Monday 9 April 2012

Red Bags and Red Rags

Today I have been finishing the red bag I designed to show of the yarn a friend had spun for me and writing up the pattern and I would have finished the latter if I could remember how to put a border into a Page Plus document and colour it the way I want. Am now too tired to try again and I have to get up in the morning so am not going to look at it again till tomorrow. Here is a rather bad picture of the bag to be going on with.

I have also been seeing red over the subject of a certain publishing company much talked about at present in knitting circles. This company once published quite a good knitting magazine but was hopelessly badly managed in financial terms by the owner. Heavily in debt they offered a sock club with patterns and indy dyed yarn at £96 for 6 bi-monthly installments but despite this large injection of cash still opted to put themselves into voluntary liquidation when an unpaid bill owner took out a CCJ against them and won. Thus walking away scot free from over £230,000 of declared unpaid debts. Then the owner's husband set up another publishing company, paid a pittance for the 'good will' of the first company and started the whole sorry saga again. Sadly this is 'just' legal in the UK.

Now I got burnt by the sock club but not by much - none of the patterns matched the yarns, the final yarn was commercial not indy dyed and the last pattern still hasn't materialised, but others suffered loss of livelihood and far more unpleasant consequences. Now the owner of the first company - who is running the new company in all but name (legal niceties and all that) is blaming the defrauded and unpaid for her situation, calling them names, claiming they are bullying her and tweeting about them from her now blocked Twitter account. This makes me see red and especailly when other people side with her and say those of us complaining are being unfair, vicious and/or mean.

Having got that off my chest I shall go to bed and leave any readers that I might have to decided for themselves which side to sit on.

P.S. I made it all the way through Lent without buying yarn and celebrated yesterday with 4 skeins from Nimu Yarns  that I am assured are already on their way to me - excellent customer service is the usual in the knitting world making the situation described about even more indefensible in my opinion.

Monday 2 April 2012

Better late than never - catch up

Its been rather a long time since I posted but I am taking the plunge and trying to get into a better posting habit.


It has been a very mixed start to the year work wise and least said soonest mended about that. I have however been knitting and sewing (but I forgot to photograph the sewing before sending it off in a swap)and designing. I am quite pleased with the 2 finished socks:


The first one I have called Egg Boxed and it has been written and charted and is in the hands of 2 wonderful test knitters as I write. 




 This second patterns is called Chiltern Beeches and is being written and charted at the moment before other wonderful test knitters are lined up to try it out.
 I have also been very brave and to date have not bought any yarn during Lent - not even for the swap I have been involved with - a fact of which I am inordinately proud (although I don't seem to be any richer!).