Category Archives: Dyeing

New colours on BFL HT sock yarn

This last week has been all about the sock yarn.  My Yan Sock base is a lovely 100% British Bluefaced Leicester High Twist sock yarn.  The high twist gives it that extra bit of sturdiness to help prolong the life of your precious hand knit socks.  The fibre of the Bluefaced Leicester sheep has one of the longer staple lengths of the sheep breeds, which means it’s less prone to felting than other fibres.  All great attributes for socks!

There are three new colours to launch this week, available now in the Etsy shop, drum roll please….

First up is Purple Fuzzy Mouse:

Lac and Saxon Blue semiA dusky pinky purple with brighter pink and purple highlights produced from a combination of Lac and Saxon Blue.  Named for a random conversation on Twitter!

Next up is a deep rich purple (can you see a theme developing here?!):

Purple logwood with iron semiThis purple is created using Logwood Purple, with the variations and highlights produced by the use of different modifiers such as iron and sodium carbonate.

And finally:

Logwood, cochineal, saxon blueA vibrant mixture of pink, purple and blue.  All created with Cochineal, Logwood Purple and Saxon Blue. From the way the dyes have mixed and moved around in the pot, there are lots of subtle variations to the colours.  This would make a great pair of bright and cheerful socks!.

As well as the new colours, I’ve restocked popular colours including Summer Berries, Deeper Under the Sea and Plumlicious.

If you’re looking for sock pattern ideas you might like Ithunn designed by Amanda of Owl Print Panda using my Yan Sock base.  Amanda says that Ithunn is the Norse goddess of spring and keeper of apples and eternal youth.  With spring just around the corner these socks would look great in my Spring has Sprung colourway:

Spring has Sprung 20140125a closeup

And, if that wasn’t enough socky goodness, Yan Sock in Spring has Sprung appears in an Indie Dyer feature in the March issue of Let’s Knit magazine!

Lets Knit March 2015 300

 

Yarndale, a new yarn base and a pattern

Well, we’ve finally recovered from Yarndale.  It was a fantastic weekend, we sold lots of wool and met many wonderful people.  A huge thank you to the organisers of Yarndale for a very well organised show. It’s fair to say that after the first Yarndale in 2013 there was some fairly ‘robust’ feedback about queues in the car parks, over crowding and not enough food stalls etc.  Well, the organisers took all those comments on board, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever come across an organisation take on board and act on feedback in such a positive way. Bring on Yarndale 2015!

I only had time to take quick photos with my phone, but here’s a quick tour of the stall for those of you unable to get to Yarndale.

Yarndale 4 ply display

Yarndale 4 ply display

Here’s the 4ply table. There’s Yan Sock on the right hand side, 100% British BFL HT sock yarn.

And on the left my new yarn base – Tethera 4ply.  Another 100% British BFL yarn, but a nice and smooth, true 4ply yarn.

Right in the middle of the display there’s my new scarf pattern making its debut at Yarndale – Sylvan Scarf.  Knitted using just one skein of my Tethera 4ply (seen here in the ‘Sitka’ colourway) it’s perfect to keep you warm on a walk in the woods; wide enough to provide plenty of material to snuggle into and long enough to wrap all the way round.

The central lace panel is reminiscent of fully grown pine trees, whilst the edging and borders feature the saplings of the forest floor.

14 colours of Tethera 4ply are available now in my Sylvan Tiger Yarn Etsy store, priced at £14 per 100g / 400m. And Sylvan Scarf is published on Ravelry, priced £3. (You don’t need to be a member of Ravelry to buy from the website).

TattySquawk Shawl Pins

TattySquawk Shawl Pins

It was a pleasure to host TattySquawk shawl pins on the stall.  Handmade in Cornwall from lightweight aluminium, the pins are perfect for your hand knit shawls. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes including sheep, cats and penguins!

Next up we have the lace side of the stall with two different yarn bases.

Lace yarns

Lace yarns

Tyan Lace on the right, 80% British BFL and 20% Silk and on the left another new base – Methera Lace.  An even more luxurious yarn than Tyan Lace, Methera is made up of 55% British BFL and 45% Silk.  On the very left of the photo is a sleeveless top, Bonny by Tin Can Knits, knitted up in Methera Lace, I’ll talk more about it another time, but suffice to say it proved very popular with the crowds, in fact it probably needs a good wash having been fondled so much!

Now it’s time for a little rest and to work on exciting new projects for next year.  In the meantime and few sample skeins and the Sylvan Scarf sample will be visiting Glasgow School of Yarn this weekend, kindly hosted on the stall of A Peppermint Penguin who makes the most wonderful project bags.