Sock yarn and mini skeins

Tomorrow’s update is all about sock yarns and mini skeins

There are a couple of colours still to be wound, but for now….

Both 100 gram and mini skeins will be in the shop from 1900 tomorrow.

Bunbun’s bonbon

My lovely friend Claire wanted yarn which had the colours of chocolate limes – and a bit of sparkle was an added bonus.

This is the first time that we’ve offered a same difference yarn in the SparkLynne 4ply base.

£2 from the sale of each set of 2 skeins will go to Macmillan cancer support and the RNLI

The yarn will be in the shop at 1900 tonight – you’ll find it in the 4ply sparkLynne section.

Snuggle Up

It’s been cold over the last few days – and seeing the frost in the mornings makes me very glad I’m a knitter.

There’s lots of lovely cosiness in the update this week

Sock yarns

These three yarns are also available as mini skeins.

If you want warmth and luxury there isn’t anything much better than our DK merino and silk

Finally there’s a whole rainbow of DK merino – gorgeous softness and machine washable too.

The new yarns will be added to the shop between 1800 and 1900 this evening.

Joy x

Sea Shells and Shore

The next in our series of charity yarns

You can find the yarn here.

Weekly Update

There’s a whole lot of new to welcome in 2012.

There’s SparkLynne laceweight

There’s laceweight alpaca, silk and cashmere

There’s sock yarn. These skeins were spares for Fibre Flurry 2011 and as such are exclusive colours. Given this I’ll be popping them into the charity yarns section of the shop and donating 50% of the sale price to our two charities of 2012.

Then there are lots of thick yarns – 6 skeins of most so there’s plenty of you fancy making a jumper.

DK merino, cashmere and nylon

Then a new yarn for us – SparkLynne DK which is 75% extra fine (so not superwash) merino, 20% silk and 5% silver stellina sparkle.

There’s DK alpaca and silk

Finally there are the January mini skein sets

All of these yarns will be in the update tomorrow. The update will take place at 1000 tomorrow morning and all orders will be posted on Monday.

We’ve had a bit of a clear out and there are some bargains to be had in the sale shop.

February mini skein places are now available in the clubs section – so if you want next month’s minis before they go on general sale then sign up now.

The Full Monty

For 2012 the Knitting Goddesses (and Gods) group on ravelry have chosen to support 2 charities – Macmillan cancer support and the RNLI.

Each week there will be at least one special limited edition yarn and £2 for each skein sold will go to charity.

Our first yarn is inspired by this

Beyond gorgeous! And called Monty.

So I couldn’t resist calling this yarn The Full Monty

100 gram skeins of 4ply sock yarn

10 gram mini skeins

Both 100g skeins and mini skeins will be in the shop at 1900 tonight.

I also promised you a final total raised by the sale of SparkLynne yarns – just over £3200 of sales has generated £1650 for Macmillan cancer support in memory of Lynne Ashton.

Happy Hogmany

2011 has been a bit of a crazy year for us, but it’s been good.

We moved house which is always ‘interesting’ – especially when you’re trying to keep a business going in the middle of it and you’re saddled with idiot buyers who seemed incapable of doing anything as simple as insuring a house without needing their solicitor to send dozens of letters.

But that’s all behind us, and even if there are still a fair few boxes to be unpacked we’re getting there. The loveliest thing is that it already feels so much like home – much more so than the last house did. So it feels like we’ve ended up in the right place, and that this is somewhere that we’ll put down roots for a long time. It’s been a real pleasure making friends here, and I love how positive the people I’m meeting are. Bliss.

It’s been a good year for the business too – in spite of the daily wailings of gloom from the media it seems that people still want to buy yarn. Following the move we’ve got lots more workspace, so even more room to grow. As always I’ve had a huge amount of entertainment from the Knitting Goddesses (and Gods) on ravelry.

One real down point this year was losing a lovely friend to cancer. Good things have come from that though, and our range of SparkLynne yarns has raised over £1500 for Macmillan cancer support. I’ll post a final total tomorrow once we’ve had a last count up.

