How The West Was Spun

Shop Tidbits

A quick note to announce a few new things on the shop website.

First up, I've got a large batch of sale-priced laceweight yarns here.  The mill I use for a lot of my laceweight is making it very difficult to get cones, so these larger 1200-yard skeins are all I'll be carrying of this put-up.  The new put-up will be a standard 875-yard/100-gram skein.  These are all first-quality yarns, just ones that you won't see at this yardage in the future.  The mill is also discontinuing the 70/20/10 alpaca/silk/cashmere blend (BOO!), so what's up in the sale list for this base is all there will be of it. 

Everything on that page is discounted 25% off, so if you've got some laceweight projects lined up for summer knitting, this is a great savings for your lace projects.

New in the shop for June are two laceweight yarns:  Brigit Lace, which is a springy, 100% merino, a great workhorse of a yarn, suitable for any lace projects.  These are 875-yard/100-g skeins. And Arianhrod Lace, which is a 75/25/5 blend of merino/silk/glitter.  This is the lighter weight (875-yard/100-g skein) sister yarn to the Arianhrod Sock that Kirsten used in her pretty "Unsinkable Shawl" we debuted in April.  It has just a little bit of bling - pretty and delicate without being over-the-top.  It has a great drape and blocks beautifully.

If there's a colorway you'd like that you don't see listed currently in the available ready-to-ship skeins, please email me and I can get you taken care of.

All for now.....

New! Summer Fiber Club

Now available in the shop, a 3-month long fiber club, to keep you busy spinning through the summer!

Subscriptions are available here.  They will remain available from today (May 1st) through the end of the month, and then your first package will arrive in mid-June.  The club will run for 3 months with a new colorway exclusive to club members arriving in your mailbox in mid-June, July and August.  The colorways will take their themes from Summer Gardens - bright pinks, purples, a whole host of greens, with brighter reds, yellows and oranges.

All of the fiber bases will be wool or wool blends.  Nothing too difficult (no angora, no cotton), and club members are welcome to order extra braids. 

Come join us!

All for now........

New Shawl Pattern - Voussoir Shawl

I think many of you have likely knit the very popular Traveling Woman shawl (or one of the other matching accessories of that name).  The designer, Liz Abinante, is releasing an eBook collection of small shawls based on the architecture of Venice, and her final one of the collection, the Voussoir Shawl, features my DK-weight Aerten yarn (that's the squishy and soft merino, cashmere, nylon blend).

This shawl takes 2 skeins of yarn and it's a great, versatile, elongated crescent shape.  You could wear it scrunched up as a scarf, or draped around your shoulders like a shawl.

Liz wanted a really deep, rich fall colorway, so I sent her the "Bittersweet" colorway for her sample, but I think the shawl would be great in any of the colors I carry. (And if you don't see a colorway you want, please shoot me an email - I'd be glad to do a custom dye for you!)

For the rest of the month, I'm running a 10%-off special on this base yarn.  You can find it in the shop here!

(All photos courtesy of Liz Abinante).

All for now....

Dallas/Ft. Worth Fiber Festival 2012

Whew!  I am back.  The DFW show was great - I got to meet some long-time customers/blog readers in real live person AND I met a ton of absolutely delightful, wonderfully nice folks.  The show ran three days - Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and I left NM on Wednesday after work, got to Amarillo, and then headed out early the next a.m. for Grapevine, Texas.  It took several hours to get set up on Thursday, but other than the fact that (like me) my poor banner was sagging a bit in the heat and humidity (oh hai! upper 80s? 90+ humidity?  OMG.), everything set up fairly easily.

A few pics:

I wound up selling out of Kirsten's gorgeous Unsinkable Shawl kit by noon the first day and as you might guess, since there isn't a lot of call for heavy sweaters with weather like that, the sock-weight and lace yarns were very popular.

I had several local Ravelry friends who were kind enough to stop by the booth, give me a mini-break for the bathroom and lunch every day, and who I got to actually meet in person and spend some time with on Saturday night.  Yay! 

So while it was a pretty long drive (11 hrs each way), totally worth it for me!  I am planning already to go back next year although... Texas Department of Roads - I'm looking at you!!! - I'm hoping there will be less completely insane construction on highway 114. 

All for now.....

Whew!

Nose to the grindstone this weekend, I dyed, dyed, dyed and then dyed some more.

I decided a good stopping place on Sunday would be when I ran thru almost all my undyed stock of the yarns I'm taking to Dallas.  I still have some roving I want to get done, but right now, I think I can call the yarn dyeing portion of this finished. 

Each of the bins in this photo is one of the 66-liter ones (there are 5 there).

I have 3 other bins this size with more sock weight yarns in them.  I have 2 of the 36-liter (ish) ones with some odd laceweight skeins in them.  I've got one 128-liter bin stuffed with kits, and another one that's just about topped off with roving, although I'd like to get a second one of those done.  I have a few other smaller bins with things like stitch markers, nostepinnes, printed patterns, little notions bag, etc., packed already.  I do need to finish getting cardstock labels for the different yarn display bins printed, and print a stack of business cards, but I feel a LOT better about the stock I'm taking after this weekend's marathon!

