Yarn in my Pocket

Doodles in air

I've been holding out on you. Well, sort of. A little bit, perhaps. When I was planning to weave my latests scarf (warp shown here; I really must do a post about the finished scarf sometime...) I orignally intended to use Bunnylace as the weft. So soft! So fluffy! So warm!! So I dyed some this soft latte colour - only it looked dreadful with the warp. It was too light, and had too much of a greying effect on the whole thing. So I pulled it out, and found a different weft. Since then, I've been doodling with the failed weft yarn - after all, it's already wound into a ball. So easy to pick up a pair of needles and play...

I think I'm finally getting something I like from my doodles. The overriding theme so far has been 'feathers'; the colour of the yarn reminds me of the collared doves who are currently raising two chicks in the nest they have built behind our satellite dish...

I'm maybe a quarter of the way through the design I have roughly sketched out in my head - and already the shawl is too big to pin out on the needles for a proper view. This is where things start to make me nervous. What if it won't block out properly when I'm done? What if the motifs don't flow into each other as they should?!

Well... How wrong could it go? At any rate, this yarn is lovely to knit with; soft as feathers and light as air.

Fun with triangles

One of the things that I know I need for shows and fairs is samples. SAMPLES. The great thing about sample knits is that they give people the opportunity to see and feel the way the yarn knits up, not just the way it looks in the skein. You can see the colour distribution, the stitch size, the drape of the fabric at various gauges. The trouble with sample knits is that it takes a very long time to knit them. So I'm knitting bunting. Lots of yarn samples, lots of different colours. Decoration and samples all in one!

I plan to mount them on white cotton twill tape, and write the yarn name, colour and possibly needle size on the back. Yay laundry marker!

I should be able to whip up one or two of these per day between now and Wonderwool - enough for a 'starter pack' on the stall. And the beauty is - I can keep expanding the bunting as needed! (I'm quite pleased with this idea, can you tell?!)

Saturday Giveaway: Ostara sock yarn

I promise that one day soon I will start writing blog posts that aren't just about prize draws; I really will! In the meantime, though, the latest shipment of yarn and fibre for the Wheel of the Year club has gone out - and I have a spare skein of sock yarn! This is a special, bittersweet shipment for me: it is the last shipment of the first six months of my very first club. If that sounds a little bit convoluted, it is! But in summary, it means that this is the last skein that some of my first club members will receive. Others, of course, signed up for the full year, and have four more to come! (And still others have signed up for the next six months - some new, some returnees! I am sorry the first six months is over - it went so fast! - but I'm really looking forwards to the months to come!) Anyway, if you feel like getting in on a little bit of the yarn club action, comment on this post before noon UK time on Monday 26th, and you will be in with a chance of winning a really rather lovely (if I do say so myself!) skein.  

Saturday Giveaway: February’s Club installment!

This is your chance to win a taste of the Wheel of the Year club fun! The shipments for the Candlemas instalment of the Wheel of the Year yarn and fibre club have been dispatched, and... I have a spare skein of lace weight yarn! So I'm giving it to one lucky commentor. I can't give out the details of the yarn or the colourway at this point - that would spoil the surprise for club members - but I can tell you that this is not a 'prototype' skein; it is from the same dye run as the shipped colourway, so will match exactly. And I will tell you that it's on one of my favourite yarn bases, too! All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is comment on this blog post by noon on Monday (UK time). The winner will be selected by random draw and announced on Tuesday. Anyone can enter, including existing club members, from anywhere in the world. I think this is my first giveaway of the year, so let's pile up the comments for this one! Have fun!

Saturday Giveaway: Midwinter fiber

We are rapidly closing in on the midwinter solstice in the northern hemisphere: days are getting shorter, weather is getting colder, and all the shipments have gone out for the midwinter installment of the Wheel of the Year club.

And I have another club giveaway: one for the spinners, this time! I'm giving away 50g (so half an installment) of the actual club fibre; not a prototype, so it is just the same as the stuff I've already shipped to the club members. I'm not going to say anything about the colours or composition (spoilers!), but I will say that it is suitable for any kind of spinning, from fine laceweight to chunky, and (I think) for needle felting too.

To enter for this giveaway, leave a comment on this post by noon UK time, Monday (December 19th). This competition is open to everyone, all over the world, so join in and have fun!  

What I’m doing with my Samhain yarn (and fibre!)

Of course I kept some for myself! Did you think that I wouldn't? This is the first installation of my first ever yarn club, you know! Admittedly, the sock and lace yarn I kept are from the prototyping phases - and I havent' done anything with the lace yarn yet - but I had to keep *some* souvenirs. The colour prototype, by the way, had a much more abrupt change from orange to black, generally less saturation through the oranges, and was - ahem - technically less together than the finished club yarnz. 

