Iris colourway - and I won! I was really happy about this because when Nube first came out I bought two braids in the - yes you've guessed it - Arco Iris colourway!

So I have this braid to add to my two existing ones. I should be able to spin a decent yardage.

The second photo is probably more accurate, but they are still different dye lots, so I shall have to be careful. I bought this colour because I made a Brickless in Malabrigo Rastita in this colourway. The yarn is a DK weight singles yarn in the same merino as the Nube.

I bought the fibre intending to make a hat and mitts to match the shawl, but now I have three braids I'm beginning to re-think what I should make.  I don't know whether to stick to my intention of trying to spin my first singles yarn, or whether to try something different.  Any ideas of how to spin this gorgeous fibre are very gratefully received.

The second parcel I received was a complete surprise, as I wasn't told it was coming. It gave me quite a giggle. For those who don't listen to my podcast, you are probably unaware that I recently decided to try doing a video version to try and cut down on the amount of time it took to edit and prepare. It worked out really well and I subsequently did another, and will probably continue in this format. If you are interested, it is available on YouTube, iTunes and on the website under the Podcast button at the top of the page. Anyway, in the first episode I shared some fibre that I bought from Fondant Fibre.

A: Organic Merino Silk & Baby Llama (Beach Huts) B: Silk Hankies (One Tequila, Two Tequila...) C: Polwarth & Mulberry Silk

When I shared these purchases with the podcast I said that none of these colourways are typical of my choices and that often Deb creates colours that I usually hate but absolutely adore in the way she does them.

So you can almost guess my reaction when I opened my package and saw the colourway label before unwrapping the contents. The name was Not Chrissy's Colours. I laughed out loud before I cooed over the contents.

They are made up of my favourite Polwarth, Falkland, Silk and Bamboo. Aren't they pretty and really NOT my colours!  I started straight away.

Sorry for the poor quality photo, it was an Instagram snap last night.  By the way if you are on Instagram, come and follow me so I can follow you back, as I am addicted to this form of social media. 

Spinning long draw from Deb's punis is always such a dream. It's so easy to draft these punis and once again I cannot say enough good things about the preparation and how easy and pleasurable it is to spin them. I am spinning without plan for the pure pleasure of it, as my other two spinning projects require a little more thought and control.

I can't decide yet whether the laugh, or the pleasure from spinning, I got I made me happier. Maybe it was a wonderful combination of the two! I do love it when the postman brings parcels!

Universal Craft Blog Directory

One of the bloggers I follow has had an excellent idea.  CraftyRie has suggested that we find out how many craft blogs are out there!  I think it is a gargantuan task, and a little bit impressive that she has undertaken this.  In order to show my support I have listed my blog on her list, and invite you do the same.  It won't take long.  If you have a craft blog, go and enter your blog details.

But, here is the clever bit, you then invite your blog readers to do the same!  See, isn't that smart?  This way the directory reaches a wide audience pretty quickly and we all get to see how many crafty blogs are out there, and maybe discover new ones that we have missed in our own meanderings through cyberspace.

So go on, take a couple of minutes to link up and compose a blog post.  Let's see how big this directory can get!  Click on the button to go to the directory post.

New Challenges for 2011

There are so many posts on the interwebs at the moment about resolutions and intentions for the New Year.  I hadn't intended to take part in any challenges because I think they are sometimes a bit to limiting and can get dull after a while.  However, I have found a challenge I might actually be able to stick to.  It is a weekly challenge from Shutterboo.  This challenge involves receiving a theme each week, then taking a photograph inspired by this subject and posting it to the Group Pool on Flickr.  I am so serious about taking part in this challenge I have created a page on my blog.  It's at the top listed as Weekly Photo Challenge 2011.

I want to take part in this challenge because I have never really learnt about taking photos. I point and click and think "that looks ok" or "delete".  This challenge will stretch me into trying different points of view and thinking outside the box to create a good composition.  I studied History of Art for A'Level many moons ago, so I know about composition.  It would be nice to put that knowledge to good use by thinking consciously about how a photo is framed.

I really want my blog photographs to improve over this coming year.  I think on the whole my photography is ok and I want to lift it to good.  In order to achieve this I have purchased a Light Tent so you don't have to see my clutter when I snap my crafts.  I hope this will also help with the constant dingy days we have been suffering from.  I think the tent will arrive some time next week, so it will be interesting to play with it.

I don't know if I will always blog about my challenge photos, but the photos will be posted to my Picasa album which is linked to the new blog page.  If you are interested, you will be able to keep up with the weekly snaps via the slide show.

This week the subject was Electricity, so I went for the obvious choice of a light bulb.  This photo was taken in black and white, which is a first for me.  I found this photo to be the most satisfying of all my shots, even down to the finger prints on the bulb.

Is anyone else taking part in challenges for 2011?  Share a link so we can check them out, maybe I'll add another to my very short list!

Random Sources of Distraction

I love reading posts on Ravelry forums.  Sometimes they give invaluable advice, or cheer you up, or make you sad, sometimes they just take you in strange directions on the internet.  This time I found a post about The Hive.  I decided to join up, cos I can!  You can find my details here if you are interested.  It's a new arts and crafts community website.  I thought it might be an interesting way of finding new blogs to read.  It's worked already because I found some more blogs to read via the forum post that started it all - I love you Blog Hub Group!

Anyway the blog entry that started me down a really random path was from Lazy Knits and Purls.  She posted a Wordle.  I had never heard of a Wordle, so of course having endless amounts of time I went and had a play.  Wordle describes itself thus:

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

 So of course I had to play with this using my blog and I got this:

I like how "pattern" is the biggest word, but I don't like how big "really" is.  I must stop using this word as much!

So thank you to Lazy Knits and Purls for a new way to kill time.  I think The Hive may suck up some hours as well - like I need any help with that one!!