Supanova Gold Coast 2012

On the 21st and 22nd April we attended Supanova on the Gold Coast. This was the first time that the event had been held there. It was a huge success with lots of people enjoying themselves and plenty of media coverage of the event as well. I want to share some of the photos that we were able to take from the event.

This was our stall at Supanova, one of the goals for the next event is to have items to hang behind us to sell and make the backing wall look a lot brighter.

I loved these guys. Lots of people had amazingly intricate and accurate costumes but to me these three were typically Australian with their ingenious use of beer cartons.

Scott took the photo of the small boy dressed as Darth Vader taking on Sauron. This was just near our stall and the crowd of people watching this was huge, as you can see in the background of the photo.

The next Supanova that we will be attending will be in Brisbane in November. Can't wait!

Handmade High Street

Handmade High street is a relatively new shop in Annerley. It sells a range of hand made items by crafty Brisbane people.

I am very pleased to say that they are stocking my hand dyed yarn. It's a trial at the moment, to see how well the yarn does in a non-yarn shop. So far it's going smoothly.

I've had such fun experimenting with colour combinations and different dyeing techniques. It is very hard not keeping all of the yarn for myself though!!

Location, Location, Location

Things have been quiet the last couple of months on the blog. The main reason for this is that Scott and I moved house. Since returning from the UK we have been living with my parents, which has been fantastic and very helpful for us to find our feet again in Brisbane.

One of the reasons for the move has been because of a new job and living closer to that job. We have found a nice little house, which we are settling in to well. We've had to acquire a lot of stuff though! For our seven years in the UK we always lived in furnished flats, whereas in Australia most rental houses are unfurnished.

The most exciting thing about the new house is that I will now have a craft room. I have never had one of these before and it is very excited for me. Scott is also very excited as all of the business stuff will be able to be shut away in a room and not be all over the place. Well at least that is what he is hoping, reality may be a little different.

All of this excitement doesn't mean The Quizzical Owl has been neglected at all, it has been a busy few months:

• Attending the first Supanova Expo on the Gold Coast
• Brisstyle Indie Twilight Markets in February and April
• Stocking Hand-Dyed Yarn in Handmade High Street
• Being accepted to my first Australian Wool Show

Now that we are back into some kind of routine I will be blogging about all of these exciting events over the coming week.

Shop Update - Lego Stitch Markers and Fimo Stitch Markers

Hi everyone

It's been a busy few weeks at The Quizzical Owl. I've started working full time again. It's a temporary role in Brisbane's CBD. We have also had a few problems with our Internet connection which means that there has been no shop updates in a while.

We attended the first BrisStyle market of the year on Friday 24th February. It was absolutely bucketing down, but we were lucky to be moved up to the deck in King George Square so we were high and dry. I sold my first skein of my hand dyed yarn, which was very exciting! More about this in the next blog post.

Speaking of all things knitting, we've done a shop update. You'll now find all manner of Lego and Fimo stitch markers in our shop by clicking here.

Check out the markers - there's cake, fruit, biscuits and donuts, and the best thing is? They're calorie free! :-)

Fruit Stitch Markers

Savoury Stitch Markers

Cake Stitch Markers

The Lego markers include everything from swords, hats, sextants and bats. As well as the very popular Lego Head Stitch Markers in three different varieties.

Horror Movie Stitch Markers

Lego Head Stitch Markers

It's great working full time, but it really does eat into my week!

Happy knitting everyone!

Hand dyed yarn - the launch!

On Friday 24th February I’ll be attending the BrisStyle Indie Twilight Market. It’s held in King George Square in the Brisbane CBD, from 5pm-9pm.

I am very excited to announce that as well as my Lego and Fimo Jewellery I will be unveiling my range of hand dyed yarns. I will have a range of 4ply and lace weight yarns in a mix of semi solid and variegated colourways.

Hand dyeing yarn is an aspiration that I have had for about the last 12 months and before I left the UK I was able to spend a day at two hand dyers studios. This experience was invaluable and cemented my desire to dye yarn.

The lines of yarn that I will have available are:

4ply
75% superwash merino/25% nylon (Herculaneum)
75% superwash merino/25% silk (Mesopotamia)
100% organic merino (Pergamon)
100% Blue Faced Leicester (Benin)
75% superwash merino, 20% nylon and 5% stellina sparkle (Nineveh)

Lace
70% Baby Alpaca/30% mulberry silk (Babylon)

The theme for the names of the yarns is lost cities.  I studied archaeology at university (and obtained my Honours in it). I felt it was fitting that I name the yarn bases after an interest of mine.

I’ll also have my Lego and Fimo stitch markers available to buy and some knitting project bags in three sizes.

See you on Friday night! :-)

Alex

Monday Photo - Trabant Fever

I started a new role yesterday in transport, so for the weekly photo I thought something transport related would be appropriate. This photo of all the Trabant's parked together was taken in Berlin. In all of travels throughout Europe we saw very few Trabant's being driven which was a shame as they are such an iconic car.

Scott

Work in Progress - Bobby's Garden Blanket

I have recently started knitting Bobby's Garden Blanket. It is a project I can pick up at any time depending on how busy I am and what else I am knitting. This is a project that I am doing on 2.75mm double pointed needles. Even though it is at an early stage it is large enough to showcase.

I started the project on 4mm needles but decided that I was not happy with how tight the stitches were and so decided to use smaller needles. At the moment I can still take the project with me in my project bag but soon it will be too big and will be a project that I can only work on at home.

This blanket is something that I have been wanting to do for quite a while. I began knitting a sock yarn blanket using squares, but I prefer the geometry of the hexagons. For anyone who has small amounts of leftover yarn from other projects, this project is a fantastic way to use up those small amounts. I have been very careful to try and coordinate the colours of the yarn that I use for each hexagon so that the colours flow.

 The knitting needle placed across these two pictures is 20cm long.

What's on your needles? Any long term projects like this one?