Tag Archives: #nonylonsockKAL

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!

Yan Tan Tethera Yarn Club, Wharfe Wool Fair and #nonylonsockKAL

The Folly by Shutterspot Photography

The Folly by Shutterspot Photography

Yan Tan Tethera Yarn Club

There’s less than a week left to sign up to May’s Yan Tan Tethera yarn club.  The club is run by Elaine at Baa Baa Brighouse and features a rotating group of Yorkshire independent hand dyers each month.  It’s my turn and I’ll be creating a colourway from the beautiful photo above. In case you haven’t guessed already, purple is my favourite colour and I can already picture how I’d like the yarn to turn out.  I’m looking forward to testing my plan this weekend.

The photo is called ‘The Folly’, taken by Gary Turner of Shutterspot Photography and it features Victoria Tower on Castle Hill at a nature reserve over in Kirklees.

The club costs £21 and sign ups are open now, closing on 15 April giving me plenty of time to get everything dyed up and over to Elaine to post out for the 1 May.  I’ll be using my 100% British BFL HT sock yarn, which has 365m/400yd to each 100g skein. Which ties in nicely with…

#nonylonsockKAL

Joeli Creates is running a KAL (Knit along) based around sock yarns that don’t contain nylon.  There’s a perception out there that sock yarn must contain nylon in order to stand up to the wear our hand knit socks get in our shoes.  From now until 10 June Joeli plans to knit socks using nylon-free yarns, then for the second part of the project, she’ll wear only those nylon-free socks to test how they feel, wear and wash.

I’ll be joining in, both my 4ply yarn bases are nylon-free; Yan Sock is a 100% British BFL High Twist yarn made up of 2 plies, the High Twist making it particularly suitable to socks.  When the yarn has a high twist there’s less opportunity for the yarn to rub against itself and cause wear. My Tethera 4ply is also 100% British BFL and this one is a true 4ply in that the yarn is made up of 4 plies.  Tethera is a regular ply, not high twist. Perhaps I should knit a pair of each and then compare how the two different bases wear for the second part of the project. Here’s a pair I’m working on at the moment, using Yan Sock using 2 50g skeins to create 4-row stripes (more on stripyness at a later date!).

Stripy sock in progress

I previously did a wear test on a pair of socks knitted in Yan Sock, so I’ll come back later, having taken some photos, and show you the results of that.

You can sign up for Joeli’s KAL at her website, and if you’re on Ravelry you can follow everyone’s contributions in a thread in Joeli’s group here. You can also post pictures on twitter and instagram, just tag them with #nonylonsockKAL then other people taking part can see them.

Wharfe Wool Fair – 7 May 2016

It’s full steam ahead now to the first wool fair of the year and the dye pots are keeping very busy. This is the third Wharfe Wool Fair and there’s a new venue for 2016.  The show has moved to Ilkley and will be held at the Clarke Foley Centre from 10am to 4pm.  Have a look a the website for full details and list of exhibitors.  There’s plenty of parking in Ilkley as well as excellent public transport links by bus and train, hopefully see you there.  This will be the first show outing for the Shetland Gradients if you missed them last month.

Gradient six together

Dates for the diary

If you can’t make Wharfe Wool Fair on 7 May, there’s always Leeds Wool Festival at Armley Mills on 4 June.