Knitting - or lack of it! (Etsy, London and machines)

I have been fairly busy with all manor of things lately but most of these have not been knitting related. Visiting London twice (recommend the Tate Modern Tanks -http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tanks-tate-modern/eventseries/tanks-art-action), working extra shifts at the pub, friends birthdays ect...... It's taken its toll on the business and me. 

When you work for yourself it's all too easy to put things off, give others priority and just generally waste away your time. From 9 till late in the evening, Monday to Friday I am supposed to be working in my studio. No use making excuses (it's too distracting in the house, I will make it up at a later time) I need to work harder on this! 

The Two Season has had a good response on Etsy 

Beside's from all the distractions keeping me from knitting other admin jobs have taken priority. Don't know if you have checked out the Etsy shop lately but I have been workings really hard on it. It's not as simple as getting everything up there and then just waiting for the sales to comes in. There is so much details that go into the listings and so many tricks and hints to learn. Luckily Etsy know this and so have a great community page to help with this - http://www.etsy.com/community/online-labs. I think there is just so much to talk about on this matter that I may save it for another day!

However it seems that the gods are against me knitting all together. Last night I put needles to the metal and started on a new cotton shawl - (lovely fair isle, using the holding stitch). Just as I was getting going I dropped the carriage off the side of the machine........ big holding of my breath...... yep you guessed it -I broke it! It wasn't too serious at first, it just wouldn't fit back on to the machine. After my many years machine knitting I have become an adequate technician but this quickly became too hard for me to fix. The carriage on my knitting machine is very complicated and has lots of little parts and screws, it's tough but just a touch in the wrong place and it's all out of whack. 

So this is a major problem as I have no back up and it is hard to get these machines fixed (brother no longer makes knitting machines). At the moment I am looking at buying another machine until I can get this one fixed and then see if I still need two. I can't be out of action for too long so this will need to be solved soon but I will keep you up to date with any news.