I can never quite believe how fast the time flies…

It’s been a challenging month, the day-job has been (too?) demanding on my time, I had lurgy from hell for 2 weeks, there’s been more home improvement works meaning I’m nearly living in a home rather than a building site (there’s a Laminate Floor down in the living room, kitchen floor tiles go down tommorow and the wall tiles nigh on finished, New sofa and bed coming in a week…), I’ve had a birthday & a lodger’s moved in.

All this means that this weekend is litterally the first chance I’ve had to do an after-show stock-take, and get the yarn I have that isn’t on the site photographed and up for sale!

I managed to get the web-shop fixed before the show, but I do want to rip things apart and put them back together at some point… Meantime, if people do notice anything “weird” happening, do drop me a line about it!

So, keep safe as the nights draw in…

So, the final preparations are going on to get all the yarn, fibres, bits, bobs & ourselves to Alexandra Palace again next week!

I’ll have about 60Kg of the finest Silk yarns & fibres as well as Surina Wood Knitting needles and printed copies of all our home brewed patterns with me on the slightly bigger Stand TGA13 in the top back corner of the Textile Galary.
I honestly have no wish to take any of it home again either!

Now, if any of you have visited the site recently, you will have seen that the webshop’s broken.

I did a database “upgrade” at the beginning of the month and it right royally messed thing up! However, I’ve managed to get the database fixed to a stage where I can re-activate the shop software after I go through all the pictures attached to posts (That was the bit that really messed up!) & sort them out! That’s this evening’s job…

However, what I’ve got on the site is only about 1/2 of what I have in stock, given the drastic amounts of “other life” that has happened this summer (house renovations were pretty much completed & took up all my available free time getting it done), Fibres Exotica has been very much in “Tick over” mode. One of the things I just didn’t have time to do was photography & upload of the new stock. Apart from the time, getting the yarn out into the dust of knocked down walls, with tiling adhesive, paint & plaster everywhere isn’t good for it!

So, again, if you are coming to the show, that means you get to see the yummy yarn, needles & dye kits before the rest of the world does!

I look forward to seeing some of you there, in the Textile Gallery, Stand TGA13.

Which is really rather annoying!

Normal service will be resumed as soon as I can get things sorted again…

Good things:

• Olympia and Uttoxeter. Very much enjoyed both those shows, met half-a-tonne of good peoples and really enjoyed the teaching I did at both.  Definitely want to expand into the teaching about dyeing more!
• House Renovation cracking on. My partner took voluntary redundancy in February, so we used some of that money to work to push for completing renovations. Which eventually means an office in the little bedroom, more storage for yarn and far less chaos in life.
• Confirmed the booking for Knitting and Stitching 2011, and got the form for Knit Nation that I really do have to send back ASAP before they run out of space!

Bad things:

• My partner broke up with me at the end of March. Was a 5 year old relationship, so as you can imagine, was a major life bump. That chaos (along with the house renovation chaos as well) meant that all the inventory and photography I needed to do between and after the two shows hasn’t yet happened…
• Supply problems caused massive delays to my expected yarn shipments.
• The Day job has taken a turn for the tedious. My heart’s with Yarn, but IT Security is what pays the bills right now! Makes me even more determinted to make that carreer track change than ever!

So, more shows on the horizon is good, my heart will heal, as it always does, my yarn is due to arrive in two lots, this week and next and the day-job won’t be forever.

I’ve got non-busy weeks the next two, and a long weekend to play with yarn and websites in, so it’s intensive photography and uploading time!

Just a quick one, To say hi to all the lovely new people I’ve met in the last few days. Lovely to meet you all!

Response for some of my new stock items has been great and I’m nearly sold out of sarisilk! Re-ordering muchly required!

So, yummy nummy new yarn, fibre, dyes, needles and other frippery uploads coming your way after the show, in the next 10 days to 2 weeks.

I’ve also got my shade book, so I’ll be uploading the shades so that any yarn in any colour or colour combination can be ordered with certainty (Photography and monitor variation permitting)!

The nice thing about the shade cards is that as well as a standard dye number, they have also included the Pantone Number. So, if you know the Pantone Number of the colour you want, I can look that up and sort it out for you.

See some of you tomorrow or Sunday I hope!

Well, it’s nearly here! Stitch and Craft 2011 is next week! Can’t believe that the show I started planning to attend back in November is finally here! This time in a fortnight, it will all be over, and I’ll be moving on to gearing up for the plans around getting everything to Embroidery and Quilts in Uttoxeter!

But I’m not quite there yet. Final approach plans are go.

Part of the prep is naturally contacting you all and telling you all about what I’m doing…
Which, as I’m typing it all seems to be quite a bit, so you might want grab a cup of tea!

First things first, thank you to you all for inspiring me to carry on.
You never know what’s going to happen when you start something up, but you guys have very effectively reassured me that my heart is in the right place, people want silk as much as I do and so I’ve got a valid & sustainable business for products that people want to use and love.

