How quickly time flies - it seems like only a few weeks ago that I was preparing my "Welcome 2016" flatlay and pondering over my goals and aspirations for the coming year. 12 months later, so much has happened!

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There are rolags (long rolags from a blending board, and lovely fluffy chunky ones off the carders), plenty of hand dyed top, some pencil roving, handpulled roving, and super soft and squishy blended tops. Some colourways are OOAK, but some are so wonderfully vibrant that it would be a crime to not make them permanent!

This has been a project in the making for a good few months now, and an idea floating round my head for so many more - a big thank you to everyone who has been helpful and supportive (because really, "I want to paint fluff and roll it around on a big brush" doesn't sound like such an impressive career choice ;) )

Click here to go to the shop!

The link will go live on Monday :)

Normally, I've been a "finish one thing, before you start another" when it comes to knitting. I'd seen people with ten, twenty projects on their needles and I had two thoughts: a) how will you remember which is which? and b) how is it possible to have that many needles??! And then... I became one of them. Read below to see what's what :)

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For a brief but wonderful while, Emma and Querube came back to Barcelona. Life fitted right back to its usual ways - with coffee and cake and stories of the last few months, accompanied by wandering around the city and discovering nooks and corners that we'd never visited. This time, though, we were joined in Cosmo by the most fluffy, playful, adorable little puppy - a welcome addition to the last weekend together :)

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January is a busy month at work, so lately my life seems like: get up early, go to work, come home, eat, sleep, repeat. On top of that, we've reorganised the flat a little, and I'm trying to sort out various shelves and cupboards to make them clean and tidy for the year. So, today I went to a 3 year old's birthday party in an incredibly gorgeous garden - a little suburban oasis to escape a hectic city life, complete with tortoises, chickens, and a pig whose name translates to "Little Bacon"...

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A big adéu to 2015, and a big bon dia to 2016 :)

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Didn't this year go quickly? Last time I checked, I was moving into a new flat and it was barely August. Now, four months have flown by and we find ourselves on the 31st once again.

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We had the loveliest Christmas this year - exploring, sightseeing, eating more than I thought ever possible, and lazing about with family and friends after being away from London for a whole year.

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So, being the wonderful person I am, I bent down on Saturday night to pick up my t-shirt that had fallen on the floor. Aaaaaand... I couldn't get back up.

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Have you ever had some beautiful OOAK fibre go missing in the mail? Now imagine that's happened three times in the last month :(

Something's going very, very wrong with the mail in Spain lately... Beautiful batts from CountessAblaze - MIA. It's quite odd because I ordered from fibre the week after, and it arrived within a couple of days. Then batts and locks and rolags from Siobhan Crafts - MIA. And on top of it all, yarn for a sweater (that's like 6 skeins of sock yarn, guys!!) from Fondant Fibre, custom dyed - MIA. Screaming intensifies. I also had some face oils go missing but the replacements arrived - but whatever, it's not OOAK wool, yo.

Generally, I feel quite awful because these are all one-woman shops and I don't want to burden them with what's quite clearly a Spanish mail problem... A few more days until they're deemed officially missing by Royal Mail - and we'll see what happens.

On top of that - another disappointment! The Xisqueta wool I ordered is a let down. It's been washed so awfully that it's really felted together, and any attempts to card it result in a tube of sponge instead of a rolag. Maybe that's due to the natural crimp of the wool anyway, but it's still not what I expected. Maybe I'm comparing it to long and straight merino fibres... But I've really got no idea what to do with it next. Hmm.



Until then, I've been spinning some lovely superfine Shetland in Sherbert Dip by Fondant Fibre - I'm trying a fractal spin so should have some nice matchy-matchy bits and some lovely crazy barberpoling. I split the braid halfway lengthways and spun one bit as is, and the other half I've split into about 8 more thin strips which I'm working on today. I've plonked myself down in front of the telly, catching up on last night's X Factor, and sipping on a nice cuppa as I spin. Small pleasures.

Having almost no time to knit or spin after work, you learn to do things in small amounts bit-by-bit.

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I've been meaning to post this for a long, long time. But then I was moving house... And the lack of internet made it impossible... And then I started working... And then it seemed like TDF was all too far away for it to matter anymore. But, really, when I think about it, why should three weeks of solid effort be ignored? So here's what I managed to chuck together this year :)

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They say there's nothing quite so detrimental to publishing a blog as a lack of internet connection. And they say that there's no customer service quite so slow as Spanish customer service. You can probably see where I'm heading with this...

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The last week of TDF, the spinning picked up! I actually got quite a lot done and I'm really happy with the results :) Lots of different techniques, colours and fibres made for a very busy but enjoyable week.

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This week's been fairly quiet... At least on the yarn front! I've been running around like a crazy woman, sorting out ID numbers and social security and bank accounts, not to mention viewing various flats around Barcelona. We actually saw one near the Santa Maria del Mar church - great location - that had zero windows. Not. A. Single. Window. I don't know how the tenants there deal with the humidity, and I don't even want to think about what happens inside the sweatbox when someone has too many beans on their toast in the morning. No escape.

Anyway! This week's project has been more spindle spinning at the mister's house, and working on Pigging Out, my combo spin of Cherry Bakewell and Pigs. By the end of Friday 17th, the end of the second week, I'd make a good start on the braid of Pigs, but not much more! Time for some more gratifying spins to finish up the last week, something nice and quick and chunky I think.

So far, we're off to a good start! Wheel has been turning, stash has been dwindling, and I've actually produced some rather lovely yarn!

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So, here we are! It's already July, Tour de Fleece is starting tomorrow, and I've got a pile of handspun skeins that are yet to be photographed and written about. As it happens, June has just been insane. The school year finished so the girls were driving me crazy occupying more of my time; I've been job hunting and filling in applications and doing online tests and attending interviews left right and centre; and although weekends are my prime spinning time, it's also the only time I have to spend with my boyfriend lately. So! As a result, these lovely handspun skeins have been languishing in the cupboard, waiting for some attention.

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Okay, so I missed it by a week. Oops.

Early June 2014, I ordered a "learn to spin" kit online. Inside, a clunky wooden spindle, and a few balls of natural Finn wool (it's still one of my favourites breeds, even now). A few YouTube videos later, and I was park-and-drafting, and making some kind of super slubby rope that wouldn't really come in handy for anything in particular. A few days later, the slubs started to even out, and I was spinning some kind of fairly-even-if-a-little-fat rope. And then, 10th June 2014, I plied, washed, skeined and photographed my first handspun yarn. I called it Cappucino. Super bulky, probably underplied, but even now it's stashed away in London as a reminder of where I started.

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Summer's here, which means Spain is all about sunshine and siestas... and lovely new wool braids languishing in their mailing bags waiting to be photographed.

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