Half of it is on ebay

http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZtheyarnyardQQhtZ-1

The last selection was very popular and this lot are very “edible”.

My own stand alone website is due to be launched next week with a competition to win some yarn, so get ready to visit www.yarnyard.co.uk soon!

I am toasting you all with a glass of elderberry wine and am full of birthday cake.

There will be some Big News later this week.

For a clue, go to Piglottie‘s blog and read the post about her lovely blue socks.

Thank you to everyone for your support and positive comments. I wouldn’t have got this far without you.

My mum gave me the recipe, it’s a grand old mixture of metric, imperial and US cups. A multicultural apricot crunch.

6 oz softened butter or margerine

6oz brown sugar

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1 1/2 cups porage oats

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

250g dried apricots

1/2 pint water

juice of a lemon

Chop the apricots and cook until soft in the water and lemon juice (I didn’t have lemon juice so I cooked them in fresh orange juice and water 50:50). This takes about 10 minutes.

Beat together the butter and sugar, then add the flour, oats and baking powder.

Put half the mixture in a well greased 8 inch loose bottomed or springform tin.

Spread the apricot mixture on top. Then add the other half of the mixture.

Bake 25 minutes Gas 5 or 180 degrees or slightly longer in baking oven of an Aga.

I cook by colour rather than time, so I waited until mine looked like this. I also felt the mixture was a bit dry, so I added a little milk, but I think it’s one of those recipes which will “tweak” quite well.

When my mum made it she didn’t bring the apricots to the very edge so they were sealed in the middle, I think that was more successful as the stickiness make it harder to get out of the tin.

And then I made this.

I wanted to see how the pink smoothie yarn knitted up, and this is how it looked. The rest of the skein is now on ebay, along with a toning skein of purpley pink.

It’s at http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/125g-handpainted-hand-dyed-sock-yarn-2-skeins_W0QQitemZ110025904060QQihZ001QQcategoryZ83944QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I have dyed seven hanks of yarn using the same three colours in various combinations, and today, once I have taken their photograph, I’m going to knit them up to see how they look. I know that every knitter is unique and the variation created by getting one or two stiches more per round because you knit tighter or looser than someone else, will make the knitting look quite different, but I personally find it hard to tell from looking at a twisted hank, how the “fabric” will look in the end, and if I am going to sell my yarn then I have a responsibility to be able to show potential customers what the differences are.

I’m also trying to source other kinds of yarns. Personally, I like the 75:25 blend because its hardwearing and machine washable, I like knitting socks but not darning them! But everyone has their own preferences, so I’m on the look out for silk, merino, and cashmere, and for other weights of yarn than 4 ply. I know texere sell these, but if anyone knows of other wholesale stockists, perhaps they could let me know?

Off to reskein a hank to send to someone, back later.

Around ninety little sections of yarn about 15cm long are now hanging to dry in carefully arranged ranks and in varying concentrations and proportions of colour. It’s like being back at school, I feel I should have a clipboard and a white coat.

So this morning was a purple and green session, everything from dark olive to pale lime, and from damson to littlegirl pink. I’m off to have a sandwich now, and then I have to write up the results and file it all, like a proper scientist.

This afternoon and over the next few days I’m going to actually dye yarn, so if there are any special requests, don’t keep them to yourselves.

You can email me on natalieATselmuir DOT coDOTuk (just rearrange as usual).

Plum-p

Thunder green

Dusky pink/soft lilac 

Pink smoothie

Mistake (it was!)

Duck egg-ish

Orange and mango sorbet

Passion

Very Purple

Moody blue

I’m not sure the colours are the best reproductions.

The paler blue ones are actually blended with a duck egg green, and the pink smoothie is much pinker in real life, so I need to improve my photography I think.

So which ones do you like best, (1,2.3 ) and which one least, please.

…I am appeasing it with bananas.

Think raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries.

Gather all your equipment.

Take your main ingredient.

Follow recipe carefully.

Enjoy!

