Saturday 13 June 2009

Away till 6 July!

I'm on vacation! No blog updates from now till 6 July, but things will still be happening in my absence:

* I'll be in the June Phatfiber box, which goes on sale tomorrow!

* The Fibreholics boxes will be released soon!

* I'll be at Black Sheep Gathering with my Sheepshape Spinning shirt - say hi! Not a vendor this year, unfortunately.

My Etsy shops are still open, and any purchases will be sent out on the afternoon of 6 July. I'll also be able to respond to email queries within a few days.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

My samples for the Fibreholics UK Box

As you may know, some of my fellow British fibre artists and I are creating a fibre sampler box of our handspun and dyed fibres. The blog for the project is here and we also have a Ravelry group. it's a new project and the first boxes will be on sale at Woolfest this month. After that they will be available through the website EcoProducts4U which is run by one of our members. There is a mailing list signup sheet on the EcoProducts4U site.

Our first round of samples are being finished up and sent to a central point, and I sent mine in over the weekend. Here's a photo (hosted by Flickr) and some more information!


To start with I have sent in 21 samples, evenly split between fibre and handspun yarn. Some of the samples are of items currently available on my Etsy shop.

There are three different types of fibre. The first, the puffy brown and blue batt, is made of deep brown Zwartble fleece drumcarded with a mix of dyed fleece colours. It's really soft and I have done a few more but haven't yet weighed or listed them.

The second fibre is blue, pale green and white and is a sample of the Salt Water Taffy colourway. It's Bluefaced Leicester roving, acid dyed.

The third is one of my favourites, it is fawn-coloured natural Shetland top acid dyed with blue and pink. The colourway is called Blue Raspberry.

I've sent in five different types of yarn, three of which are currently available at Sheepshape Spinning. The yarns are:

Summer Citrus, made of Columbia Dorset wool and dyed by another Etsy seller

Corriedale Glow in the Dark yarn, in a lovely heathery tan

More Corriedale, but mixed with multicolour Donegal Tweed fibre from Kilcar, Donegal

A Shetland/Merino blend made from one of the samples I received from the April Phat Fiber box - one of a kind with lovely greens, blues and browns, and very soft

The last bit of light coloured Alpaca Glow in the Dark yarn, though there are other colours of this on the shop

I'm really looking forward to the release of the boxes, and also seeing what everyone else is making for their samples! If you get one of my samples in your box I'd love to hear from you. :)