Jingle, Jangle Creative Holidays

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That time of year is coming closer and closer: Christmas holidays. It’s the time where I feel extremely conflicted about whether to down tools, relax and start cooking and baking -a lot- or…feeling guilty about downing tools and not working. So, this year, I am compromising. During the holidays I will keep on working but at a much s.l.o.w.e.r. pace! What a brilliant idea! I have no idea how it will work, but at least I won’t have to battle my inner demons telling me it cannot possibly be right to just sit down and read a book, while sipping a cocktail.  Mind you, I may change tactics, depending on a lot of extenuating circumstances, like the ultimate heatwave hitting our shores, predicting over 40 to 45degree heat. I’m aiming to be eh..adaptable…and not get myself in a tangled mess. Maya Angelou said it best : “I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled yarn and Christmas tree lights.”

The absolute hectic mayhem of the twelve days of Christmas fundraiser event has passed and I have started cleaning up, organising dye pigments, plants, fibres and yarns, ready to create another bit of mayhem in the next few weeks.

I thought it would be a great idea to start something I have never really down before while having this website and that is create a “pre order”. I am not doing this lightly. Things like this can be fraught with danger, but since I have been doing clubs and been in business since 2004 I think the chances of me doing a “Bankman-Fried” will be highly unlikely. The most important thing the launch of this website, back in August, has taught me, is that it is tremendously important to plan ahead. Not only for myself and my dyeing schedule but also to minimise the amount of disappointment to all of you by not being able to offer enough. So,  the weather forecast saying that it is going to be warm and sunny, I thought it was a brilliant idea to start the natural dye process, which takes a long, long time. I normally only have time to do these natural dyeing and eco printing sessions once or twice a year. Since the last few years have proven to be super hectic, I thought I’d take the plunge this holiday season. All the leaves, bark, dye pigments have been collected, dye baths will start next week and they will take about two weeks to “ferment” and dye the yarns. 
I am offering you three types of yarn bases and all the information on which dye plants are going to be used are mentioned on the listing in the section “what’s new” and the pre order listing.

Here are some photos from previous dye baths, together with some knitted examples. 

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All the pre ordered eco printed yarns will be shipped out to all who ordered in early January ♥️

Which brings me to the next part: the art journey clubs for 2023! All the prep work for those will need to be done during my “holidays” as well 🤣 so club sign ups will need to be finalised by the 30th of December at the latest to give me much needed time.

Here is an overview of what the 2021 clubs looked like. Revisiting them and making these little compilations sure was fun. 2023 will be filled with lots of colourful, interesting and mesmerising art works as inspiration as well !

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 I hear what you’re thinking: well, that doesn’t sound like a holiday to me…lol.  If you had seen me running around like an absolute mad hatter out of Alice in Wonderland over the last year, compared to the more eh…gentle pace I am going to go at over the next two weeks 😉 

Now, before I let you go and browse the website and the pre order eco print yarns offer, i will take a short break from blogging til January 20th. The online  shop will remain open and more importantly, new items will be added at regular intervals to keep stock levels up and of course to tempt you.

2023 will bring lots of new fibre and yarn adventures, new colourways and fabulous new lair of the bearded dragon spindles, bowls and much much more! So exciting !!

I cannot thank you all enough for all the support and amazing friendship you have shown both Paul and myself this year! We are super grateful ♥️ Without you, we would not be able to do what we do. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, Kwanzaa and happy holiday season filled with lots of fun and creativity. 

May 2023 bring you lots of new adventures, colour, happiness;

May your yarns never tangle and everything you create be worn with a big smile ♥️

Keep making, keep smiling;  do what you love and do it often ♥️

Big Hugs,

Charly

 

Going round and round

 

It’s that time of year where I can have a little breather, take up my knitting and spinning, and create new adventures for a new year! All this year’s art journey club productions are done, major shop updates for this year are nearing their end with next Friday, December 23rd being the last blog for this year AND the twelve days of Christmas event is over, shipped and a big donation has been taken care of ♥️

Thanks to all who have enthusiastically shown their support for the IxCHeL 12 days of Christmas fundraiser event, we have been able to donate a pretty substantial amount ! 

We cannot thank you enough ♥️♥️♥️ You are all AMAZING !