I hope 2011 was good for you – and that 2012 will be even better.

Happy Hogmany

Joy

Bricks and Mortar!

I have some fantastic news.

Until now we’ve sold pretty much exclusively online, and we wholesale to a very select few retailers.

But 2012 will see something new for us.

The lovely Caroline who runs my local yarn shop The Wool Bar has been thinking that she’d like more space, and I’ve been thinking that I’d like to have space for the majority of our stock to be available in a shop rather than just online.

In one of those lovely coincidences of fate, the shop next door to where Caroline is now has become available – and we’ll be renting part of it.

This means that we’ll have complete control over which of our yarns are on the shelves at any time, and means that Caroline will have the vast majority of our stock available.

We got keys yesterday so we could go and have a look – and we’ll be opening during January. Everything has now gone to solicitors so once they’re done we’re pretty much good to go.

We’ll be looking to have a goddess get together in the new year and there should be space in the shop for us – plus the delights of Brighton are 15 minutes away f anyone fancies making a weekend of it.

Back to the dye pots!

Joy x

Choosing Yarn with Ann Kingstone

To celebrate the publication of her book Novel Knits, Ann Kingstone is on tour – and today she’s visiting my blog.

I’ll start by saying that I have a bit of an interest in this as a couple of the patterns in the book are knitted in Knitting Goddess yarns – but even if that wasn’t the case I’d still love this book for several reasons.

I love books. I love knitting. So a book of patterns based on 3 great authors (Jane Austen, JRR Tolkein and JK Rowling) was always going to be a winner.

Then I love that this isn’t yet another book which fills half of it’s pages by teaching me how to knit. I know how to knit. Really. Honest. So I’d sooner see pages filled with patterns and techniques rather than instructions about hoe to cast on. That isn’t to say that some of the designs aren’t suitable for beginners. The unbreakable vow mittens would probably be my choice for a very new knitter – or for anyone who wants almost instant gratification.

If I was picking a yarn for these I’d go for 4ply alpaca, silk and cashmere for utter luxury.

Then there’s a perfect shawl – Hartfield

This was knitted in our (sadly no longer available) laceweight cashmere – but I think it might be even more gorgeous in our fine alpaca, silk and cashmere laceweight. Even more of a bonus is that only one skein would be needed.

My final favourite is the Luna Socks

These are knitted in Knitting Goddess semi solid sock yarn in slate.

There’s a real range across the patterns in this book – so not only will you find something you’ll love but I’m sure you’ll spot lots of perfect gifts too. For Christmas 2012!

When I knew Ann was visiting the blog I knew that I wanted to ask her about yarn – how she selects yarns, what yarns she loves most – the ususal knitter chat!

Do you start with an idea for a design, or see yarn and design with that in mind?

Usually I start with an idea for a design, then go hunting for the perfect yarn for it. I do know designers whose designs are generally yarn-led though.

Occasionally I have felt inspired by a particular yarn and attempted to create the perfect design for it. That was the case with the Luna’s Moonlight socks. The yarn reminded me of dappled moonlight, and I wanted to make it into something very feminine.

By contrast the Hartfield shawl resulted from my determination to use Shetland rose lace in a more knitter-friendly design than traditional rose lace projects. The shawl I came up with is knitted in one piece with simple increases and decreases for the shaping. I developed my own stitch pattern for the edging so that i could have an integral edging (knitted at the same time as the maion shawl). From the very start I knew that I wanted a very luxurious, rose-red yarn for the sample. Luckily I didn’t have to look far; your red laceweight cashmere was perfect for it.

What is your favourite weight of yarn to design with? Why?

My favourite is 4ply/fingering weight. It’s so versatile! Because it knits to a small gauge I can get far more pattern into a small area, making it ideal for small projects like socks. Also it is light enough to make a drapey fabric when used for stranded knitting. As I do a lot of colour-work this is a primary consideration!

What is the fibre makeup of your favourite yarn? What makes you love that so much?

