Category Archives: Knitting

New Year, New Plans, Yan Tan Tethera Club

Happy New Year! It’s been a while!

I took a good break after Yarndale last September, but now it’s time to warm up the dye pots again and get cracking on making 2017 woolly and colourful!

Yan Tan Tethera Club

The first plan for 2017 is to dye for Baa Baa Brighouse’s Yan Tan Tethera yarn club. Elaine selects an inspiration photo, taken by her husband Gary, then I choose a yarn and make it colourful.  This is the photo that Elaine has chosen this time, it’s called ‘Red Cloud’ and was taken in the hills above Rastrick in West Yorkshire:

Red Cloud

The yarn I’m using this time is something a bit different, a 100% British Jacob DK weight yarn, made by West Yorkshire Spinners.  Sign ups are open now, and will close on Friday 20 January. There are limited places, so be quick! Pop over to Baa Baa Brighouse’s website to see what extra goodies you might find in your subscription box and to sign up.

Whilst you’re there, have a look at the gallery of photos of things people have made with previous Yan Tan Tethera club yarns.  I’m just one of a group of Yorkshire yarnies who dye for the club in rotation.

New year, new yarn

In exciting news, my very first custom spun yarn should arrive with me next week.  This yarn is made of all British fleeces, and is wholly processed by the Natural Fibre Company in Cornwall.   More news to come once I’ve got my hands on it and sent it through the dye pots.  This is what it looked like when we picked up the main component from a friend:

IMG_20160711_113746

Just one more thing…

Prices of undyed yarn have increased recently, so I shall have to reflect that with a small rise in prices. I’ll be updating the shop over the next couple of weeks, yarns priced £7 will go up 25p and yarns priced £14, £15 or £16 will go up by 50p each (except the Shetland gradients, they’ll stay the same). So if you want to get in before the increase…here’s where to go.

Dates for the diary

I shall have a stall again at Leeds Wool Festival on 3 June at Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills.

And I shall be applying to Yarndale again, so fingers crossed for that.

Circus of Stripes!

 

Circus of Stripes are you ready to join

Preparations for Yarndale (24-25 September, Skipton) are well under way, but in the meantime, a little something new:

Rainbow star x600

The Circus of Stripes is a troupe of eight colours naturally dyed on High Twist 100% BFL sock/4ply yarn. Each skein is 50g (182m / 199yds), perfect to mix and match for striped (or colour block) projects. Stripy socks anyone?!

Each colour is named after a circus act (clockwise from orange in the photo above):

Orange – Fire Eater
Yellow – Trapeze Artist
Green – Juggler
Aqua – Tightrope Walker
Blue – Stilt Walker
Purple – Ring Master
Pinky Purple – Tumbler
Pink – Unicyclist

What combination will you choose? A Stilt Walking Ring Master, a Fire Eating Juggler, a Tumbling Stilt Walker? Have fun, play with colour, make stripes!

The Circus of Stripes will be at Yarndale in September, but if you can’t wait that long then roll up! roll up! the Circus is in town at my Etsy shop now!

I’m a big fan of stripy socks; my main aim in creating this troupe of colours was to provide a bold, bright palette from which to select exciting colour combinations for socks. For my first pair I choose Stilt Walker and Unicyclist to make a simple four-row striped stocking stitch sock.

Stripy sock in progress

I chose two colours, but you could choose three for a pattern such as Geek, a pattern originaly written for self striping yarn, but could be adapted for separate skeins.

4ply shawls are really popular at the moment, Veera Välimäki has some wonderful designs utilising stripes including the Color Affection shawl. Martina Behm, (Strickmich and designer of the Hitchhiker shawl), is another designer who makes great use of colour and stripes in her designs, mostly recently in the Shore Hap in Kate Davies’ Book of Haps.

For a rectangular scarf the recently published Paint the Town makes effective use of three different colours in stripes and blocks knitted on the bias.

Those are just a few suggestions of how to use the Circus of Stripes yarn, have a browse of the patterns on Ravelry. A pattern search of the tag ‘stripes‘ brings up 209 pages of patterns!