All for now....

Unsinkable

Did you know that this April marks the 100th anniversary mark of the sinking of the Titanic, a ship deemed "unsinkable"?

To commemorate the event, Kirsten Kapur of Through the Loops and I have teamed up for a fun, quick-to-knit project.  I was really excited when Kirsten approached me about collaborating on this project, and even more excited when I saw the gorgeous pattern she came up with.  Interesting to knit, but a single-skein shawlette with just a hint of lace, it's a great spring project that you can finish and wear for cooler evenings in the late spring, early summer.

Kits will be available in the shop starting April 1st (and includes the pattern with written and charted instructions, plus the yarn to knit the project).  Or shoot me an email/leave a comment if you'd like to pre-order yours now!

All for now.....

Pattern Release: Viviane Mittens and Hat

The Viviane Mittens and Hat is now available through my Ravelry pattern store.

Instructions for both accessories are included in the pattern, and it is knit from one 325-yard skein of a light DK/sportweight yarn (my Freya BFL DK in the shop, colorway "Wisp").  If you have more hair than my stick-straight version, or just want a slightly looser fit for either the hat or the mittens, you can up-size the pattern by using a light worsted-weight yarn like Cascade 220.

The inspiration for this set came from the legend of Viviane (called by this and several other names, depending on which Arthurian legend version you read).  Despite the fact that Merlin foresaw his demise at her hands, he taught Viviane all his magical arts and she learned them so well she imprisoned him within a gnarled tree trunk.

The patterns are suitable for an intermediate knitter.  They are both knit in the round (the hat on a 16" circular and DPNs, and the mittens on DPNs), and assume some knowledge of reading charts and basic gusset-thumb mitten construction.

All for now.....

Weekend Recap

We had another home-body weekend this week (my favorite kind of weekend)!  We took down the Xmas tree and did clean-up of some holiday things.  Saturday, we got the new boys some exercise in the arena before Sunday's snow.  Sam and Bhen are both in the barn on stall rest for various and sundry issues.  Sammy's got another episode of laminitis we are nursing him thru; he's slowly slowly slowly improving with his little therapy boots on and his bute.  Bhen's been limping around a bit.  He's lost most of his eyesight and I'm pretty sure he got kicked or run into during the high-spirited play he tries to avoid with Zel leaping around like the youngster he is, so he's been moved permanently into his own run and has his half of the barn to hang out with Sam on the other side of the fence panels.  My two retired veterans are good at keeping each other company. 

One of my super-duper test knitters finished up her task with the March Shakespeare in Lace shawl, so I've moved into high gear getting skeins dyed for that kit shipment, and I spent a lot of time with the skeiner and dye pots in my studio on Sunday.

Also, if you are near to or a local of Dallas/Ft. Worth, please put the Fiber Fest, which is the last weekend in March, on your calendars.  I've been juried into that show and I plan on carting a massive amount of yarn and fiber east to Dallas that weekend.  I'd love to meet some of you on-line fiber friends in person if you are in the area!  I also started on dyeing for that this weekend - lots to do, but I've got a few months to get it all accomplished.

Back to work as usual this week.  Maybe with more snow in the forecast for us.....

All for now.... 

FO: The Scottish Shawl, aka the MacBeth Shawl

Did you know that there's a superstition in the theater world about not calling Shakespeare's play MacBeth anything other than "The Scottish Play"?  It's true - there's a quick blurb here on Wikipedia about the reasons behind it.

So we won't chance bad luck by naming the play in association with the shawl, but I now can share with you the monster lace project I worked on a lot during the fall.  This is the final kit project for the 2011 Shakespeare in Lace, and it is indeed based on themes found in The Scottish Play:  The storm, flowers (represented by Scottish thistles), and the trees of Birnham Wood.

This is a large square shawl, knit from the shop's Euphrosyne lace in the "Scottish Heather" colorway.

The thistles are my favorite portion:

The pattern and kit are currently only available to club members, but if you'd like to be notified when they go on sale to the general public (March 1st), please leave me a comment, or shoot me a PM on Ravelry and I'll be glad to add you to the notification list!

All for now......

New Yarn - Aerten DK-weight

I've just posted a few small lots of the new DK-weight yarn I'm carrying in the shop.

This is the Aerten DK-weight, which is a blend of 80% superwash merino, 10% nylon and 10% cashmere, with 230 yards per skein.  Soft, but hard-wearing, it's got a lovely plump, multiple-ply structure, so it's perfect for sweaters or any accessories.  I can envision it in colorwork patterns, as well as cabled or twisted stitch patterns.  It is very soft, as you might guess, from the cashmere component.

Right now, I've just got a couple of ready-to-ship small lots, but I've also set up a custom-order listing if you need a bunch of skeins for a larger project, so you can order as many as you need.

Look for another DK-weight yarn next week, and in December I will have two new worsted-weight yarns to add as well!

All for now....