I had hoped to have the pattern for these socks (or at least, the finished socks) ready to display on Hallowe'en itself - but no luck. I finished the whole first sock, then decided that, really, it was too tight. Yes, I could wear it - but it wasn't how I wanted it to be. So I started the second sock (without ripping back the first, I hasten to add; just in case I changed my mind!), and started work on the second. When I finished the second, I realised I'd done a really stupid thing when setting up the stitch pattern for the foot: the whole thing spiralled gently, biasing it's way around the sock. Wearable, again - but still not what I wanted. So I pulled it out, back to the end of the heel turn, and set at it again. I think I had the first sock finished for November 1 - and I've been plodding my way through the second ever since. I'm on the foot now - and without any silly mistakes, thank you - so it shouldn't be too much longer till I'm done! 

The fibre was easier. I wanted to maintain the colour progression, so I spun it all into one long, graded single, and then chain plied it for a fat, round, 3-ply yarn. (Chain plying, by the way, is also called Navajo plying, but certain people think 'chain' is more correct, so that's what I'm trying to train myself to say.) But wow! It's a long time since I've chain plied anything, and I'm a much better spinner now, with much higher standards. I had never realised before how hard it is to keep all the strands under even tension whilst you add the plying twist - and if you don't do that, you don't end up with such a regular yarn. More on that another day, perhaps, but suffice it to say that what I was expecting to be a quick-and-easy ply has taken me a lot longer than I expected, and has needed a lot of concentration, too!

I overplied the yarn relative to its intial spinning twist, so it was quick active (read: twisty - you can see it coiling up on itself!) when it went in for its bath this morning. But a couple of changes of hot and cold water, a good squeeze and a snap between the hands have it hanging meek and straight in the shower, drying. I think a hat is in its future.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Hallowe'en. Samhain. The midpoint between the autumn equinox and the midwinter solstice. It's today! This is also the first festival celebrated by my Wheel of the Year Club! I know that some of the packages have arrived with people already. I'm not sure they have all arrived, though, especially in the US where some folks have been hit really, really hard by snow over the last weekend. So! To avoid spoilers, I'm putting the inspiration photographs and a couple of club hints behind the following cut. Click to read on...

Saturday Giveaway: Wheel of the Year club one-shot!

Entries are now closed for this week's giveaway! Please come back later today to find out who the lucky winner is!

OK, so this is a thing I'm going to do every time the Wheel of the Year shipments are about to go out. It's a way of spreading the club joy a little further; a little wider.

Signups for the Wheel of the Year club ended last Monday, and I have been busy dyeing, winding, washing and all the rest of it this week. As it happens, I have an extra skein of lace weight yarn from the colour prototyping phase for this installment. It's not exactly the same as the finished versions, but recognisably similar, and it's waiting to go home to one of you!

The prize: A skein of lace weight yarn (weavers, you might also rather like it!) in this season's club colour. No photographs are going up for this one, for obvious reasons. (Spoilers!)

How to enter: Comment on this post by noon (UK time) on Monday.

Who can enter? Anyone! I don't mind if you're already in the club or not. Though, if you're in the lace club, bear in mind that this won't be a perfect match for the skein you'll be receiving anyway.

Club memberships now available through Etsy!

Just a quick heads-up to let you know that Wheel of the Year Club memberships are now available through Etsy as well as from my own site. The price to you is exactly the same, so you can now select whichever purchasing portal you prefer! The one thing I cannot do through Etsy is sell subscriptions (i.e. payment by installments). If you want to do that.. you have to buy direct from me.

Time to dance!

Introducing Dance...

Dance is one of my most favourite yarns that I dye, but I haven't mentioned it much on the blog until now. It has made a few quiet appearances in my Etsy shop, but the person who holds most of the stock is Affinity Yarns. And, this month, Affinity Yarns are giving away a skein of Dance to one lucky winner! Go see how you can win (I'll wait...)

Dance is a sock weight/4-ply yarn in a decadent mix of 55% Bluefaced Leicester (superwash) and 45% Silk. It has a wonderful, soft lustre without being completely in-your-face with the shiny, and it takes colour amazingly well. Scarily well, you could say.

(By the way, if you haven't met Bluefaced Leicester (or BFL) wool yet, you're in for a treat. It's a wonderful, slightly shiny long-stapled wool that is so, so soft. Some of my favourite spinning experiences have been BFL).

Because of the high percentage of silk in Dance, fabrics knit up from it have quite a heavy, drapey hand. It does have some memory and 'spring', but not as much as you'd get from a pure wool. Because of this, it blocks beautifully for fingering weight shawls, and I am absolutely itching to knit a cardigan in it: the swing would be divine! Perhaps for springtime, eh?

And yes! This is a sockweight yarn. But you will get best results if you pick stitch patterns with built in elasticity if you want to knit socks in this yarn; that silk content makes for drape, shine, warmth and beauty- but not bounce. Plain stockinette socks in Dance will probably slump - but there are plenty of more complex patterns out there to set your needles dancing!