Memories from the old shop...

This afternoon I have been trying to think of something interesting to write for a new blog post and have, as usual got bloggers block! So I went through some of my old posts from years ago for inspiration (or, if I'm totally honest for something to copy!). And I found so much stuff that I had forgotten about......so many pictures from my time owning a different wool shop, making all those buried memories come back to me. 

Firstly I found a photo of the first shop I owned - look how small it was! How did I ever fit everything into it, let alone customers! I think I remember three customers at once made it look pretty full. I loved that shop, it was the beginning of a lot of good times and great memories...

How about the time when we appeared on Countryfile!! What a wonderful day spent behind the scenes for the filming of the summer special - cups of tea and knitting with John Hammond, chatting with Matt Baker (I was a bit star struck!) and actually being filmed for the tele!! Us, a little shop in the west country actually on the tele! I will never forget that day it was brilliant!

                              

Or the time we yarn bombed Thornbury for the Queens Jubilee and surprised everyone with a whole load of red, white and blue which seemed to appear overnight! That was pretty brilliant too. 

I cant miss out when we were asked to knit hanging flower baskets for Thornbury in Bloom - my amazing knitting group and customers rallied round and knitted hundreds of flowers and leaves, and me and my mum spent a whole day wiring them and making 13 hanging baskets that were dotted all around Thornbury High Street - we were in the local papers for that effort, and were so pleased with how many people popped into the shop to comment on them. Good times.

And then Countryfile called us again and set us a challenge to 'knit the presenters'! Of course we rose to the challenge and knitted up a set of tv presenters that rode on the back of sheep in a race on their summer special. Oh the things you can do with two sticks and a bit of wool...…!

All this and lots more happened during my time in my first shop. More adventures came my way during our three years in wales - including Alpacas, wayward goats, hatching chickens, pig sitting and wool shop sitting in Llandeilo. More great and happy times.

Now we have moved back to our home stomping grounds and I have opened LoobyLou Yarns, I am hoping that the adventures will continue and in a few years time I can look back on the photos from today and remember all the things that can happen - and DO happen when you are the owner of a little old wool shop!

Knitting certainly has a lot going for it!

Lots of love

Tina

PS If you are from Countryfile and are reading this, we are back in business and ready for another wool based challenge....!!

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all 

Wow, its been almost six months since I last posted anything! Lots of excuses, but from April onwards, 2018 was an actual event filled whirlwind....

Firstly in April my beautiful 2 year old Granddaughter was diagnosed with a terminal illness called Leukodystrophy, and this diagnosis set the scene for the rest of the year. As a family we decided to move back from Wales to our home area so that all of the families could get to spend time with Zoey and get to know her as much as possible. So Arhosfa House and Arhosfa Cottage were put on the market and we began to search for houses in the Gloucester/South Gloucestershire areas, resulting in us finding a lovely little terraced cottage on the high street in Berkeley - a total change from being on the edge of the mountain in Wales but  perfect for our next new life.  

                            

With all my animals re-homed, I felt that when I moved I would need something to occupy my time, so between us me and my daughter Hayley concocted the idea of setting up a shop together. So we did! We now are the proud owners of LoobyLou Yarns and Mint Plants Wotton under Edge! We share the shop space and the odd sounding combination of house plants and yarn is actually working out really well. I have to say August, September and October were fairly stressful with lots of travelling between Wotton, Cardiff and our home in Wales - we were very glad once the house and shop had completed and we could all be in one place!

After spending nearly three months in a children's Hospice in Cardiff, Zoey is now at home with her family and has been stable for a few weeks now. We take each day as it comes and are thankful for each day as it ends. The shop is doing well, the house is getting straight and we are getting to relax a little bit....for now! In the space of a few months we have moved houses, moved businesses, travelled a million miles up and down the M4, and opened a shop - we are a bit tired out!
                                                                    

2018 was an awful year in a lot of ways - hearing the news that your grandchild will not live very long is a complete devastation, but we feel that we have made the best decisions for us as a family and there have been some highlights as well as really low times. We have definitely learned all about unconditional love, making the most of everything and how precious the good times are, no matter how small. Our dreams for a rural life working from home and looking after our animals has had to do a U turn but we have new focus and new ideas to look forward to in 2019, while also dreading what the coming year may bring us.
I really hope your 2018 was a lot less eventful (and stressful) than ours was, and also hope that your 2019 is a good one and treats you all kindly. My next blog posts will focus on the new shop and our visions for the future of this little venture.....exciting times ahead I think.

