To cake or not to Cake?

Just a random thought for a Thursday in February.

When you buy a skein of yarn, do you take it away from the shop/festival as a skein, or do you ask for it to be wound?

Now there should really be a bit of back story to this random question. Gail of the IBKC was just on a weekend trip to Amsterdam, where she just so happened to stumble into Stephen and Penelope, yes that Stephen and Penelope! Being the little child that i am, Gail was asked politely to bring me back a skein of speckled hedgehog fibre yarn and to let her pal Stephen to choose the colour!
ANYWAY, Gail picked one up for me and Mr West even wound it which started a debate with Mr fluph.
        "Why do you keep all your yarn in skeins?"
After a brief think I came up with the fact that I love nothing better than starting a new project by winding my yarn into cakes; It is just part of the starting something new ritual, winding that skein and popping it into the project bag along with the newly printed pattern and needles ready to go.
When i look at the caked yarn in my stash it reminds me of projects that haven't worked out, or things i meant to start but haven't. It's such a subconscious thing. Also skeins stay nice even after a good squishing!

Its often a question i get asked in the shop, why hanks? or people exclaim
             "my granny use to make us wind these."
Basically it comes down to this, hanks are easier to stack than balls, trust me on this one. Or if the yarn comes from a small producer or an indie dyer, the yarn already comes pre skeined so turning it into balls just adds on more time (and therefore money).


So Mr fluph I am definitely a skein girl, Unless wound by Stephen West!



I also thought i would throw in the fact that I have the facilities in the shop to wind yarn. Any yarn bought in fluph i will wind for you if you so wish. just let me know when you are buying.
If you have anything from your stash that needs wound feel free to bring it in and ill wind it for you for a small fee of 50p per skein.


So what do you prefer? do you like the cake, or the skein?

What is this fluphy twisters?

So by now you will have heard me sporadically call the fluphy twisters to arms about our next meetup.
But Lj what or who are the fluphy twisters.
I would love to say they are a bunch of rag tag superheros who meet in secret at a local yarn shop to maintain their cover. When in actuallity they are our knit nighters. Its our Saturday knit day.

They meet in the shop every 3rd Saturday of the month in fluph from 10.30am - 1.30pm ish. There is always cake, tea and sometimes crafting!

Same rules as knit night (i should write those down) Completly free, open to crafts of all types (we arnt craftist), all ages and genders.

For the rest of 2015 meet ups land on these dates
August 15th
September 26th - rescheduled from the 19th as thats marks dads wedding and i'll be closed
October 17th
December 5th - our last one for 2015....ive heard there will be cake :)

Swantsalong

The infamous Clare Devine are having a swants along!
Want to join in? share your photos and progress, its a bit of an informal along, basically we are just going to make swants and then post silly photos so use the tag #swantsalong and lets see those jumpers before you cut them up!

Im in love with mine, a nice cheeky ebay find.

Want to find out what swants are, the inventor has a great tutorial over on his blog.