MAD updates

UPDATE - Our 2 winners have been selected using random number and have been contacted and have their Advent Kits already in the post

Congratulations go to Nicole and Melissa we hope you both love your Advent Kits

Thanks to everyone who entered we wish you all a better end to this year than what the past has provided and look forward to what 2021 brings

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This year has been ***** for all so we thought we would help the year end on a high for 2 lucky people

The pic is just a distraction and will not be found in our Advents

For your chance to grab either a Jekyll or Hyde Advent which is not quite perfect (some minis are underweight) then tell us as a comment on this blog post which set you would like, your ideal base (from those we have listed for the Advents) and what you would make.

We will pick 1 lucky recipient for each kit after the giveaway closes on the 6th November at Midnight UK time

So what you waiting for why not post a comment or nominate a friend for a chance to win.

Your email used to post a comment will only be used for contacting you if you win and will not be stored for any other purpose.

So this is happening - a Yarn Fund to help those who would love to try indie dyed yarn but cannot afford to

It will only be available to apply for twice a year at this point in time - but each time it will be open for 1 month and you can request 1 or more skeins for your project

It will be trust based so please don’t apply if you can easily afford to buy our yarn as we would like to give access to those less fortunate

During March 2020 our usual charity donations will instead go into this fund!!

This excludes the "Operation Social Justice" colourway "We are all made of Stardust"

Then in April we will randomly select from those who have submitted a request via our form - link on main menu

If you want to add to the fund we have a listing here where you can select the amount you want to donate towards the fund whilst it is collecting - we would be happy to consider leaving this open all the time for collection for later funds if needed

The fund is open worldwide 

We are anticipating October being our 2nd Yarn Fund period but will say for definite closer to the time

Any questions please feel free to ask

A little later than we planned but our Birthday Giveaway Winners have been chosen by random.

We had a couple of giveaways - 1 was a giveaway for everyone who has ever ordered from us since we opened and the other from our giveaway blog post for a 12 Days of Xmas Box.

Blog Post Giveaway

The winner of our 12 Days of Xmas Box + Extra Surprise Skein and a Large Project Bag is 

Astrid who commented 

Alliance for choice would be a great charity to support – they campaign for free, safe and legal abortion in Northern Ireland. My favourite colour way (this evening – it changes!) is a close call between Methane and Crystal Violet :-)

We will also be adding Astrid’s charity to our list to support in the future as well as many of the others you all suggested.

Thank you Giveaway 

We entered names of everyone who has made a purchase from us in our 1st year into a list as a little thank you for supporting us by making a purchase. We decided to draw 2 winners from this list.

1st Prize - £50 Giftcard goes to Kay W

2nd Prize - £25 Giftcard goes to Mollie W

Thank you all once again for supporting us as without you there would not be the charity donations we have made so far

We officially opened our online shop and started this venture a year ago (6th Sept) and can’t believe all that we have achieved and the amount we have managed to raise for all our selected charities

In the last year we have managed to raise a total of £2605 which has been shared between the following charities

Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity

Badger Trust

MIND - The Mental Health Charity

Celia Hammond Animal Trust

In addition which will count towards next years total we have raised a staggering £2000 for MIND from the Advent Calendars themselves

Therefore I think we can say without a doubt that the total for next years charity donations will easily beat this years numbers

As a little thank you to everyone who has made a purchase from us this year and any who buy from us over the weekend we will add your name to a random draw and 1 of you will get a little thank you giftcard to use against anything in our shop now or in the future

So what about the giveaway?

For your chance to win a 12 Days of Xmas Kit with the extra mystery skein and a large project bag please answer the following question in the comments section of this post by Midnight 9th September 2019 BST

What is your favourite colourway and what charity would you like us to consider donating to in the future (Does not need to be UK based)

Your details will only be used to contact you in the event that you are the winner who will be chosen randomly and this is open worldwide

It's been a while since we added anything here, but thought we better add an update on the charity donations raised for MIND as well as more details on our new charity.

We supported MIND for a few months and in total we have raised £1209 and this does not include the donations yet to come from our Advent Calendars / 12 Days of Xmas Kits - but if we say that we anticipate donating a minimum of £2000 more in November then this raises our total for this great charity to >£3000 which is impressive.

So thank you all so very much for supporting this crazy idea of ours.

New Charity

As of the 1st July 2019 our charity changed to Celia Hammond Animal Trust - this is a charity close to us as its where we rescued all 4 of our owners from.