This was the first yarn I have done ”to order”. There was a lot of emailing of photos backwards and forwards to make sure it was right. I think it’s quite edible myself!.

Ankle update is not so good. Saw the orthopod, who said I still have a significant fracture line, and instead of getting rid of the removeable cast as I hoped, I have to wear it for another four weeks. Use crutches when I need to, and then they’ll review it and decide what to do next. So I need something home based to do for the next four weeks plus, which can be done in short bursts with sitting down time in between. Looks like I’ll be doing a fair bit of dyeing then, doesn’t it?

This week I decided to see if my yarns would sell. So far I’ve sold one hank of yarn on ebay and four hanks to other people.

This is what it all looked like when it was ready to post. I even made labels.

Now, I need to know. Do you prefer “big” pictures or “click to make big” pictures.

WordPress are keen for bloggers to use the clickable kind, but it doesn’t matter to me. Once I put a bigger picture on the page, that’s it, it can’t go any bigger, wheras the clickable ones will give a bigger image, bigger than the unclickable ones.

What do you think?

After writing about the thundery green colour in my last post, I decided at the weekend to try and make a yarn which was just that colour. I spray dyed it in two different shades of blue, then yellow, then cooked it, then overdyed it all with a dilute green. I was aiming for a blended colour rather than semi-striped, and I am pleased with how it turned out.

Then yesterday I posted on another forum that I had a yarn on ebay, and got a couple of pm’s about it. And three hours later I had sold the green one and the purple one as well!

It has gone to be posted by G today as I am not a pavement-worthy-vessel as yet, or at least, not unaccompanied. Today I am looking into recycled/environmentally friendly packaging. I don’t want to use jiffy bags, it isn’t neccessary, yarn isn’t fragile stuff but the packaging does need to be waterproof just in case it’s delivered in a downpour. I don’t want someone getting a lump of soggy wool on the doormat.

1. Keith (my postman) didn’t deliver the Hot Pink dye I ordered yesterday. I suppose it was a bit of a long shot ordering it at 3pm and hoping it would be here today, but I had plans for it so my nose is seriously out of joint.

2. I have been trying to put an “about me” section on my ebay account. We have bought a number of things on the family account over the last few years, not hundreds, but we have a healthy positive feedback. When I set up my own account this week so that I could sell my yarn, I needed to have my own ID. This of course means I have a feedback score of zero, but I’m not willing to go and buy stuff I don’t need in order to create an artificial score, that seems quite dishonest to me. So I thought I’d do an “about me” page so that anyone looking would get a feel for the fact that I’m an ordinary sort of person, not an ebay gangster. Will the page writing template work? Will it fluff. So in the end I have put a link on the text-less page to this blog in the hope that this will provide potential buyers with some information.

If you are here because you followed the link, then welcome, it’s good to “meet” you… please post a few words.

3. My chickens (2 of them) keep escaping. One of them is already known as Steve McQueen, and now I think the other one has been taking escapology lessons too.

4. G is away for the weekend on a bushcraft/wilderness course for which the kit list was worryingly brief. It read- sharp knife, 15 metres string, sleeping bag.

5. He has taken the camera, so I can’t show you the reskeined begonia yarn.

After looking at various yarny online shops, I have decided to reskein my yarns. It takes about ten minutes per skein, (with the help of a teenage boy) but they look so much prettier than when the colours are all in a lump. No-one else seems to do this on ebay. Instead of looking just apricot and green, you can now see all the variations in the apricot, through from a deep saturated colour to pale toast, caramel, and milk chocolate. The greens range from very delicate pale green to lawn-before-a-thunderstorm and then shading to olive. It’s much more interesting altogether.  Have a look at Sundara and you’ll see what I mean. Go to Sold Out Multicolor Yarn on the right hand side of the page and prepare to be bowled over.

6. My ankle is sore again. Time for some diversionary activity, I think. I am knitting G some blue socks, K2 P2 rib down to the ankle almost done, so it’s the heel next. He says he’s going to wear them with his suit!