The Sock Variety Club

I spent yesterday dyeing the sock yarn club for June plus some new laceweight British Alpaca which is utterly gorgeous. So all in all, yesterday was a very successful day alhtough it kind of killed me. I could hardly move in the evening. Luckily today, Sunday, (although it's technically Monday now as it's gone midnight) was sunny and warm and all the yarn dried nicely out on the line. No room for washing though.

Simon has been painting the wood work in teh kitchen and has more to do tomorrow which means I can spend another session dyeing yarn. I'm working on the new organic merino 4ply tomorrow. I've been tying extra ties in the skeins tonight and it's a gorgeous yarn. So incredibly soft and it's organic so it's got to be good. Looking forward to dyeing it.

With all this dyeing going on I'm making great progress getting ready for the Ravelry Day in Coventry. Less than 2 weeks now. Still got more yarn to dye though and lots to label. I've not quite decided what to take yet but I'm hoping to get some Supreme Lace, Luscious Lace, new Amazing Cashmere Lace, Super Merino sock yarn and my new Glorious Sock yarn done in time for the show.

If you fancy signing up for the Sock Variety Club in time for June now is the time. The parcels will be going in the post on Tuesday or Wednesday. I've dyed several extra skeins as I miscounted so there are room for a few more members this month. The sock pattern for June is looking gorgeous and the yarn is amazing. You can sign up in US dollars in my Etsy shop or in British pounds in my new online shop.

better get to bed otherwise I won't be fit to do anything tomorrow. Nite x.

Don't forget to check out the bargain bags in the post below.

Bargain bags

I've been having a bit of a clear out in my studio this week. I have a big box of yarn that's either been discontinued, is too tangled to make it worth my while untangling them or yarns that have failed quality control as the colour wasn't quite right or they have splotches or similar. I've decided to divide these yarns into bags and I'm listing them for sale here. If you're interested in buying one please leave a comment with your e-mails address and the bag of your choice. Your comments containing your e-mail won't be published. I moderate all comments and I won't publish those containing e-mails addresses. First come first serve. Most of the yarn is discontinued sock yarn and is perfectly useable.

ALL BAGS ARE NOW SOLD.

Bag O (from left to right): SOLD
Discontinued easy care Merino sock yarn, a merino/nylon sock yarn blend I trialled last summer, BFL (sock club yarn that failed quality control), Merino/tencel sock yarn (got tiny red spots).
Bag 1 (from left to right): SOLD
First two are discontinued merino sock yarn, Supermerino red with small brown mark, Organic cotton/tencel sock yarn (with a pink spot).
Bag A (from left to right): SOLD
Unknown lace yarn (I'm not sure if this is a discontinued BFL/nylon lace or merino/seacell or what the yardage is), Luscious Lace 55gr skein, Silky Merino Lace (with some pink spots, old club yarn), Merino sock yarn, discontinued merino sock yarn (this is a smaller skein).
Lace Bag 2 (from left to right): SOLD
Silky Merino wiht some brown marks, 2 Luscious Lace 55gr skeins (unevenly dyed), 50gr Merino Lace, 50gr Cashmere Lace.
Bag H (from left to right): SOLD
Almerino ex-club yarn (tangled), Pure Merino 4ply, discontinued merino sock yarn, Supermerino with brown marks.
Bag E (from left to right): - SOLD
Ex Merino Club yarn (bad dye job), the other 3 are discontinued merino sock yarn.
Bag C (from left to right): - SOLD
Discontinued Merino sock yarn, discontinued merino/bamboo, discontinued merino sock yarn, merino sock yarn, ex club - bad dye job.
Bag B (from left to right): - SOLD
SuperMerino or Merino Plus (ex club yarn, bad dye job), discontinued merino sock yarn, merino sock yarn (ex club yarn, tangled), discontinued merino sock yarn.
All bags are £12.50 including UK postage. If you live outside the UK, let me know which country and I'll quote you for postage which will be charged at cost.

