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So my plans on regular blogging have, as usual, fallen by the wayside a bit as life has majorly gotten in the way.
The house decoration, as always, took a lot longer to complete, and this prevented me from being able to get near any looms for a while. They’ve all been found again and are getting put back to good use.

I have to say thank you to everyone that came and saw me at ‘By My Own Fair Hand’ craft fair in West Kilbride back in September.

Knit 1 Girl 1 at By My Own Fair Hand

I had a great day and it’s been a while since I’ve done craft fairs, and a while since the public have seen my items in the flesh. The feedback I got was lovely, and even better, the sales were the best I’ve had at any fair. The other stall holders were also of a high quality and we had people coming from far and wide.

This has helped to get me back into business mode and you might have realised that my Etsy shop now has stock in it. I’m still unsure about how easy it is to sell on Etsy, and I need to pay more attention to it as well. The thing is that spending time marketing online and keeping Etsy, Facebook and twitter up to date does take time, and time is a precious thing and I would rather be weaving than promoting. It’s a fine balance and one that I really need to perfect. If anyone is reading this and is a fellow designer who sells online I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on selling and where you’ve found works the best for you.

I’ve also been busy recently with Yarn Club and I’ve now got 16 children, boys as well as girls, sewing, knitting, and felting away. I’m really loving teaching them as they are always so proud of what they’ve made. We’re currently making christmas decorations for the school fair, and they all want to buy the ones they’ve made. Not quite the way it should work, but we’ll see how it goes.

As well as yarn club, the classes at Once A Sheep are back up and running. We’ve recently had success doing double weave on a rigid heddle loom and I’ll be teaching spinning and weaving over the next two weeks.

Of course, I do have college work as well, and it’s taken a bit of effort to get to the weaving stage.

I did have to free up the last warp on my table loom, and it turned into this wall hanging that was a slightly late wedding present for a dear friend of mine.

River in the sand by knit 1 girl 1

It’s made using pure silk and I forgot how much I loved weaving clasped weft patterns. I am definitely wanting to do some more of these as banners for selling.

Once my loom was free again, I’ve been able to get my first pattern samples done and I’m still unsure on what yarns to use. I am using wire in the warp for the first time and I can’t tell you how happy I was when I managed to get it wound on without it springing all over the place. It’s not that hard to weave with and it’s keeping some form of structure so there’s hope of something resembling a rock pool by December.

Samples with wire warp by Ange Sewell – knit 1 girl 1

I’m enjoying the weaving stage of this, but I’ve still got trepidation as to what the final product will look like.

Going back to the title of this post, I have news of a very exciting development for Knit 1 Girl 1 – Ange Sewell.

Over the past few months I’ve been tripping over looms, yarn, art stuff, and the dog in my workroom at home. It’s been acknowledged for a while that all my stuff takes up a great deal of space in our wee house.

I’ve been thinking on and off about taking on a studio in West Kilbride, where I live, but I’ve always been a bit scared to take the leap. West Kilbride is also known as Craft Town Scotland, and their aim is to support crafters set-up and run their businesses, as well as promoting craft to the local community and beyond. I’ve worked with them and crafters over the years and it’s made a huge positive difference to our town.

My business has started to take off over the past few months, and I’ve got some interesting and exciting work coming up next year as well as the usual teaching, which I want to expand locally. Finding somewhere to teach locally is easy, but the rent for a day was getting near to the rent for a studio.

So, I have decided that the time has come to take the leap, and all going well I’m hoping to be moving into my new studio at the beginning of December, ideally in time for Yuletide night where all the shops are open late and everyone comes out to celebrate the start of Christmas.

I’m very excited, and a bit scared as it’s a big commitment, but fingers crossed it will work out.

Over the next few weeks updates on the move will be posted on here and on Facebook, and I will be setting up a mailing list with information on classes and other news.

Do get in touch if you want to know more about the classes, and do pop by once the studio is open.