I’ve also had to make the hard decision to charge shipping on top of the yarn costs.
I did some maths around the yarn pricing with the new VAT rate and the latest exchange rates, and although I can still keep it keenly priced (in fact, I can drop the price of a few of the yarns now!), if I want to be able to grow the business, I wasn’t charging enough to support the shipping costs going forward.

So, I looked around other yarn sellers for a reasonable flat-rate price and picked £2.50, however big your order.

I’ve also changed the software set-up, so that you don’t have to log-in to purchase anything. I know that some people were having problems with that!

For S&C2011 and also E&Q2011, I’ve been busy organising; getting the yarn into the country (HMRC can definitely give you some entertaining hoops to jump through!), getting samples made up of free internet patterns and also commisioning patterns created specifically for silk. As you will know from the last newsletter, I’ve also found a surina wood needle & hook supplier and I’ve also recently found some good&cheap “child-safe” dyestuffs.

Happy to say that everything in the “buying it in” department is sorted and either with me or on it’s way.

I’m really happy that I’ve found a supplier of “industrial” food dye powders in small quantities, even if right now he can’t do me blue. My demonstration at S&C is based around using Kool-Aid sachets for fun dyeing with the children… But, although they are fun to use every now and then, they are an incredibly expensive way to dye if you want solid blocks of colours in any sort of quantity.
One packet of Kool-Aid only does 25g of yarn!

Most people would want to dye a project’s worth of yarn at a time, and as 1x100g skein means 4 packs of Kool-Aid, it’s going to cost you around £2.40 in the UK (the sachets tend to be ~60p each on eBay) to get the Kool-Aid in. Which, unless your project only going to be that 1 skein can make the dyeing up really add to the cost in these money pinched times.

Most food colourings you get in supermarkets give about the same dye yield also, depending on the brand, you get between 25ml and 38ml in a bottle, which is going to do between 25 and 75g of fibre. Again, around 80p-£1.20 for a bottle means expensive dyeing if you want to do it on even a semi-regular basis.

The yield on the powders is a teaspoon (~2.5g) of power does ~100g of yarn!
The supplier does the dyes in 25g packets, as well as citric acid in small packs as well…
It’s just about a kilo of yarn per pack of dye.

(On that point, look out for the dyeing tutorial that I need to put together from one such dyeing session where I took pictures of my partner and his kids as we did lots of dyeing experiements a few weeks ago!)

I’m very excited about the silk that arrived. Apart from the undyed I ordered, the rest is mostly dyed in colourways that I don’t have in stock already, so that compliments the existing stocks perfectly. (as well as being wonderfully happy making as I unpacked and audited it)
There are packets and packets of sari-fibre that look so “sweetie-colour edible” and the pulled sari-fibre looks like clouds of multicolour candyfloss.

The latest batch of Recycled SariSilk is exceptionally vibrant, and the sari ribbon yarn is a treat on the eye indeed.

The silk “string” bunches I ordered for the embroiderers are oh-so vibrant, they are basically ~1cmx~1m strips of dyed unwound cocoon. So, they are a little stiffer than I expected them to be, but I can see them being used in “multimedia” style projects, embroidery embellishment as well as adding to felt and paper-making projects.

I’ve actually got the worry that what I have isn’t enough… I’m sure I’m wrong though! Hopefully I’ve got “Just enough!” Although, I also know that I don’t have time to get any of it online before the show, so look for it to hit the website around the 3rd weekend of March. If you want to see all the goodies sooner, well, come to Stitch and Craft!

I’m also excited about the meetings I’ve been having in the last few weeks. I’ve been hooking up with piecework knitters/crocheters and also designers so that I can bring you an ever growing collection of patterns as sparks for your inspiration.

Everyone I’ve met has been wonderful, supportive and very inspirational to me in their own right, both about the silk itself, where they can see it taking them on their creative journey and also about where I want to take the company working with them.

So, this coming weekend is dedicated to getting all the patterns formatted and up-loaded. Most of this batch will be free, although I think there are a couple of “pay-for” patterns as well in the pipework. All will be naturally be PDF download available from the site and of course, on paper at the show.

So, patterns as well as yarn and needles and hooks all in one place?
Also undyed yarn, dyes and citric acid?
Can only mean one thing really… lots of inspiration and lots of kits.

Yep, at the show, I’ll have a discounted “Needles/Hook+Yarn+Pattern” kit price for about 10 Patterns as well as dye-kits. Again, these will hit the website after the show, so if you want to see it first, Stitch and Craft is where it’s at!

Inspiration – It’s definitely becoming my byword. See you all somewhere soon I hope.

I started Fibres Exotica because I love silk. Don’t get me wrong, I love working with and using merino, wensleydale, alpaca & cashmere for knitting and dyeing, but there is just something about working silk that is luscious.

It’s not soft like cashmere, buttery like alpaca, or smooth like wensleydale fibres – the reason I love silk so much is because of the the way it takes  colour. Dyed silk is vibrant, it looks almost alive! Undyed silk is even better, it has a lustre and shine that is virtually unbeatable.

