Now, whats all that about??

Weeeell, let’s begin with Alletta and Allegra.  They’re a very pretty pair of shawls designed by my friend Ruth, who you’ll find at Ruthcrafts.

Alletta and Allegra are sisters.  Alletta is a plain stocking stitch top-down triangular shawl with a wide lace border, and Allegra sports the lace pattern all over. My li’l ole blog doesn’t seem able to cope with copying a picture from Rav, so here is a link to Alletta.

Now, what’s all this got to do with Caithness? Well….. Ruth is the first designer to be featured on the podcast from the Caithness Craft Collective, and I’m delighted to be included in this episode too, as the-person-who-supplied-yarn-for-the-giveaway!  The giveaway prize includes the patterns for both shawls, a project bag and a skein of Cloud!  There’s going to be an Alletta/Allegra Knit-a-long in the Collective’s Ravelry group beginning at the end of the month, and I have a little skein kept by so I can join in too.

And here’s some Cloud, newly updated

And here’s a link to the Bizart blog, where you can enbiggen the flyer and see the directions!

There’s a 25% sale right across the board for the month of January!!

Check out the Merino Cashmere dk.  One skein is plenty for a neck warmer/cowl. and will knit to all standard dk patterns, such as this Herringbone Cowl, or the very pretty Frost Flowers Lace cowl, or 2 skeins for the large version of the wonderful Honey Cowl

Also check out the Big Softy.  One skein makes a wonderful Star Crossed Slouchy Beret, or a lovely Crofter’s Cowl.  Or use two contrasting skeins for a Newsprint Cowl, (all Ravelry links) which I’m currently making in silver grey and denim blue.  The Ravelry pattern search is a wonderful tool here.  I searched knitting-accessories-nock/torso-aran/worsted-0 to 150 yards and came up with 11 pages of possibilities, and that is just for necks!  I found 28 pages for hands, including Dashing, which has been in my rav queue for ages!

Now I must stop, before half my day has gone.  May just have to cast on for Dashing right now though – I haven’t got a little project OTN currently (well, apart from socks, but they don’t really count!)

Happy sale-ing

Let me introduce you to this lovely pair of socks, knit by the very talented Laura who not only knits, but makes the most beautiful glass beads.

They’re Crocus socks by Wendy D Johnson from Toe-up Socks For Every Body.  The yarn is Smoothie Sock, in a non-pooling shade of pumpkin.  They’re quite splendid, are they not?  I’m really pleased with how the colour has subtly variegated – just the effect I was hoping to achieve

Thanks to Laura for permission to use the lovely photographs.

I’m so very glad that I have discovered the wonders of handspinning.  I’m no expert, far from it, but I am getting the hang!  I’ve even managed to knit an FO of which I am quite proud.  It’s Daybreak, by Stephen West.

The medium brown that starts the shawl, mid-neck, is semi solid Smoothie Sock and the rest is a 2-ply spun from a large braid of superwash Blufaced Leicester, dyed by me.  I’m just blown away by the way the hanspun shows as really striping where it’s separated by the brown.  The closeup shows the last dozen or so rows of just handspun.

My success led me, of course, to the internet in search of more fibrey goodness.  I had a small accident at Daniela Kloppmann’s  FeltStudioUK etsy shop..

They came with a lovely mini batt, which caused another accident, this time a 3 month sub to Daniela’s 8oz batt club!  And then I got to meet Daniela and her fibres in real live person when we were setting up for Wonderwool on the Friday!  Her fibres and colours are truly mouthwatering, and I fell in love with a set of batts that actually kept me awake that night!  I think I may have been Daniela’s first sale before the doors opened on Saturday!  Here it is – I just love the way it looks like a complete landscape..

I can’t tell you just how gorgeous this fibre is.  I’m sure it would photograph better out of the bag, but I don’t want to mess it up trying to get it back in again! I have a plan to spin a single from each one, starting by pulling strips off from one end, and matching  it with the second single, to get a single colour shift from one end of the yarn to the other.

If you’re a spinner of felter, you seriously need to give her shop a visit.  If you’re not a spinner or felter, then you still seriously need to give her shop a visit, because she is also a hugely talented Art Yarn spinner.

Just in case you missed it, it’s FeltStudioUK ! 

So, Wonderwool is done and dusted, and much fun was had.  There were so many smiley people, and I love the whole setting up shop/stallholding thing and meeting lots of lovely people, all connected together with a common love (or maybe obsession!) of all things fibrey.

Here is a supercute fluffy thing who was inhabiting the stand opposite.  Just look at those tufts!

and here is the Artist’s Palette Wall.

What you can’t tell from this is that the yarn is  (mostly – it was day 2!) 3 skeins deep!

There is lots left and it will be uploaded onto the site in batches.  We are trying to get out heads around a new way of updating, which will make it much quicker in the long run to enter all the data and pics, and will result in a one-press upload onto the site.  The first one will be sometime today, fingers crossed, which will be the Smoothie Sock.  Due to the way the site works, the new entries will appear underneath the current entries.  We’ll see how it goes.  I can’t tie it down to a time yet though.  I suppose you could say it’s still in it’s Beta phase!  Here is a little taster of what’s to be added..

Next post – fluff!

Just to let you now that orders placed from tomorrow , Thursday 11th Feb 2010 to Monday 15th Feb 2010 will be posted out on Tuesday 16th Feb 2010. We have a date with the Tower Of London, amongst other things!  Let’s hope I come back with both the children ;p

More silky goodness..

Glisten, 50g skeins, 400m per skein.

They didn’t quite make it in time for Christmas!  They’re very nice though…

There’s also some sock blockers in a trial medium size, and the versatile KnitPro set of interchangeable crochet hooks.

New yarns are trickling into the shop this week too, and there is a stocking up of the bargain basket in keeping with the January bargainous themes.

Happy knitting:)

It’s that time of year again!  Here’s what’s in the sale…..

Buttersoft dk

Pop Sox (older spinning – the new soon-to-be-here Pop Sox is just very slightly different in feel, having been spun at a different mill due to the closure of the old mill – still in the UK though!)

Gleam, the dk weight silk  (will sub for Debbie Bliss Silk, should you be so inspired)

Gleam lite, the 4ply weight silk (fab for shawly things – a large Ishbel will take 2)

Softee, the alpaca lace.

…and what remains of the fibre.

What’s NOT in the sale is the sock yarn (other than Pop Sox mentioned above), the Glisten, Damsel  and all the KnitPro.

There should have been lots more sock yarn coming your way today, along with more lace and a stocking up of the Bargain Basket BUT….. my dear little 4yr old, bless his little hand knitted wool and nylon socks, whilst playing train games on the computer yesterday managed to completely delete the folder of pictures we took last week.  And that means completely deleted!  He mysteriously managed to disappear them from the harddrive, and we’ve been unable to retreive them.  Which means an emergency photo session this evening!

Hopefully tomorrow…..

Happy bargain hunting