I broke the HipKnits shop.
We're fixing it this week.
We have tonnes of goodies ready to go on the shop as soon as I fix it, I think that it should be up and running properly tomorrow.
x
This poor blog has been sadly neglected, like so many other things, recently.
After nearly 6 years of blogging I've finally decided that I just can't do it any more. Too many other demands on my time, too many days of feeling guilty because I can't post here. Maybe that will change, maybe not. I'm going to leave the archives up for a while but no guarantees how long they'll stay here for.
We're making some changes to HIpKnits so that the blog will be part of the shop over there, keep it all nice and tidy and together. Dad is planning an update for Friday this week and then every Friday after that, give you something to look at over the weekends!
I'll still be uploading pics to flickr, on Ravelry every now and again, posting on the YF and SH blogs as time allows and coming along to all the shows. So its not like I'm disappearing completely is it?
All HipKnits queries should go to infoAThipknits.co.uk all Kerrie queries to kerrieATkalmedia.co.uk but be warned, the kerrie email address fills up pretty darned quickly these days so bear with me. There is mucho going on behind the scenes that keeps me from emails these days.
I seem to have been sewing lots and lots recently, as well as knitting tonnes. Most things seem to be for the magazines but this one I think I can share with you. its a review pattern that I did for Sew Hip 2 so just to be fair I think i should not tall you what pattern it is or anything about the review. Only that I'm super super proud of it and how the gorgeous Trinity looks in it. She wore it to nursery the other day and I was slightly surprised that it had lasted the day without falling apart. I'm going to make her lots and lots more of them to wear all winter I think!
I love her cheesy face in this picture, if you can ignore the hula hoops then I think its pretty much a perfect picture of the funny little girl. I got to visit a very tiny little newborn this week (well, he is actually quite large for a newborn but you get the idea) and oh my goodness it made Trinity look like she should be old enough to drive. I'm feeling very broody about little babies at the moment, I think I need to borrow one for a while to remind myself how little they sleep and how much they cry.
It was my gran's birthday at the weekend and I made her a quilt. Inspired by Manda's charm pack quilt in the current Sew Hip, I used a totally different colourway and its a bit lumpy and bumpy in places, but I think she liked it. I used the new Amy Butler fabric that I bought when I was in New York together with some charm squares that have been hanging around in my stash for a while. I seemed to have hundreds of the charm squares, I made a mini quilt with them, then this one and I still have a whole pile of them left. What to do with them?
The kids have been quite attached to the quilt as I've been making it and I'm wondering whether to make more for them. I think that there's a limit as to how many quilts you can have in one house though and I'm sure that Wayne would say we're close to nearing that limit. Maybe I'll make them for other people for Christmas this year and then wait to make more for us. Or maybe not, its a little addictive.
I thought I was getting to grips with everything last week but something turned around and bit me in the bum. I'm not going to go into all the details here (you'd never come back if I did!!) but the finale at the end of the week involved 2 disasters - firstly my lovely car breaking down on the M25 on the way back from an 18 hour day working in Bradford with Lou and the team. I had to be rescued home on the back of a truck at a cost of far too much money, but what could I do? My Green Flag cover is part of my car insurance and I'd never looked at the details closely enough to see that I only had a small radius of recovery, so I had to pay per mile to get home. What choice did I have though?
The second disaster was discovering on Friday that someone had kindly cloned my debit card and spent almost £10,000 of my money that I don't have in Amsterdam over 2 days. So until the fraud report and investigation have gone through I have no money and a whole pile of legitimate payments (mortgage etc) that have been returned as unpaid. Don't get me started on this one though...
Tomorrow I'm going to post a happy post, with lovely pictures and a press release announcing our new YF editor. See, ignore the bad and concentrate on the good. I feel like that's all I can do at the moment!
Its been a wee while hasn't it?
Ally Pally was great, we met so many lovely people that I can't begin to tell you all about it. Over 2 weeks now since we started its already becoming a dim and distant memory. It is always a great show, this year was a lot quieter sales wise than previous years have been, but i guess that's the economic climate at the moment isn't it? It is still the best show of the season, although we have Dublin next week and Harrogate at the end of November to look forward to as well so they will be good I'm sure. We're looking forward to meeting more and more of our customers at those 2 shows, Lou is doing one of them and I'm doing the other.
As well as the excitement of seeing YF on the shelves in Tescos et al I picked up a copy of Essex life last week which has an interview that I gave them on running a small business out of managed offices. They managed not to make me sound too silly and 2/3 of a page on KAL Media in a nice glossy county magazine can only be a good thing.
On the subject of magazines, does anyone know what happened to Adorn?
I'm still not properly around until next week sometime, I'm hardly home at the moment and when I am home I'm hanging out with Wayne and the kids so the blog has been badly neglected. Next week is the week when huge amounts of work are lifted from my shoulders as our new Yf editor starts on Monday and surely it has to get easier from then on, right? I'll share some pics of all the bits and bobs I've been working on recently soon as well, my camera is getting good and full of yummy things.
Oh and I need to set dad up with a HipKnits update, that will be Monday I think. HipKnits is now totally his really, he did all the work for Ally Pally and I'm happy to be photo taker / site updater from now on. Its odd handing things over sometimes, but always for the best.