The more I think about this question, the harder I find it to answer. I love so many fibres for so many different reasons; angora is so soft and snuggly, alpaca is incredibly warm, silk is luxuriantly shiny, wool is such a good insulant, bamboo and linen are so cool… So when it comes to designing, my answer pretty much depends on the intended end use.

If I had to plump for one top favourite, it would be wool. I have so much history with sheep; I’m a Yorkshire lass, with sheep-framing relatives and a long tradition behind me of Yorkshire knitters working with wool. So wool is very special to me. In fact, I love sheep so much that I work at being able to recognise the different breeds on sight, swotting up on their characteristics to be able to do so. The wonderful little book ‘Know Your Sheep’ often travels with me, like a train-spotters notebook! Many of the projects in Novel Knits are made with British wools; the jumpers are both in shetland wool, Lanthir Lamath is in a blue-faced leicester, and the Fleur Tote is made with a British wool blend.

As far as fibre makeup of my favourite yarn goes, I think that wool and silk is a marriage made in heaven. Yarns featuring these have such a range of properties; warmth, springiness, slinkiness, and shine!

Yarn substitution is something that many knitters find tricky. What tips can you give?

The safest thing is to look at the weight (thickness), fibre composition, spun characteristics, and colourway of the recommended yarn, then work to match these as far as possible. These are the key variants that affect how yarn functions in knitted fabrics. Of them all, colourway is the safest to vary.

Swatch the stitch patterns with your mooted yarn and assess whether or not you like the look. Some stitch patterns are best with smooth and crsipy yarns, while some are best with soft and squishy yarns. Even slight variance from the yarn used in the main sample can spoil the look of some designs. For example, cable patterns are particularly sensitive to yarn differences, and can look very flat and indistinct with the wrong yarn choice.

Avoid multi-coloured yarns for almost anything but stocking stitch! Though some stitch patterns do work in variegated yarns, it is safest to follow the lead of the designer in this. If they’ve used a very multi-coloured yarn, then go for it! For similar reasons avoid very dark yarns for anything with texture stitches.

I have created a tutorial in the Knitting School at my website about selecting colour for colourwork. This will help if you are thinking of substituting different colours for designs such as Kellynch, Pemberley, Durmstrang, Fleur, or Lissuin.

If you could design your perfect yarn what would it be?

Well, at the moment it would be a linen and silk blend laceweight, because I’m planning a lacy summer top! I am having incredible difficulty sourcing a suitable solid-coloured yarn for this. The yarn I want seems so impossible to find that I may end up going with a bamboo yarn for it instead. That would be cool and drapey, but not as luxurious as I prefer.

My perfect yarn for general use would be a woollen-spun (so, slightly fuzzy, springy and elastic) wool and silk yarn with a massive range of solid and marled colours. In other words, a particularly luxuriant version of a shetland jumperweight!

You can find out more about Ann and her work on her website.

Thanks Ann – and happy knitting to all of you.

Joy x

Loooooooong Stripes

I’ve wanted to do a long stripe yarn for a while – so yarn which isn’t dyed in a skein and which doesn’t have a pattern which repeats.

Like this

A very, very simple cowl designed to be long enough to pull up round my ears when it gets really cold.

The long stripe yarns will be available in a couple of yarn bases and lots of different colours – but for now they’re in SparkLynne sock and laceweight as we’re still donating 50% of the sales of these to Macmillan cancer support.

The blue is the same one as is knitted up in the picture above – so the skeins don’t show off the full range of colour from light to dark.

Then there’s sock yarn in some old favourites and some new colours.

There’s 4ply merino, cashmere and nylon in case you need extra cosy socks.

There’s 4ply alpaca, silk and cashmere

There’s DK alpaca and silk – perfect for a quick knit

There’s lots of laceweight SparkLynne yarn.

There’s a small mountain of laceweight SparkLynne yarn.

And finally there’s more fine alpaca, silk and cashmere.

Everything is in the shop now – so happy shopping.

Joy