Happy New Year and lots of love from us all here at LoobyLou Yarns xxxx

Top Tips

When I owned my wool shop, I was always encouraging my customers to come back if they have any problems with their knitting so I can try to help. This happened fairly often - someone came in and 'couldn't do it', had 'lost my place', or simply 'cant understand the pattern', and usually all it took was for me to show them once, or give a simple explanation to get the 'light-bulb' moment where they said.....'oh of course, why couldn't I see that?'.

One lady came in who just couldn't get her increase row get the correct number of stitches. She had tried for hours and had unpicked the row many times - in desperation she had trudged up to the shop to ask me what she was doing wrong. The simple answer was that she had cast on too many stitches! She just hadn't counted properly right at the start of her knitting and never thought to count before she started to increase!

Needless to say she was a little embarrassed, but how often have we all not been able to see the wood through the trees, or the 'knit through the purl'?? I certainly have done some daft things with my knitting over the years - I once knitted a whole back of a jumper with two different size needles having forgotten to change BOTH needles after the rib resulting in an 'interesting' effect...why hadn't I noticed while I was knitting? The answer is....I have no idea! But it seems we are not alone (thank goodness). 

So using the most common mistakes/questions I was asked in the shop, I compiled a few tips for those of us who do get in a tangle every now and then whether we have been knitting for 5 minutes or 50 years. I have blogged this list before but these are still my:

Top tips to stop you Fraying at the edges

1) Read the pattern through before you start so you can find out if theres anything you don't understand BEFORE you start to knit 

 2) Use a highlighter to mark on the pattern the size you are knitting - this is especially useful if you are knitting one of the middle sizes and helps stop you knitting different sizes throughout the garment (hands up who's guilty of this one!)

3) COUNT your stitches regularly to make sure you are on the right track, and if you have lots of stitches place a stitch marker every 10 or 20 stitches to help you keep count

4) If you are anxious about a new stitch or pattern, do a sample square before you start the garment so that when you come to the pattern you know you can do the stitch. This is also important for checking your tension, something we all hate doing!

5) Do keep checking your knitting - there's nothing worse than getting right to the top and then finding a mistake halfway down!

6) Use a row counter, especially for complicated patterns with a repeat - its easy to forget where you are if you are distracted. There are simple row counters everywhere, but also some great 'Apps' on your Smart phone which you can download easily and often for free :-)

 7) Make sure your stitches are pushed to the back of the needles when you have finished knitting, or use point protectors to stop your stitches coming off the needles when your knitting is in your bag (so annoying)

8) If you do need to unpick, don't just pull the yarn - unpick the stitches carefully one by one (this is sometimes called 'Tinking') if you only have a few stitches to undo. If you have to unpick several rows place your work on a flat surface, carefully remove the needle and gently pull the yarn to unravel one row at a time until you get to your mistake (this is called 'Frogging'). Using the flat surface makes it easier to control the unpick and to re insert your needle when finished 

9) Dropped a stitch? Don't panic, you can pick it up with a crochet hook and work it back up to your needle  

10) Do have a look on line for tips and tricks on 'how to's'  - YouTube is very full of simple videos and tutorials, and there are so many bloggers out there also giving tutorials and help. 

My main tip though, is to just have a go! While I take my knitting seriously, it IS just wool and sticks and is not life and death stuff so if you do make a huge mess of something, it really can be as simple as undoing it all and starting again....or asking someone for help 

I kind of thought this was two knitters passing yarny help to each other!!

That's it for now, I'm off to start a new project with lacy bits and I really do need to read the instructions first!