The charity has a few locations - Canning Town, Lewisham and a farm in Hastings where all feral / semi ferals that can't be homed go to live. Our 4 came from Lewisham and we can't praise the work they do enough.

To see more details on what this fabulous organisation does please see more details on their website here

As we have not shared pics of our 4 on this site yet - we thought this was an appropriate time to share some pics of them now and not long after we first got them all.

The 2 tabbies - Loki (bottom left) and Maia (top right) we got as 4 month old kittens but just over a year later we went back and rescued Rhea (top left) and Nyx (bottom right)

Nyx and Rhea were about 9 months old when we got them, underfed and afraid of Scott so seeing how they are now just over 6 years later is quite a contrast

Before Pic's - Loki and Maia ~ 5 months old and Rhea & Nyx ~10 months

Now - as 8 year olds (Maia & Loki) and nearly 7 year olds (Rhea & Nyx)

 If you would like to suggest a future charity please feel to drop us an email at the following address madscientistyarns@gmail.com

Its time for our next update preview - this is primarily a Stellar update but we have added a load of OOAK skeins and test bases in limited numbers as well

Full details can be found below

Stellar

Moon Glow

Not You Grandma’s Plutonium

Regolith

Quasiparticle

MAD Apr19-13

MAD Apr19-14

MAD Apr19-19

Continuum

MAD Scientist

MAD Apr19-1

Cosmic

MAD Apr19-6

Fission

MAD Scientist

MAD Apr19-10 £18

MAD Apr19-11 £18

MAD Apr19-12 £18

Hybrid

MAD Apr19-7

MAD Apr19-8

MAD Apr19-9

Singularity

MAD Apr19-2

MAD Apr19-3

MAD Apr19-4

MAD Apr19-5

Alpaca / Silk / Cashmere

NIckeline £20 



BFL / Masham

MAD Apr19-20 £18

Alpaca / Linen / Silk

MAD Apr19-15 £18

MAD Apr19-16 £18

MAD Apr19-17 £18

MAD Apr19-18 £18

Its time for our next update preview - we hope you like these as much as we do if not Michelle’s stash may just grow by a few skeins or more

Names are in the order the pics are shown from left to right, top to bottom

Continuum

Black Ice, Centauri b, Pulsar, Muon, Not You Grandma’s Plutonium, Shattered Realm

Continuum - Aran

Crazy Chemist, Half Life

Continuum - DK

Not Your Grandma’s Plutonium 

Cosmic

Alkaloid, Oxidation

Element

Anthozoa, Bioluminescence, Chain Reaction, Deconstructed, Not Your Grandma’s Plutonium, Vernal Equinox

Element - Aran 

Half Life, Oxidation

 

Fission

Chain Reaction, Oxidation, Vernal Equinox

Fractal

Black Ice, Centauri b, Deconstructed, Muon, Pulsar, Sublight



Fusion

Bioluminescence, Blue Hue, Chain Reaction, Darkling, Deconstructed, Not Your Grandma’s Plutonium, Sinkhole Troposphere, Vernal Equinox 

Hybrid

Apoapsis

Singularity

Chain Reaction, Vernal Equinox

Singularity - Lace

Aldebran, Ancient Chlorophyll, Aphelion, Crushed Amethyst,  Ionic Balance, Luminosity, Pyrotechnic Colourant, Vitis Vinifera

 

Stellar

Bioluminescence, Black Ice, Bow Shock, Centauri b, Chain Reaction, Pulsar, Sublight

Hi all,

When we started our business last September, our main drive (aside from playing with yarn on a regular basis) was to raise money for charities that are close to our hearts.  As there were several we wanted to donate to, we decided to rotate them every 4 months, with Rainbow Trust being the first one.

I'm delighted to say that we've donated a total of £1086 to Rainbow Trust, so thank you so much to all of you who've supported our business and helped donate to this wonderful charity.

We had intended to switch to Celia Hammond Animal Trust next (our 4 rescue cats were adopted from them), but have decided to move one of our other chosen charities forward in our cycle which is Mind, the Mental Health Charity.

They provide information, advice and support to people with mental health problems and lobby government and local authorities on their behalf. They also work to raise public awareness and understanding of issues relating to mental health. 

We took this decision due to recent issues with a local Yarn festival to us (J13) that has sadly shown that mental health issues are still not being understood and respected by all in our community.  Both Michelle and I hope that will change in the future and look forward to working with you all in achieving that goal.

Scott

We are trying something different for our updates so that we can schedule them to appear rather than doing it manually, this means we will post details about the yarns in the update on here and as an Event on Facebook