Saturday, December 25, 2010

Tis the season to be jolly!

!!! EXTENDED UNTIL SUNDAY, JANUARY 9TH !!!

Happy holidays to everyone! I hope you all have a great time with your loved ones, peaceful and joyous. And sorry for not writing earlier, but well I guess you can imagine how busy one can get.
I am happy seeing the family and the friends, eating loads of great food and having just watched the Doctor Who christmas special. And we have the perfect winter wonderland outside with heaps of snow.

We also wanted to launch a little christmas special for our shop during the holidays, but since I am a bit late we will prolong it until New Years eve, midnight. If you start following us on twitter, add us to your circle on etsy, include one of our items in your etsy treasury or like or share us on facebook, we will give you a gift certificate with 10% off with the order you use it for.
If you send us back photos of your finished items from our yarn with the permission to publish them or if you write about us on your blog including photos of our yarns or thereof made items, you will be rewarded with a 15 % off certificate.
The vouchers will be valid for half a year (until June 30, 2011) and can be used for all items in the shop unless marked otherwise in the description, but not for the shipping costs or other gift certificates.
If you did several of the things above, we will give you a bit more, but we will judge that individually.
All you have to do is to send us an email to this address with your information and proof/indication of your activity and we will return an email with your personal code and the amount of the discount.

Under all entries we will also give away this beautiful yarn:


It is called "Soft Glacier" and measures 80m, 10 wpi and 57g. The material is extrafine, white merino and it was plied with a green glittering thread, holding green glass beads. The winner will be drawn on New Year's Day.

Be safe and have a happy new year,

Cheshirecat & Tini

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

It was fun!

I really had a good time yesterday at the EPFL market, sharing a stand with filambulle, spoutknit and jissa! It was just over too soon, and they did not offer anything of that delicious soup they had the year before. Also the (free) mulled wine was finished very early, but I guess we all had enough to be even more merrier than we were already. And without bragging I would say we had the most interesting stand of all, selling yarn, knitted things, cute little ornaments and handmade toffees.

I parted with a Santa Clause yarn (in Europe, Santa is coming on December 6th, so it was perfect for that day), and one of my favourites, the Holly Berry. I liked it so much, that I just had to take a photo which I had not done before, and the new owner promised me a photo of the finished item. It consists of a mix of bluefaced leiceter wool, tussah silk and soy silk, all in off-white and creamy tones, which I had mixed with traces of green and red to match the holly fabric I included in the yarn. Some golden sparkle, red glass beads and green holly sequins are also spun-in. I might make another one, I liked it a lot!


In the next days I will add the things which have not been sold at the markets to the shop, so be prepared to find lots of new yarns and other nice items very soon.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Phew!

Why oh why must there be always such a stressful time before the end of the year? I haven't had one day to sleep in for weeks! I have been busy with work, having a conference and a short course in Fribourg. Which is quite cute by the way and has a chocolate factory outlet of one of my favourite brands right next to the university's campus.
Additionally, we had quite a lot of snowfall which made the train ride, though very early in the morning, even prettier and having a delicious hot chocolate in the factory's cafe even nicer. It was also great to finally meet Saskia, who has knitted some really beautiful things from Tini's and my yarns.
This is a cute little cowl from the "Raspberry Swirl"



and vou can find a picture of her gorgeous scarf from Tini's "Kiss from a Rose" in her blog post here.


Then there has been the first of the two christmas markets, the one in Bellevue. It was the whole weekend and I was really busy before, finishing stitch markers, finding some decoration and finishing several new winter yarns, including a new "Marmite d'Escalade", for which I even have a perfect box now!
You can see it at the left side of the picture of my part of the stand, next to a bunch of wintery art yarns I will you tell more about later:



Here is a glimpse at one of Katharina's wonderful shawls. You can find out more about them on her website.



I did not sell extremely much but it was still fun. The time also just flew by because I took my spinning wheel and lots of people stopped by amazed to watch me spinning.
It was very "sympa" and I am already excited about the market at the EPFL, which will be quite different.

I also went to a craft fair in Lausanne, but it did not have much to offer in regard to knitting and spinning things. There were several stands for patchwork, though and I could not resist to get some fabric for my evergrowing stash. Some already found its way into this "Christmas Tartan" yarn.



Next activities will include more knitting, some sewing, the obligatory baking of the cookies and a trip to London to spend some time with Tini before she moves back to good old Germany.