This is because of the way silk reflects light. Because the fibre is extruded by the Bombyx mori silkworm as a triangular fibre with rounded corners,  it is effectively a crystal prism.

So, you can just imagine the anticipation I’m having right now, and the joy I will get when I open the 40Kg parcel that’s due to arrive on Wednesday!

Hopefully, as it will mostly be yarns and colours I’ve already had, I can get the majority of it up on the site rather quickly, as it will just be working the numbers.

I’ve got a few new treats coming through as well… decorative silk “strings”, sari ribbon yarn,  sari ribbons and (next month) 4 types of silk fabric.

Why have I been able to order 40Kg of yarn with the utmost confidence that I can and will sell it, and almost certainly need to order more in the summer? Well, apart from my having put myself up for doing 3 yarn shows this year (and hopefully 4 if Knit Nation reply to me as well!) it is all to do with getting the word out there.

After Knitting and Stitching, I worked to take on board the feedback I was given. In amongst some small advertising I took out with a couple of magazines, I did some community outreach work & I got my mailing list in order and so started the conversation rolling again. It all seemed a little quiet, and then suddenly, lots of lovely people started ordering via the website and also eBay. (Thank you!)

I also started a conversation via Stitch London – A call out to Designers and Sample piece workers.

One thing that the Fibres Exotica Stand lacked at Knitting and Stitching was sample knits from freely available patterns that I could display. We also had no patterns of our own either, so there was no “spark of inspiration” available for people.

So, I did a call-out piece with Stitch London 10 days ago and I’m now happily inundated with people like me; people that love silk, that are inspired by its properties and are either wanting to work with silk and knit a free pattern that will help inspire others for me to display, or just dying to get started with designing patterns that work for Fibres Exotica yarn.

All these people want to share their passion for silk with you via me. And I love that because it means that not only do I get to meet a whole new bunch of inspiring people myself, I then get show and inspire even more people with our shared love of silk.

It’s a whole silky little circle of life!

I’ve also managed to find 2 wooden needle/hook wholesalers, one for surina wood and the other doing ebony, bone and rosewood. They also do shawl pins & buttons.

So, I’d like your views on what treen you think I should stock? What’s your favourite needsle/hook size? Do you make things that would like quirky buttons, or a decorative shawl pin?

Secondly, as I ‘blogged in October, Jonanne J. won the £40 of yarn competition. Congratulations there!

Thirdly, upcoming shows:

1. Stitch and Craft 2011 – Stand KB1 – Olympia 2, 17th -20th March 2011
   • At Stitch and Craft (leaftlet attached!), as well as having a stand with all manner of everything on it, I’m giving workshop every day at 15:30:
     “Space Dyeing with Kool-Aid – Kool-Aid dyeing is incredibly easy and gives a dyer of any age almost instant gratification. Included in the class will be some colour theory, the technique for microwave space dyeing and a whole heap of fun!”
2. Quilt and Embroidery Show 2011 – Uttoxeter Race course, 15th-17th April 2011
   • I’ll be aiming to rebalance what stock I take to aim at embroiderers rather than knitters, so no chunky yarns! If you would like to pop in and see me for knitting or crochet supplies however, just me know sort of what you are looking for beforehand, and I’ll pack it for you!
3. Knitting and Stitching 2011 – Stand TGA13 – Alexandra Palace, 6th-9th October 2011

Fourthy, as I have to make a re-stocking order by the end of next week for Stitch and Craft, I’d like your views on what colours you mostly like buying/creating with.

Personally, I like reds and oranges, however from what I can gather talking to other knitters, what we sold at the last show and from generally looking around the internet, I believe that in the UK, we like turquoise yarn as a run away favourite! Then purples, reds, oranges, strong blues and finally green yarns. We don’t generally buy yellows, pinks or other weak “pastel” colours in large quantities as the quality of the light in the UK doesn’t show them off very well.

Given that most of the yarns that didn’t sell are yellow, pink or pastel… I can see agreement with the theory! However, as I have a customer base, I thought that I’d check if all that theory is right.

Please leave me a comment about treen and/or colours and I hopefully be seeing you at one of the shows!

They aren’t on “general sale” yet, because, although I love Teaching, and it is something I do in other spheres of my life all the time, I don’t yet have the materials and coursework written for dyeing as yet.

So, what I’ve posted is very much “a taste of what is to come”, with a listing of a reasonsable price for my skills and the course materials.

However, if you are dying to have me teach a dyeing class at your facilites, just get in touch!

Holden Shawl by MagicMiniatures

It’s the Holden Shawl, as knitted by MagicalMinatures on ravelry, using 150g of Aleena “Silk of Heaven” yarn.

I’ve got about 2Kgs of Aleena in stock (Although the above was the last I had in stock of colourway AL008), which I MUST photograph and post ASAP!

So, if you fancy a bash at this, do let me know!