CHSI Stitches 2020

Hi!  How are you doing?

It's a blustery Wednesday here in Winwick - not so different, really, from two weekends ago when I drove down to Birmingham to meet up with the West Yorkshire Spinners team for the CHSI Stitches trade show.  I can't believe that it's been a year since I was last there - that was the official launch of the Winwick Mum Collection of Signature 4ply yarn which means that it's been nearly a year since it's been out in the world!  Wow, that year has gone quickly - and it's been an amazing one too as I've seen my yarn knitted up into so many projects.

This year's trade show was a good opportunity for me to see what's coming up from West Yorkshire Spinners (oh, I'm so nosey!) and now you can have a sneak peek too!  Do you want to come and have a look around?  

Finding your way around

I've been doing some updating on the blog recently and today seems like as good a time as any to tell you about what I've been doing - and hopefully it will help you to find things a bit more easily.

Here's the blog as you'll see it when you first visit the page (although because it's a blog, that central section with the blog post will look different depending on when you visit) ...

All of the main reference pages in the blog are quickly accessible from the pictures down the right hand side.

If you are here to knit socks, you'll need to click on this picture here which you'll see at the top on the right hand side of the page ...

This takes you to all the Sockalong tutorials and the download page for the basic 4ply Sockalong sock pattern.  If you want to learn to knit socks, this is the main page that you're going to need!

February half term

It's the school holidays again.  Seriously, it only feels like five minutes since the last school holidays and that was when?  Christmas?  How can we be in mid-February already?!

Well, the start of our week was heralded by Storm Dennis which came hot on the heels of Storm Ciara and there's been terrible flooding all over the country - my heart goes out to everyone whose lives have been turned upside down by the flood waters.  I can't begin to imagine the despair of seeing the water creep (and sometimes race) closer to your home and knowing there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Today is calm and mild.  There's even a hint of sunshine - a bit pale and watery, but sunshine nonetheless.  Small daughter, who has now joined the ranks of teenagers who could quite easily turn sleeping into an Olympic sport (although not at bedtime, strangely enough ...), is snuggled in with one of our cats who's a bit under the weather at the moment.  I don't like it when our pets aren't well - it's as bad as having poorly babies as they can't tell you what's wrong.  The vet is looking after him, though, and we've got a round of blood tests to come later this week to see if we can get to the bottom of it.  In the meantime, he's feeling safe and warm somewhere in small daughter's duvet and once you're curled up with a cat, the incentive to get out of bed is even less so I may not see her before lunch time!

She's got a sleepover organised with friends this week so I've got a so-far undecided number of girls descending to camp out in our living room.  I suggested that we might all load up into the car and take the dog for a walk at the beach and was greeted with "nah, it's boring", "it's pointless just walking on a beach", "it's too cold", "it's too sandy" so I've taken that as we're not going.  Small daughter must have felt sorry for me as she has promised to come with me another day (I'm grateful, I think?!) but I'm just going to leave them to it.  They see each other every day at school but that's not the same as having hours out of school to spend together and they don't really get to do that very often.  I think as long as I remember to feed them every now and again it'll all work out very well 😀.