Well, almost!  This time next week I'll be sitting quietly in a corner of our friends house having travelled down to Edinburgh and set up for Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2016 wondering what it is I've forgotten to dye/pack/bring/do/knit/label.  The hard work of setting up the stand will have been done, and everything will be under wraps, ready for an early start to this lovely event on Friday next week, bright and early at 9.00am.

To say that Lockhart Towers has been a hive of activity over the last couple of months would be a gross understatement!  There have been lists - lists of yarn dyed, lists of yarn yet to dye, lists of yarn packed:

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There has been selection, buying and packing into of new storage boxes which fit into Tatiana, the trailer, perfectly:

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There is knitting blocking (in the bathroom!)

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and there is knitting still on the needles and yet to be blocked:

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and between all of that there has been dyeing, a LOT of dyeing.   Including a new range of colours called "Hubble Bubble".  This range is fun to dye, but time consuming, as each and every hank of yarn goes through 4 dye baths to achieve layer upon layer of colour, and as a result each and every hank will be unique and most definitely cannot be replicated.   The new base, Burras, takes this method of dyeing particularly well, so the Hubble Bubble colours will be available on both this base and the Reliable Sock yarn base.  Here is a wee taster of some of the colours coming with me to Edinburgh:

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I think this one with burnt orange and grey is one of my favourites so far:

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But then there is this one:

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The bases I will have with me will range in weight from fine laceweight through to DK, but my main focus is on 4 ply, and I currently have 6 different 4ply bases for you to choose from.  There will be multi coloured hanks as well as almost solid colours, many of which will be available on garment quantities.

On the stand I will have the 2 glamorous assistants helping me again, aka Dorothy and Lizzi.  So please do come and say hello.  Ripples Crafts will be in the same place as we were last year - Stand H4.

In amongst all the preparation, I had a little relaxing breather to spend time chatting to Jo Milmine aka Shinybees, and you can hear our chat on her award willing podcast.

A small thorn in my side the past few days, though, has been the parcels of club yarn which went to the post office last week on Monday, and were meant to have been well on their way before the end of the week.  Sadly, due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, this did not happen, and I can only apologise.  I have been assured by the post office that the parcels are on their way and should reach you, hopefully very soon if you are in the UK.   Because our post office is so small, the way we have dispatched parcels in the past is all the parcels go to the post office and they are franked and sent out as quickly as they can cope with them.  Up to this month this has worked well, but we will have to revisit the situation for next month's parcels - but that is something to look into once Edinburgh Yarn Festival is but a distant memory.   I always try and get ALL parcels in the post as speedily as possible, and having this delay with the club yarn parcels this month makes me feel very uncomfortable - those of you who know me will understand!  So my apologies, again, if you are a yarn club member.  Other orders have not been affected by the delay.