Now, what to do now? After all the hectic excitement??!! And…ALL the Christmas parcel packing of all the orders! 🎁

It’s time to breathe and take stock (Paul  is  doing that literally atm) before Some major baking, relaxing, spinning, reading and knitting time off.  Mind you, with the website being there and automated as it is, we decided to keep the shop open. I mean, yarn and fibres and spindles are essential products right? 😉 plus, since we are not exactly going on a holiday anywhere like on a tropical island being brought fancy cocktails with little umbrellas  in them, we might as well be there for all of our super loyal people who have shown us so much support during the last years. We love you all ♥️

There may be some delays shipping when you order now until New year, but that will not be because we are lounging about, but because post offices will close on certain days during the holiday period and Australia Post is not known for its super expedient, super sonic shipping times. If you have any questions, requests or anything else on your mind, we want you to know we are here for you, so send us an email or a message on our social media and we’ll do our best to help and enable.

A word of warning: I will not be dyeing every day and I will not have a dye production going on with a 100kilos a week. My body needs a rest 🤣 

So, what will I be doing? Hmmm, as usual I have a mountain of books I want to read. They’re all waiting, in a huge pile and I’m probably very, very ambitious, again…lol

Finish my knitting …well SOME of my knitting projects! I have a “Kate Davies Pattern Treit” short sleeved treat jumper already (see photo) , but I desperately wanted a long sleeved version, because you know, it’s summer here and I am still wearing a jumper..yesterday it was 5degrees Celsius 🥶 Besides, wearing a hand knitted  jumper is like getting a hugs all day♥️

I absolutely love the IxCHeL tweed “have fun storming the castle”  so I decided, hey why not! A little quirky inside information here: if I really like something : a pair of shoes, clothing, I get at least two…or more in different colours 🤣

Here is the link to the “have fun storming the castle” yarn:

If you like your coloured tweed speckles a bit less bright, you can also choose Grevillea 

Almost finished 😃

 

So, what’s NEW on the website tonight? The Bearded Dragon aka Paul has been busy ! Super busy! Ther are some amazing drop spindles : Bottom whorl and top whorl spindles with semi precious stone inlay and without plus fabulous Tibetan support spindles ! Looking to gift yourself something special for Christmas , or somebody else? To gift a stone in,any spindle is better than a diamond ring..well, that’s my opinion, but that’s only because I can’t afford a diamond ring and you can’t spin yarn with one of them anyway 😜

Your can find the new spindles in the What’s New section here 

if you have not signed up for the IxCHeL Art Journey Clubs for the next round of January, February and March 2023 round, please have a look.

There are still batts, yarn and fibre clubs available and sign ups will be open til December 30th or until quotas are reached. So, don’t wait too long ! I will be posting an overview of what the 2022 Art Journey Clubs looked like plus their inspiration artworks on next week’s blog ♥️

Have lots of fun exploring the IxCHeL shop and most of all: crafting and having FUN !

big hugs

Charly & Paul

Busy Bunny Christmas Elves

  

December is always a super busy month for us and doing a twelve days of Christmas fundraiser event just adds a totally extra dimension to everything! Organising, braiding, labelling, Christmas paper packaging, not to mention hopping to the post office at warp speed every day with a load of special parcels.  I could not do this without Paul ! While I do the organising of what is going to be offered on which day and make sure it is ready so there’s no mad scramble or panic…lol, Paul is doing an absolutely amazing job parceling everything up, writing emails for customers who have questions shipping wise, checks the payments and does all the fabulous organising of the stash parcels as well. The whole studio is starting to look not only like Santa’s workshop but it is filling up with a mountain of parcels waiting to ship out. Having the website up is definitely helping because so much is automated, but there is still so, so much that needs to be done of course. I think after the twelve days of Christmas, the Friday updates and all the custom orders have been shipped next week, we both will need two weeks of sleep 🤣

There is definitely no rest yet for us though : today’s update is rearing to go up at 8pm AEDT and there are THREE more 12days of Christmas event coming! To say it’s busy would be an understatement 🤣
I hope you can join me at 8pm when the new smoochy restock update of a  rare sheep breed blend will go live on the IxCHeL website (you can find that in the what’s new section here : https://ixchel.com.au/collections/whats-new 

The rare sheep breed is the cute Soay sheep in the exclusive IxCHeL outlander blend. To read all about the rare sheep breed you can go to my blog of September 23rd here on the website.

But wait! There’s more !

All the December clubs were shipped out end of November so now it is time to show you the clubs!