Yarn Samples

I've got so much to blog about I don't know where to start so I may share it out over several days, that's if I can find the time to blog over the next few days. I've dyed lots of yarn for the UK Ravelry Day, 2 1/2 weeks to go now and I'm starting to panic even more. Yesterday I had a big box of British yarn arrive. There was some British alpaca laceweight and organic merino sock yarn spun in Devon. A;so got some merino pencil roving. All rather gorgeous stuff.

I think I may have mentioned that I had a sack of rather gorgeous silk, silk/merino and cashmere yarns a week or so ago.

here are some of the samples. Handspun angora, cashmere and baby camel - very yummy. Incredibly soft and no it's not spun by me.Some silk and silk blend yarns:

Some colourcards for cashmere and bamboo yarns.
I also got some cashmere and silk laceweight, some new sock yarn and other gorgeous stuff. I've been dyeing some of it and more will be dyed in time for the Ravelry Day.

I've finished another lace stole but I'll save pics of that for next time. It's the stole for the Lace Variety Club. The sample is going to be sent to my sister. I promised her a lace stole a couple of years ago and she'll be surprised I've finally managed to knit one.

Lately the only thing I've been concentrating on is the garment for a mag that I finished last week and since then I've worked flat out on finishing the stole. So now it's time for some 'me-knitting'. I've started a shrug for myself in a gorgeous new sock yarn called, Glorious. It's incredibly soft and luxurious and so far the shrug is knitting up beautifully. I'll get some pics taken and show them in a few days.

Tomorrow i'm off to Spin A Yarn to teach a workshop on toe up socks two at a time on circs. Now I've got to get ready for housegroup which I'm leading tonight.

New Yarn Forward

The latest issue of Yarn Forward is out now. I've got a design in this issue. It was strange last issue to not have a design included, it was the first time in quite a few months. But this month I've got 'Siena' - a stylish cardigan in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran which was gorgeous to knit with. It's comfortable and looks just as good with a smart outfit for work or evenings out and jeans for the weekend. The perfect cover up for chilly summer days or evenings. In fact, it's perfect to wear all year.

Here's one of the magazine pics (copyright - St Range Photography) and one not very good photo I took on my mannequin.
I'm having a bit of a knitting emergency. Yesterday, I had nearly finished the 2nd sleeve on a new garment for a magazine I've not worked for before with a deadline thisFriday which means it's got to be posted tomorrow. At lunch time yesterday I decided to sew in the first sleeve and laid the pieces out after blocking and realised there was a massive problem. i'd compeletely mis-calculated the armhole and made a couple of other small mistakes. In the end I had to go through all my measurements and calculations and completely re-write all my numbers and do my schematic again. This took most of the afternoon. Then after a quick take away tea, I started frogging. Both front and back had to be frogged to armholes and half the sleeves had to come out and be re-knitted. I stayed up till midnight last night and managed to finish the front and one sleeve while watching Tom Cruise in Top Gun. This morning I set to work on the back which is now done and now i'm on the 2nd sleeve. It still needs to be posted tomorrow. I'm hoping to finish the knitting and sewing up/finishing tonight and then double-check the pattern tomorrow.

It's all under control now and I'm feeling calm but 24 hours ago I was in major panic mode and nearly e-mailed the editor and told her to forget it. The garment was very close to being scrapped completely before I got a grip and got working on fixing my mistake. The thing that lead to this mistake not being noticed before I think is the inches and cm thing. I grew up using cm but since I've lived here in England I've got more and more used to using inches since, alhtough England is officially metric, most people work in inches. When I design I mainly use inches but this mag use cm so I thought I'd write the whole pattern in cm and had put in some wrong measurements in cm and not picked up on it. I'm sure if it was inches I would have spotted it earlier as I'm more used to working in inches now. Never mind, it's taught me a lesson. From now on I'm knitting front or back, then one sleeve so I can double-check the fit before completing the other half of the garment. Or perhaps i just ought to explore one piece designs.

