Experimenting with Yarn and Kool Aid ::

As I mentioned in my post on Monday, last week I dappled in a bit of yarn dyeing.

Nothing remotely fancy, I used some sachets of Kool Aid I purchased at Wonderwool last year, some white sock yarn I purchased from my local yarn store, a frame I knocked together using bits of wood I had around the house and an evening of my time.

But from that I managed to produce something in 6 colours, that stripes (fairly evenly too!).  It's not perfect, there are a few patches of white and I think the sock itself looks a little like someone's taken a white sock and coloured it in with a bunch of sharpies, but hey, it was my first attempt at self striping yarn and only my second ever attempt at dyeing so I think I did OK. Plus I learned a whole lot to improve the process next time.

Unfortuantely I have much too much work to catch up on this week to spend much time on these socks, but I'm managing to sneak a stripe in here and there throughout my days.

Happy New Year ::

A belated Happy New Year to you!  I hope you all had fabulous festive seasons, full of family, food and fun.

We're only just starting to return to normal here, Milo goes back to school tomorrow then there will be a whole lot of catching up to do on my part! The school holidays and general festive chaos have meant I don't really feel I've started my new year proper. The slates aren't clean (ie the house and workroom are as far from tidy as can be) my thoughts and plans have yet to be properly put into place and my diary remains as empty as the day I bought it (that's not to say I am free of any commitments for the upcoming year, I just haven't had time to put them neatly away within the pages yet).  

What I do have have wistful thoughts and hopeful plans for the upcoming year, zooming around in my mind, waiting for a peaceful moment to be put into words on a page.  I don't really have much success at resolutions (who does?!) but I do like to put onto paper all I would like to achieve over the upcoming 12 months, whether that be work or personal achievements, realistic or less so.  I find that writing them down and returning to those words regularly helps to keep my hopes at the front of my mind and hopefully this means I'm less likely to forget what it actually is I'm striving to achieve once the regular routine of work gets back underway.  

Over the past 3 years I've also been using Susannah Conway's Unravelling workbook to help me look back over the 12 months just gone and plan through the 12 months ahead.  I love these little books and keep them all in the same little binder, it's nice to be able to look back at the dreams I dreamed and see how many have become a reality.  You can download the workbook here.  I'm still slowly working my way through mine for this year.

A few of my hopes for this year are ::

• blog more regularly and with a better routine (I'm really looking forward Blogtacular in May which I'm hoping will help me advance further with this)
• create some new lines for my etsy shop (I really want to create pieces that are much more 'me', items I really want to wear and am really proud to sell)
• learn more fibre arts (I've dabbled a little in yarn dyeing but would really like to do more of this and advance on from using Kool Aid!  I'd also like to get my knitting machine working and explore what this has to offer)
• visit more friends and family
• make an actual proper decent income from my craft businesses!

Wishing you all much success and creativity in 2014.