New Year News!

Hello Friends,

It’s been so long! I hope you had the best Christmas and a wonderful time seeing in the new year (or sleeping through it, whatever works for you) I totally abandoned the blog for a few weeks there while I went into FULL HOLIDAY MODE! I’m just emerging from it and back into the swing of things here at work so thought I’d do a bit of an update post today and cover a few things! Let’s just dive straight in shall we?!

Knit 4 Australia

Most pressingly I want to talk about Australia. I imagine we’ve all seen the stats and the tragic images so I won’t go into those right now but since lots of us are knitters I wanted to share something we can do to help. So many animals have been injured in the fires, there’s been a call out for crafters to help make some ‘Joey Pouches’ for kangaroos, possums and wombats to help with their burns treatments. If you want to help and have some time and yarn to get knitting all the information is below. You can then either post them straight out to the Animal Rescue Craft Guild in Australia or to us at LAD and we will send them on for you (I know shipping to Australia can be expensive from the UK so we’re more than happy to take that cost on for you for this cause.) Here’s all the information you should need:

Patterns:

Jacqui Fink has uploaded some brilliant knitting pattern information on her facebook page

And the Animal Rescue Craft Guild have got HEAPS of information and a range of different patterns on their facebook page – Please read all the information on the caption of their cover photo (where I’ve linked to) as it has all the answers you should need.

Australian Address:

Animal Rescue Collective
c/o Allison Cairns
132 / 20 Federal Highway Watson, Canberra, ACT 2602 Australia

LAD Address if you want us to send them on for you:

Lauren Aston Designs

The Old Ticket Office

Holman Way

Topsham

Exeter

EX3 0EN

Credit: Unknown (Please let me know if you know so I can credit correctly!)

Looking Forward

Adorable kangaroos aside I best carry on with some LAD news…

I’ve always been a fan of January because it feels like there’s so much time ahead for exciting new things. Just as we spend a lot of time gearing up for the busy-ness of Christmas we spend time planning for the quieter months of Summer. With such a seasonal business, summer tends to tick along nicely but also provides us with an opportunity to GET STUFF DONE. It’s a chance to catch up and create, so the months that lead up to that are key in terms of planning and prep (otherwise I tend to just get overwhelmed and panic and not do anything.) Helen and I have spent the morning in the studio planning (we used our Planning & Time Management toolkit which I must say – is bloody marvellous haha feel free to treat yourself 😉) and we have some EXCITING things in the pipeline. We’re currently setting a date for the next Open Studio days, working on about 6 new knit kits, looking at more yarn & colours, Organising a Knit-a-long and planning plenty more How-To/knitting technique videos. We also, inevitably, had a nice heart to heart, cried a bit and laughed a lot…. It’s been a big day.

I can’t wait to share it all with you and see what works and what flops, learn from some mistakes and have Helen say ‘I TOLD YOU SO’ when something I don’t want to do goes really well (that always happens, it’s great but also super annoying!)

Wobbly Ones

Before we move forward though, let’s get Christmas over …we currently have a listing for ‘Seconds Sale’, it’s mainly Christmas items that aren’t *quite* up to scratch to sell at full price so everything in the seconds sale is 30% off. We will NEVER put anything really dodgy in there as we still want to live up to our rep but some items in there might be a touch small, large, wobbly etc. I’m going to leave the listing up and continue to add anything into the sale that fits the bill – it might be LAD bags with a mark on, cushions with a slipped stitch or a smaller than normal Stocking – so keep your eyes peeled as we’ll update it whenever we come across something slightly weird. (It currently has stockings, tree toppers and giant knitting needles)

Can We Talk About The Beckham’s Now?!

The final point on my agenda today reads ‘Show off a bit’ soooo 🤷🏼‍♀️…

Christmas Eve was even more epic than usual! Whilst I was out with some friends VICTORIA BECKHAM posted this picture of her family (you might have heard of them?) and my blinkin’ stockings in the background.

They purchased them a few years ago (I obviously kept it quiet at first coz customer privacy etc but she posted an instagram story with them that Christmas and so the cat was out the bag… I’ve been super annoying about it ever since!) This is the third year they’ve used and shared my Christmas Stockings and I cannot begin to tell you how happy that makes me. VB is one of my idols – she’s a bloody Spice Girl who then created one of the largest fashion brands on the planet – plus whenever we played Spice Girls when we were kids… I WAS Posh Spice so it was meant to be!

OK, I’m exhausted just from reliving it! Time to go and work on the new Jumper – Don’t even ask me, I’m not saying about it! (it’s a ‘top down’ jumper, knit on circular needles so there’s no sewing up) I wont reveal anything! (It’s made in two colours and is super fast to knit up!) I’m like a vault! (I’m going to do a knit-a-long so we can all make one together!) OK I need to leave before I copy and paste the pattern… see you next week <3 x

Take care, L x