August

3/8/2021

It's been busy, busy , busy here!
No sooner did the Tour de Fleece finish, than Fiberworld start. One week on and I'm finally starting to draw breath. This month has been really hot and dry, to the point where no amount of watering was keeping the plants alive, and we started having to be cautious with our house water supply. When it's that hot dyeing tends to be pretty impossible anyway, working in a metal box with various heat sources all making it hotter inside than out, when the outside is 30C is just impossible unless I want to end up with heat stroke.

A pond with a wooden jetty. In the background stands a woman and small black dog. Behind them are green fields and hedgerows.

Earlier this month we drove to Welsh Lavender just south of Builth Wells for a day out. If you are in the area I can recommend their lovely brownies, and remember to take your swimming things because the pond is lovely for a dip. Closer to home walks were mostly done based on their proximity to water, often walking up the streams themselves for the ultimate in cooling exercise!

Looking down on a black dog walking up a rocky stream bed.

And of course trips to the quiet beaches where the tourists rarely visit.

Standing in the sea looking up the beach towards sandy cliffs. In the foreground stands a small black dog with one paw in the air.

The Tour de Fleece has filled my crafting time this month, along with enjoying cool evenings getting jobs down in the garden. As ever I always find it amazing how much yarn can be spun just by doing a little bit every day for 21 stages! These are all pre-washed skeins, and now I just need to find the time to turn them in to fabric of some kind!

Multicoloured skeins of yarn hang over a wooden railing.

At the end of last month I said I hoped to have good news about EU VAT. I'm pleased to say that I've now set up registration with the IOSS system, and have an arrangement with a firm to act as an intermediary to do the reporting and payment. This means that all EU orders will now be charged VAT at your countries rate. I will then ship them marked with my IOSS number showing that the VAT has already been collected. If your postal system does it's job properly that should mean that your parcel is delivered straight to you, with no extra fees or taxes. Unfortunately this means it's not going to be possible for me to combine any club orders with your shop parcels as I have no easy way of correcting the VAT collected amount once it has been reported to the intermediary. This may change in the future, but for now it's how I need to run things.