The Woolly Mother on Esty.com

After much ado, I decided to open an Esty shop for my handspun yarns and, soon to come, spinning accessories. Setting up was pretty easy, though time consuming.

Etsy.com is a oneline shopping site for handmade goods. All items on the website are made by the shop owner therefore making them quite unique and set aside from the commercially mass produced goods. There are some marvellous items and its well worth having a look, especially if you have birthday gifts to find. 

As I enjoy spinning, even more than knitting, the shop will give me an outlet for all the yarns I manage to produce and accumulate. Hopefully, my handspun will find a loving home and be well utilised instead of just sitting around doing nothing.

One yarn is a beautifully soft dusky Burgundy handspun  
It has been spun to accentuate the slubby texture of the yarn, enhancing the colourway with splurges of white and darker burgundy.

This 'Tweed Twist' is a bulkier yarn and very soft. It will knit up very well into a vest or hat and scarf. The yarn will blend perfectly with a white or brown contrast, which can extend the 200grams into a long-sleeved garment for warm winter wear.










Other items include a natural brown bulky yarn, and a pale grey singles which was spun from a very soft corridale fleece.

Coming soon to the shop will be spinning accessories such as handcarder covers, spinning lapcloths, and fabric bobbin protectors. These invaluable accessories will be an asset to any spinner who would like to keep her, or his, spinning equipment in first class condition.

Handknitted Socks For Any Season

Hand-knitted socks are very warm and very snuggly, keeping toes warm and stopping legs from freezing in the cold weather.

My daughter decided she would like a pair of socks after I mentioned I was going to make myself some. So, onto the net I go and look up a few patterns, settling on a pair that have celtic twisted cables front and back.

This is a lady who has never knitted socks before - ever - attempting to work these complicated designs. I have knitted quite a few cable patterns but none as tricky as this one.

The socks were worked on five 2.5mm needles - matchsticks I call them, they are that fine. But once I got the hang of it, I was whipping around those needles pretty quickly and the socks grew rapidly.

They turned out well, with the verigated colours blending

beautifully.

Daughter is pretty pleased with them and has

already 'ordered' another pair!

Blogging and HTML

I like blogging, and having a website. It gets your words and ideas out to the rest of the world - if they can find it!

With having a blog comes the idea of lots of people reading your words, following your posts, and then wanting to add extras to your page. There are many standard bits to add, but if you want something a little different, or your own text, colours, and pictures, then that is where learning a little HTML comes in.

I found it very frustrating when I started looking and trying out a few blog sites. Each one is operated in a different fashion, and where one will have part of what you are looking for, another site will have the balance. Challenging! This is exactly what I have found with trying out Wordpress and Blogger. In the end, Blogger won as I could add my own HTML codes to my site to create a more personal page. But with Blogger, the tags are only 'site' orientated and do not get picked up by the search engines.

But I have added a few extra bits and pieces that would not have been possible without some HTML knowledge. How did I learn? Why, searching the net of course - and kept looking until I found what I wanted then gave it a whirl. It does take some trial and error, but with perseverance it will be very satisfying, and you will have a site that is a bit different from the run-of-the-mill standard blog.

To see the html on this site, click on Edit Html at the top of your post typing area. It shows the codes, including any pictures you may have added.

One very handy html code I use is the one for creating a website link

The other codes are very simple ones to use and can be very useful. There are many websites with html coding information and instructions, too numerous to mention here but a web search will bring up a multitude of pages to read.

As for getting people to find you, that is a whole different exercise but networking with other blogs, forums, linking to other sites is a good place to start...

Happy Blogging!