Next time I blog I've got some gorgeous pics of some new ayrn which arrived yesterday. It's stunning. I didn't open the sack with yarn until midnight as I was on my way to bed. And as well as my order, the supplier put in some samples and among them are handspun baby camel, cashmere and angor and they're stunning. Anyway, more about that next time. Back to my knitting now.

Small yarn update

I've listed a few lace yarns in the new shop. They are a new version of the Exotic Lace. My old Exotic Lace which had 1200m per skein are now called Exotic Cobweb Lace and new Exotic Lace have 800m per skein but is the same blend (alpaca/silk/cashmere). It's pure luxury and it's gorgeous.

I've also tweaked a few things in the shop too - changed some stuff and added some stuff - so take a look.

I'm trying out discount codes too, so if you order now you can take advantage of the 'introduction' discount code. Just type in introduction in the discount box (at some point during check out) and you'll get 10% off your order. I'm not sure if the discount is taken off postage or just yarns. I'd like it to come off just the yarn but I can't set what the code should apply to. Which means it applies to clubs too. Perfect if you fancy joining the Lace Variety Club as I'm dyeing the yarn tomorrow so you need to sign up for that now. The discount is only valid on my new YarnAddict site and not on Etsy.

Here's a sneak preview of the lace club yarn?No, it's not actually grey but I'm not going to show you the colours. These are the four trial skeins, all slightly different and I'm trying to decide between them and can't decide.

It's live!!!

I've got exciting news. My brand new website is now live. It contains my new online shop. At the moment the only things listed are the clubs. But I'll be adding yarns soon. At the moment though you can still buy my yarns through my Etsy shop. If you want to buy the clubs and pay in British pounds use my new shop and if you wish to join a club and pay in US dollars use Etsy. By early June, everything will be in my new shop. Confused? I hope not. I've wanted a new website for a while and have also been wanting to move my shop off Etsy for a while. The dollar exchange rate has made pricing the yarns difficult lately and a lot of British customers are not keen to buy in dollars any more. But obviously it's a bonus for my American customers. so it's been a difficult decision to make and I just hope I've made the right one. Let me know what you think.

This week it's time for the Lace Variety Club again. If you want to join you can now choose whether to pay in US dollars (Etsy) or British pounds (new shop). You need to sign up by Tuesday at the latest and preferably earlier if you want to make sure you don't miss out on the May parcels. This month's pattern is a brand new summery Stole and the yarn... okay, I'm going to keep you guessing on that one.

This is March's club yarn which was Cashmere Lace. May's colour and yarn will be completely different.

There are lots of exciting things going on right now but I can't tell you about most of them yet.

Have a good weekend.

New Sockamania pattern

The new Sockamania pattern is out. This is also the pattern used for the Sock VAriety Club for May, so if you're a member of the Sock Variety Club and your parcel hasn't arrived yet, look away now.The inspiration for the socks came from out trip to Norway last May. It was the first time I'd been home for 17 May since 1989. What's so special about 17 May? It's Norway's national day and it's a big deal in Norway. We celebrate with big childrens parades led by marching bands and family parties. Everyone's waving their Norwegian flags. Last year it was unusually cold and some places on the outskirts of Oslo even had snow, which is why I included the snowflakes. The socks also features the Norwegian flag. It's quite challenging to knit, but you can make it easier by dropping the blue colour (and end up with hte Danish flag instead), or knit the snowflake twice instead of the flag (and drop the blue colour and use white instead for those stitches). The foot is simple stripe pattern. If you belong to Sockamania your socks will be included in the draw if you decide to do the stripes for the whole socks as I realise some people will find a stranded colourwork pattern a bit too challenging. The socks are knitted top down and have a short row heel. Don't look too closely at my short row heel on the sample though. It's one of my worst short row heels. I was trying a new technique and didn't have time to rip it out when I realised I didn't like it.