Have a great week

Tina xxx

Cheesewring Wrap

Just a quick blog to show you a wrap I knitted in Manos del Uruguay Alegria, a beautifully soft 4 ply yarn designed for socks but equally lovely used in other projects. Here is my finished wrap (called the Cheesewring Wrap) in the first photo, which was made with the lovely colourway in the second photo called Ceibo, shade A8686. Beautiful.

What you can't see in the photo (because I photographed it from the 'good' side) is the GLARING mistake I made because I did not follow the advice I give to EVERY knitter I speak to and I did not READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST!!

There are short rows in this pattern, and halfway through I was not happy with how the 'wrapped' stitch was showing, and couldn't work out what was going wrong.......until I read to the end of the instructions which told me exactly how to knit up the wrapped stitch so that it doesn't show. AAAARRGGGHHHH. Usually I would have taken the whole thing out and started again, but with so many projects on the go, I decided to carry on regardless and display it as a lesson to all who look at it to (as my Mum used to say) 'do as I say, not as I do'!!

Even with the mistakes, its still pretty though and I will wear it - with the good bit on the outside.....

Oh and these photos of skeins is just to show you my favourite colours at the moment in this lovely yarn :-) Of course, you can find Manos Alegria in the shop here - you might be able to buy it if I can bear to let it go........!

Speak to you soon

Love from Tina xxxx

Pigs and Piglets....

When I moved to Wales I never realised just how many new friends I would make and how many new experiences I would be a part of. 

Yesterday was another new experience on an epic scale (for me anyway!!). I have recently met and become friends with a smallholder who has land that backs on to the farm where I keep the Alpacas. Lorraine recently became mum to four alpacas, and so we have been able to help each other out with handling, worming, advice etc. 
Lorraine has also just become mummy to three KuneKune pigs. Now I have not really been a fan of these animals - I sometimes help out my neighbours and feed their massive Berkshire pigs, but the size of them is a bit scary, so when I first met Lorraine's' three I was happy to stay the other side of the fence.
However, both female pigs gave birth to litters last week (14 piglets in total) and I went to visit them yesterday.....Oh My Goodness!! I have never seen anything so awesomely cute, sweet, pretty, perfect or lovable in my whole life - and both mummy pigs let us in to have a good look and a stroke of the piglets who came out of the arks to wander around our legs and say hello. I really could have sat in the field all day with them. 

The three adult pigs were so so friendly and full of character - walking up to us and waiting for a head scratch and a tickle, and I totally fell in love with them, so much so I'm now wondering where I can put a couple here (don't tell my hubby!!)......they were so much like big muddy dogs, not scary at all just wanting some attention and some cuddles - amazing creatures, and I never knew! 

These piglets will be for sale as soon as they are old enough and I can vouch for their amazing characters and pretty faces. I'm not too sure about the amount of digging they do (they are crossed with JCB's according to Lorraine!) but I'm very sure that I love KuneKune pigs now!

Here are some photos of the piglets and Hugo, the daddy XX

Just look at Hugos face!! Adorable xoxox

Daphne the Alpaca

This is a long one.
We have had a bit of a traumatic time with the Alpacas lately, resulting in us losing our wonderful Daphne to heart disease ....

Beautiful Daphne

One Saturday evening, having been fine all day, Daphne started heavy breathing with flared nostrils. Concerned, I sent a video to Emma (my Alpaca Guru) who thought that she may have been stressed by something, so the opinion was to leave her quiet and warm overnight and see what the morning would bring. Sure enough in the morning Daphne was up and about, fighting for the food, hay and attention as normal. Phew - I was relieved she was ok. But not so. Later that afternoon she started to breathe with difficulty, making a 'catching' sound in her throat. So I called the vet and described her symptoms - he thought she may have a chest infection so came to visit her with all intentions of giving her antibiotics and something to ease her symptoms. 

