Yay! It's the Bank Holiday Weekend!

We had a fabulous time at Wonderwool last weekend despite having one man down as Andy tested positive for covid. For a moment or two I considered staying home, but then I decided to be all grown up and put my big girl pants on and take myself to the show. I managed to hire a smaller van and cram it full of stock and the wonderful Sarah Hazell and her fabulous husband Paul came down to Wales to help me. I couldn't be more grateful for their help or for all of you who popped by the stand to say hello! We really did have a very special weekend and it was so good to be out in the wild again after such a long break away from shows.

I have been busy getting ready for my Iceland trip with Arena Travel, which heads off next week, but I have a few more things to tell you about today, so I hope you have a little spare time to catch up with my news.

We finally have lots of kits in stock, so if you have been waiting for the yarn for certain designs to be back on the website, take a look at the list below and the links for more information.

Beaded Decorations

Climbing Rose Wrap

Delft

Fruit Garden - Night & Dusk

Fruit Garden - Love is Enough

 Lily Pond Original

Lily Pond Cherry Blossom

Mexican Diamonds

Mystical Lanterns Blanket

Eastern Jewels

The Blue House

Sunshine & Showers

We are so pleased to have so many kits back in stock after long absences from the website and hope that there will be something that takes your fancy. We will be revisiting the Sunshine and Showers design from May onwards to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the design featuring in Crochet Now magazine as a year long CAL project. We will be focussing on the design each month from May this year through to April next year and Emma will be doing some technical videos to accompany the design. Patterns are just 95p each or £11.40 for the whole set via Ravelry.

I have created two pretty cushion designs for Inside Crochet Magazine - these will be revealed next week, on May 5th, so do look out for them. ​

A couple of our Instagram posts produced quite a few interesting tips this week so I thought I would share the links here for you. The first post that produced more chatter than usual was one where I asked whether you preferred to work in production line way when crocheting or whether you tend to make one complete motif at a time. It seems the majority like to work in a production line way, but there were some great tips posted too - take a look here.

In another post I showed some of the pieces I have in my essential crochet kit - such as sewing up needles, beads and my favourite crochet hooks. This post also produced a lot of feedback with many of you naming your favourite accessories - you can find that post here.

If you follow us on Instagram then you may have seen that I officially introduced the lovely Emma to the team this week and mentioned that we will have some new videos on YouTube soon - If you don't already follow us on Instagram it would be great to have you join us!

I am very much looking forward to sitting down with the family for a treat filled celebratory meal tomorrow as it will be Andy's birthday. I have baked the scrummy chocolate cake that I made a couple of weeks ago for a friends birthday and will post a pic on my Lifestyle Instagram page.

Things have been so busy lately that I have really neglected my kitchen and, other than to make the cake for tomorrow, I have spent barely any time cooking. I am not a fan of ready meals, but on weeks like this we do resort to some of our favourite pre-made meals. This week, rather than share a recipe with you, I am going to recommend you tale a look around the COOK website. We are particularly keen on the Nut Loaf (which will easily serve 3 people, if not 4, despite the packaging saying it is for 2) and the Roasted Pepper and Goats Cheese Quiche, which is a great addition to a large family gathering.

I will be appearing on Yarn Lane TV on bank holiday Monday, so I have a little bit of prep to do for this event over the weekend. The show is on at 1pm so I hope you will be able to join me as I chat about my Fruit Garden blanket design.

The weather forecast is looking a tad chilly here for the bank holiday weekend so we might not be out in the garden quite as much as we had hoped, but the house has been mightily neglected lately, so I think we will be giving it a bit of much needed TLC over the next couple of days by having a bit of a spring clean.

We have Summer and Chris coming for the weekend and as I said already we will be celebrating Andy's Birthday, so I am sure it will be a lovely couple of days. I leave you with a pic of this amazing version of Mystical Lanterns made by Anna Wells with yarns from her stash. Isn't it amazing!
 
I hope you all have a fabulous weekend whatever you have planned and I look forward to popping back into your inbox in a couple of weeks time.

​Janie x