Saturday 30 January 2016

The Votes are in and it's Shiny!

I've counted up all your votes, and you wonderful people have chosen Firefly!

I'm incredibly excited and I confess i've been planning this nearly since the beginning of the month, but I also planned the Doctor Who box option too, so you might get to see some new Whovian colourways this quarter.

I'll be working with a couple of other artisans to bring you a very snazzy club box. Just a quick reminder of what will be in the box.

The club boxes (£42) will include a 100g skein of yarn in an exclusive colourway. There will also be a set of mini skeins two of which are colourways you've already seen before but are just gorgeous. Take a look at Mal and Inara all knit up together in Lili Comme Tout's fantastic pattern Papyrus .


There will also be some mystery theme related goodies, which is where the other artisans come in, though i'll be making a few.

The exclusive club skein can be in one of our 100% superwash merino bases, Companion 4ply, Echo Dk or Space Aran or you can change from one our standard bases to one of the luxury bases.

  • Tesseract lace 600m (55% Sw Blue Faced Leicester 45% Silk) + £2 per skein
  • Hevelin 4ply 400m (MCN - 80% Sw Merino 10% Cashmere 10% Nylon) + £3 per skein
  • Sinaya Dk 212m (MCN) + £3 per skein
  • Selkie Dk 212m (50% Sw Merino 50% Silk) + £2 per skein
There will also be a limited number of single 100g skein offerings for £16 + postage, if a luxury base is chosen add £2 or £3 per skein depending on the option as detailed above.

Extra 100g skeins can be added to the club box or with the single skein for an addition £15 (standard skein) each.


Sign ups are available to subscribers of the yarn club mailing list on the 31st and will be open to everyone else with the next blog post in the first week of February.

Friday 22 January 2016

Colourway Creation: My process

I love working on new colourways, though it isn't something I do all the time. Especially when it comes to repeatable colourways. Often when I dye for the sake of dyeing or myself I just throw colours together to see what madness comes out of it. This part of my process is very haphazard, but often informs my more structured dyeing. I like to play with colour to see how they combine in a more real way than on a colour palette.

When designing a new colourway I usually have been prompted to think about a Fandom or theme and then I tend to select the first few things that come to mind to take down the research rabbit hole.
So for example when working on the Phat Fiber samples for January with the Theme  'Dragons and Fantasy'. I had originally been thinking about fiery reds browns, colours I don't dye often, but are commonly associated with Dragons and their fire breathing ways.   However when it came to dyeing my samples I was suddenly reminded of Eragon by Christopher Paolini and thought it would be nice to play off other colours, so I was guided to his dragon in particular Saphira.



Once I've got a firm inspiration, I start thinking about how to represent this using colour and how the colours should best be distributed across the skein. For Saphira, it was really important that I looked at 3 colours, the slight brown, purple and the rich but kind of dusty blue. To create the colours I was looking for I extended my colour palette, especially as I am dyeing this colourway on Superwash yarn, I can make full use of how dyeing on this type of yarn creates a layered effect.

So with a view to the final blue, I chose an icy blue grey, to add that level of dustiness and also to neutralise the cream/ yellow colour to the undyed yarn. I then chose a warm brown and strong purple. With a final rich blue.

I then decide the strength of each of those colours I am going to use, which will determine where the colours are very deep or pale. In this case I kept the first colour as is and chose to go for paler versions of the brown and purple as they were secondary colours to the blue. The blue I decided to use at half strength.

When it comes to dyeing the skeins I think about how I want each of these colours to be represented on the skein, whether the colour has to be across the entire skein, if I just want flashes of the colour, whether it should be a completely solid colour or if in itself it should be a semi solid. This determines the method of dyeing I use for the colouway.

In this case I chose a semisolid method for both the icy blue grey and the rich blue, and the same resist method of twisting my hanks for the brown and purple to give flashes across the skein in different sections.

The final product on the Space Aran weight base!

Don't forget there is only a week left of voting time for the Themed Quarterly yarn club. Vote in the Ravelry group, Facebook or in the comments on this post . Go ahead and subscribe to the club mailing list to get first dibs on the club sign ups (which are limited in number) on the 31st of January. Sign ups will be available to everyone else  in the first week of February.

Your voting options are
1. Doctor who
2. Firefly
3. Random Fandom!

Friday 15 January 2016

So Many WIPs... So Few FOs!




It seems since my last knitting post about the Soft Stones Pullover, I've been pretty terrible at finishing my projects :(

I certainly didn't manage to complete 12/15 jumpers in 2015. I won't be attempting it this year either but it is one of my knitoloutions to finish more WIPs (so based on my jumper WIPs, i'll be almost there!) and knit more in general.

My finished items from 2015 (a few of which are pictured above)
  • Wurm hat for a friend
  • 2 x Stained glass shawlettes
  • Ease Jumper
  • Sandshore
  • Soft stones
  • Swing me right round
  • Cowl for a swap
  • Shawl for a swap
  • Hawthorne singlet
  • 3 x Amigurumi vampire bats

Unfortunately my list of Works In Progress, is pretty long..
They amount to around
In addition to my WIPs above, I have added another jumper and a few more accessories. On top of that I have several designs in the works for this year. Including the rest of the Short Row collection that the Stained Glass Shawlette belongs to. 

This collection explores the use of short rows as design features, and the way they can be used to provide structure and shaping. It will consist of the Shawlette, a Shawl, Wristwarmers, a Tank top and a Jumper. These will be released to the collection at different points this year so stay tuned to pick up a fantastic discount on the collection when the first pattern is released.

What are your knitoloutions or craftoloutions for 2016? Share them in the comments :)

Friday 8 January 2016

New Year, New Things and the Quarterly Yarn Club

Happy New Year and Welcome to 2016!

We've lots of new and exciting things coming up this year, more shows, new bases, new designs and of course, more yarn!

We are starting a Themed Quarterly Yarn Club. Sign ups will be limited for each quarter but will be 100% worth it!

The first quarter runs from January to March

The first month of every quarter (in this case, January) you get to vote on your favourite theme from a shortlist of themes. Subscribers to the Yarn Club list get to go first and have more weight in the decision (they also get first dibs on sign ups). So subscribe to the list now if you're interested: here

At the end of the first month the theme is announced and sign ups are open through the second month, these are limited though, so don't wait!

In the third month the club yarn goes out!

What do you get?

Each Club membership of £42 gives you a skein of yarn exclusive to the club (and club members) for the year, a set of mini skeins and some mystery theme related goodies and accessories.

You are able to choose one of the following Superwash Merino bases for your exclusive skein of yarn.

  • Companion 4ply
  • Echo Dk
  • Space Aran
You also have the option of picking one of our luxury bases for a little extra
  • Tesseract Lace (55% Sw Blue Faced Leicester 45% Silk) 
  • Hevelin 4ply (80% Sw Merino 10% Cashmere 10% Nylon)
  • Sinaya Dk (MCN)
  • Selkie Dk (50% Sw Merino 50% Silk)
Please note that our Ship's Mechanic Sock base will be available but will take the colours slightly differently from the superwash merino and BFL bases above.

There will be an even more limited number of just the exclusive skein sign ups for £16 available as well.

So without further ado get voting in the comments!
  1. Dr Who
  2. Firefly
  3. Random Fandom!
Or head over to Facebook to vote in the comments there, don't forget to include your email address when commenting on the blog, so we can contact you when sign ups go live!