As soon as he listened to her chest he said that things had just got complicated. What he could hear as well as lungs full of fluid, was a very large heart murmur which he had never heard the likes of in any large animal before. Things were not looking good, but we decided on some treatment to see if it would lessen the fluid and enable him to hear the heart more clearly. So poor Daphne had painkillers, steroids, antibiotics and diuretics with the plan for the vet to visit in 48 hours to evaluate her again. I stayed with her for a couple of hours, and she settled into the straw bed so I left her to sleep.
In the morning, she was up and about, desperate to get out of the stable and wolfed down her breakfast and ate hay. I really thought that the drugs had helped and she had turned a corner. So all day I checked on her every hour. At three pm I went to the farm and she was in the field eating grass. I didn't go over to her as she looked just fine so left her there munching away. 

Sadly, later at 4pm when I went to see her. she was in the yard and her breathing was worse than it had been the night before. So I called the vet again to come and see her. This time I got a lovely vet called Emily, who knew a fair bit about camelids having done an extra module in her training with Claire Whitehead (who is an expert in camelid care). By now Daphne was lying down in the stable struggling to breathe with her head almost lying on the floor, quite obviously in trouble. Emily listened to Daphnes chest and actually gasped at what she heard  - in her words 'a stonking great heart murmur'. Either this had always been there and something had made it worse, or she had had something like an infection happen that had settled on her heart valves, causing her heart to not be able to pump properly.

To say I was devastated is an understatement. I knew what this meant but I had to be the one to make the decision. There was nothing more we could do for this beautiful creature who was looking at right at me, her great big eyes almost imploring me to help her. I am a strong person emotionally, but I have to admit that it took me longer than it should have to make this decision - I have made it before with cats and guinea pigs, but never with an animal so big and never with an animal that I had such a close bond with. Daphne had been 'well' two days before all of this and I couldnt get my head round the fact that I would have to let her go. But, with Emilys and my husbands help I did it. Daphne was suffering so much and no treatment would have made her better, so in bits, I gave her the biggest hug she had ever had (even though she hated hugs!) and said goodbye. It was so hard to do. And I left her with Emily and the nurse to help her out of her pain. 

I can tell you I didn't sleep that night, and cried for the next day I was so affected by the events of the past two days.

Daphne on the day I got my Alpacas..

We miss her so much in the yard. She was always the first to come and say hello, would fight you for the food bucket, would let me rub her neck (sometimes) and was so beautiful in every way. I look for her in the field sometimes, missing her white colour next to the other two. Beau and Autumn spent a few days looking for her and seem to have settled now but are missing their third amigo, so now I am over the shock of it all, I am looking for a new amigo to join the gang. Life is very quiet with two Alpacas, and for their sake they need to be in a herd, even if its a herd of just three..

The Three Amigos

There's so many photos of her that I shall never forget her - my first Alpaca, my first Alpaca loss.

RIP Daphers, you were a true beaut xxx

My first Etsy Sale - Yikes!

Yesterday I had my first sale on Etsy - a lady in America bought 4 skeins of my hand spun yarn, shown in the photos. I am so happy that she liked it enough to buy it as I think it's beautiful, but I am so nervous about whether she will like it as much when she actually gets it!

  

The reason I am so nervous is that to me, every skein I hand spin is quite a personal thing - so much goes into it from blending, carding, spinning, skeining, washing, drying, labelling and marketing that I love them all, but I am obviously biased because they are mine! I also know all the little imperfections, which to me makes a hand spun skein of yarn unique but to others might be seen as 'mistakes'

So, as always, I am hoping I haven't sold my 'unique' yarn to someone who is expecting perfection. I don't know why I always do this to myself as any one who has bought my yarn in the past has loved it, but each time I worry!

 Now I know there are many many talented spinners out there who create the most beautiful perfectly smooth, regular yarns (and I am totally in awe of their skills) but my spinning style always ends up slightly different. If I really concentrate I can spin fairly even 4 ply yarn (my Daphne shawl was as close to a 4 ply as I could get) but the odd slub always appears. To me, if you want perfection you should be looking at something that is commercially spun. My ideal hand spun yarn is soft and bouncy and squishy and that is generally what I make. 

Hopefully my new customer in America agrees and I can stop worrying......this time!

Happy knitting
Love from Tina xx