A lovely weekend and a broken webshop. Argh!

Perhaps this eight blog posts a month thing isn't working like it should? I get dead excited at the beginning of the month and then I write my eight posts and a few more and then... nothing... Ugh. At least it was only five days and not the months I'd been leaving you with recently... I think this can be a catchup type blog and Boyf is getting at me to show you the goodies he brought me back from his jollies but I forgot to photograph them (again) so that'll have to be another day.

Shall I start with Friday?

 I've been super ill. Like, not deathly deathly ill but pretty bad with a massive side order of shat-knacked. So I was going to take the nephew swimming on Friday but, and I hate to say it but this was happily, the swimming baths were all closed. So, I did a tiny little bit of accounting and had a nap instead. But then, I got up to some v. exciting things. Here's a little sneak peek:

Mwahaha! Can you guess where I was?! Yes, yes, yes. I was at Vezza's. National Love Your Local Yarn Shop Day is a-coming and I've got Verity making some veeeeeeeery interesting grads for me. But because she's now knitting her own blanks: 

It's taking a bit longer than it used to. So I helped her ball up some skeins, using a ball winder: 

 

And then knit up the blanks on a knitting loom pictured above. It's long and boring work and it bloody kills your arms. One day I'm going to go around for dying (I haven't told her this...) but I think I'll love that part of it. I think she probably loves it too but I'll be 'helping' not just stealing her favourite bits. 

Then I spent some time smooching and admiring.... Ahhhhh. 

 

And then, at the bottom of that massive box I found the skein on my dreeeeeeeeams! I can't remember what she's going to call it. But it's a rainbow in 12 parts around the skein. You can't tell that once it's balled up and I, for one, cannot wait to see what it looks like knitted up! 

 Buuuuut. There's a spanner in the works, I'm knitting these:

Which, up until the moment that I laid eyes on my new 12 colour rainbow, was the best yarn that I'd ever seen. It's one of the Two Of A Kind Grad Yarns but something went wrong during the process and it ended up with a load of knots along the skein so I'm knocking up some socks for Vezza and I do love it but seriously... I wanna knit MY socks. NOW!

By the by, there's nothing I can do with that apart from plod along. On Saturday I spent a fair bit of time knitting and chatting with customers so that by ten o'clock the first of the rainbow socks was done. On Sunday I had a lovely lesson teaching the second Learn To Crochet class - not much time for selfish knitting during a lesson, more's the pity...

On Monday, the weather was bloody miserable when we were woken up at about six. So we cancelled some plans to go bowling and sat around watching Game Of Thrones and knitting/crochet. But by nine o'clock or so the weather had turned  for the better and we were getting restless so we thought about going to Wollaton Park where two lovely friends were doing a craft fair (hi Steph and Rebecka! Hope it went well!) but we agreed that it wasn't enough of a challenge. Then we thought about Newstead Abbey but thought that wasn't countryside-y enough. In the end we agreed on Dale Abbey which is a ruined abbey just on the other side of Stapleford. It's in the middle of a picturesque village in proper countryside countryside if you know what I mean.

Five bloody miles. That's how long I walked. Up hill and down dale. Bear in mind that I'm not that fit in the first place but on top of that I've spent the last week on my deathbed and barely moved a muscle - certainly no muscles that didn't need moving... He also lied to me about how high we had to travel - he told me iis was 53 feet at the highest. It wasn't, it was 53 metres! That's three times as high!!!! And more, it's not just up 53 metres - it's up 53 metres, down, 20, up 20, down, 45, up 32... blah blah blah. Up and bloody down. But I must admit, it was worth it to do some sock knitting here:

What a view! It also meant that I saw and climbed my first stile since I was a child but apparently, the photo won't upload here... You know what I stile looks like though?

I saw the most beautiful bush in the world.

I had THE MOST AMAZING PICNIC EVER! Seriously. That tomato was the best tomato I've ever had and we had real tea, brewed in a tea pot, and drunk in proper cups:

Finished off with creme eggs. Ahhh Easter. I know what you're all about. 

Anyway, we found the Abbey - it's peaking right in the centre of that photo above the bush, behind a tree. That's all it was. One side of a building with no glass. And there are bushes and electric fences all the way around it so you can't see where the abbey would have been even and I actually took a video from over the wall and there were bloody animals - maybe cows - living there. COWS IN AN ABBEY!

And then we stopped off at a lovely cafe for ice cream and Elderflower drink. Lurvely.

Not enough knitting though. But I made up for that last night when I dreamt of a stitch pattern last night and I've just done a bit of texting and calling of my contacts and I might be publishing it through somebody else not just this blog and rav! IMAGINE!

I also dreamed about another opportunity that I forgot about because I am the worst business woman ever. It's a series of blogs for somebody else about what it is to be a yarn shop owner and I think I'd enjoy it, as long as it's not too often, perhaps once a month. So I've got back in contact with the lady and I'll see where that goes.

And on top of that I've been inspired to get the mailing list back on the go. Maybe this month! Maybe. We'll see. It's been a few months - I don't think we've done one since Christmas and it was always June that did it before so it'll certainly be a different tone... as it were... slightly less formal...

All of this comes from how slow last week and this have been! It's those bloody students leaving us to see their families. Can you imagine! And on top of that it's been nice weather. Ugh. I hate this nice weather. Today, miserable and rainy as it is, suits me much better. Ahh well, I never worry about slow bits now because I know you lot will be back in when projects are finished and the gardens are growing as they should... Especially when you see what we've got on order to turn up this week!

HAHAHAHA! AMAZING YES! These are new Riot DK's and Riot Chunkies and Zig Zag 4plies! AMAZING!

....Although I can't link those for you because apparently our webshop's gone down... I am well over today. Blurgh.

Right, I'm off to find all of the information for the the mailing list because if I can't do webshopping today then I'm going to bloody do something. Ugh. Can we all cross our fingers that the webshop is back up and running tomorrow? In t'meantime - click here to sign up to the new and improved mailing list (when I've done it...).

And I really am off.

Love Eleanor.

P.s. I'm in too much of a mood now to read through this so I'm sure there's loads of spelling mistakes etc. apologies in advance!