I am completely overwhelmed by the response to the publication of the Manchester Shawl a couple of weeks ago.  Thank you to everyone who had purchased and given me very positive feedback.  This has been a MASSIVE confidence boost to me and I am now looking at ways I can make 2017 my year of designing and publishing.  I have lots of shawls made that I need to write up, and design ideas that I need to work through!

At the moment I’m working on a Tunisian shawl design.  I had looked for a shawl that had certain elements and found lots of shawls that were *nearly* right but nothing that was *exactly* right.  So decided to make my own.  After lots of false starts and ‘almost’ rights (I like this, and this but not that….) I think I finally have a combination that is working so that is finally coming along

I’m loving the yarn though.

Talking of yarn I’ve decided that I need to pull out the Stash and reorganise it all (again).  I need to order some boxes for it and dedicate a day to putting it all on the floor and then back into some better order.  At the moment I have two large boxes (and several smaller ones.  And maybe a couple of drawers.  And my ‘current project bags’……oh dear) which is ‘sorted’ into UNDER 4ply and OVER 4ply.

As much as I love those beautiful photos of rainbow cascading yarn cakes, it just isn’t practical with my life and I really don’t need to split by colour group or fibre – it’s not that kind of stash.  Frankly if I sorted my stash into ‘yarn with silk’ I’d have one huge pile and a couple of balls of cotton.  So I’m thinking a box per yarn weight/WPI so when I decide next year to design something in DK or 4ply or cobweb I can just pull out that box for a play and inspiration.

Does anybody else do this?  Have a system for something for years and then suddenly one day realise it’s not working anymore?

I don’t have a free weekend until October – but watch out for a photo update!