This being the December club was the last one of the year and the subscription, so if you were a member of the October, November, December club, please go to the club section on the website and join up for the next club period January, February, March 2023 ♥️ It is going to another amazing year of Art Journey inspirational fibres and yarn ♥️
Please let me know if you have any questions or requests! If you want to have a combination of any of the three clubs on offer : yarn and fibre and batt, I can manually do that for you and send you all the information and save you big time on shipping.

Have a fabulous weekend, happy browsing and  ♥️ thank you so, so much for all your wonderful support♥️

Big hugs
Charly

It’s buzzing here !

 

It is all happening here : November clubs have shipped just on time before the the overseas Australia post deadlines on November 28th, immediately everything went in overdrive here to get all the 12 days of Christmas and dye lots more fibre for updates and custom orders, plus custom spinning as well. It’s all extremely exciting !

in the meantime I get asked lots of questions, among other things how I decide what colourways to dye or how I combine colours. I that is a hard one because it is all extremely personal. It depends on my mood or state of mind, the light, nature all around me and the amazing wildlife surrounding me. Little things. And all that light and colours all are translated in my brain to create a combination of “all the things”, “all the moods”, “all the experiences”. There is no good or bad way to translate anything how you see it. It’s you, it is your experience and your vision. There are rules that art school teaches you about tonal values and warmth etc but as I have always said, you read the rule book, take it to heart, throw it out and do things anyway. It’s good to know the rules, but it’s even better to flaunt them. You might wind up with something horrible but at the same time you may see that the way you “threw things together” reflects exactly what you saw. It’s personal. And if you’re lucky, the personal will resonate with lots more other people who look at things maybe in the same light as you do. Some others may say it’s hideous, but “beauty is always in the eye of the beholder”. Beauty is never absolute. Beauty is always personal, emotional and subjective. 
theer was a time in the dark days of the last century that people tried to define beauty, attach mathematical rules to it, try to capture it objectively according to their view, but right there is the problem: THEIR view. 

I’m going out on a limb here but I like boobies…no not those ones, although I have to say, I do like them as well…lol that’s a totally other question before I get banned from all social media for “impropriety” as if we were still living in Victorian times…or the “now” where boobies are frowned upon but ak-47 guns and war is thrown onto our retinas as if it was an advertisement for a breakfast cereal. Anyway, I digress…lol. You know em by now, this happens all the time, I veer off the path and then, hopefully, will join the conversation I started with at the beginning..where was I? Lol

oh yeah…boobies 🤣

Yeah, that’s what I mean ! 

December has hit full on, the temperatures are rising here in the Southern Hemisphere, no snow warnings anymore, and Christmas is coming! This also means the TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS event is on again! We are already two days in and two special offers have already been on sale and there are ten more days to go and oh wow!!! Is it going to be super exciting !!

it’s no use telling you that it is beyond hectic here! 
I also have to say that I am a bit under the weather…not physically (I am one of the lucky ones not having had Covid……yet) but my back and hips are killing me and I have lost my best friend…well, not exactly lost, but she moved to the other side of the world and it kinda hit me last night when I had to say goodbye..  I know, I know! It’s just a airplane flight away, but people, I have not gone anywhere in the last three years, not even … well…hardly anywhere.. always,work work work, keeping my head down, doing my thing and probably putting my head in the sand. You know the easy way… i am afraid I am starting to develop a bit of a phobia of going anywhere, so I am going to make some changes in the next year! I am going out there, going places, trying not to be in my bubble and work ALL THE TIME.

I don’t know how it’s going to work, but I will try and see where it takes me. 
The last years have not been easy on anybody. Some have gone through the most traumatic times of their lives. Some have discovered how to adapt. Some have retreated (me, and that’s saying something because i was a hermit before this whole thing started…lol). But change is sometimes a good thing. Learn something new and …we’ll, maybe be crap at it, but at least try.

Life is short..we may as well have as much fun as we can and put a bit of a challenge in at the same time.

yeah ! Yeah! I see what your doing, mr booby! (Aren’t they the funniest 🤣)

I hope you will be enjoying the 12 days of Christmas event : please follow my posts on Instagram and Facebook and an update every day at 12 pm AEDT  10% of all sales of the 12 days of Christmas event will go to Zoos Victoria Healesville for their amazing effort to save rare breeds and wildlife.

Enjoy tonight’s update!

Here is the link to all the new exciting things here https://ixchel.com.au/collections/whats-new

big hugs

Charly