Hello!

Migration

Any birdwatcher will tell you that this time of year is exciting.
It's migration time.
All sorts of birds you haven't seen since last year are about to appear in your back garden, under the eaves, and flying overhead, tantalisingly close. Out come the binoculars and the bird identification guides and many an hour is spent anticipating and identifying species, new and not so new.

After much thought I am consolidating the yarns and fibres available in the shop, along birdwatching lines.

Bonny and toddy are the two sock weight yarns I have chosen as "residents". The rest will become "yarns on migration".
In practical terms this means that there will always be some of the residents in the shop, as variegated or as semi-solid yarns (of which more later in the week).
The "yarns on migration" will be hug, caber, beautiful and lochan... and these will be available in varying amounts and at different times, but certainly not all the time. What this does is free up space (literally, I am bursting at the seams) for new migrants for you to add to your collection, on an occasional basis, so keep those binoculars handy.

The same is true for lace yarns - I am deciding which to stock as the "residents" at the moment, and which will be allowed to fly off. For the moment they are all migratory while I make up my mind!

Fibre is going to follow suit as well. In the fibre section you will now find that there are sections for BFL, which is loved by everyone, and for Peregrine.

Peregrine is a blend of 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon. It was first sent out as the Muddy Jeans colourway for the fibre club and I have decided to make it "resident".

• It's beautifully soft - as I am sure a Peregrine would be if you could stroke one.

• It's strong - the addition of the nylon makes it great for socks which will last longer than a few wearings.

• It's fly-away - this is more of a problem for me than it is for you! It has to be one of the most difficult fibres to dye because it is SO soft and slippery it just wafts around the place if I as much as brush against it before it is tamed by the addition of a little colour.

• It's exclusive to The Yarn Yard, not a bird fibre you will see in every back garden shop.

• And lastly, to peregrinate means to travel from place to place, especially on foot.

I have plenty of migratory fibres to choose from at the moment. Shetland, merino-silk, wensleydale, texel and others.

And all of this is before I get going with the new "rough-stuff batts"... batts with attitude, sparkles and lumpy bits galore (a bit like myself), and then there are the softer, more gentle "erica" fibre-twists, and more silk hankies than you would need at a black and white weepie.

Of course I can't do all this at once, so I will add to the fun little-and-often over the next week or so.

n

PS  Yarn prices are about to rise I'm afraid, but I'll leave those in the shop already at the old price. And postage rises are on the way at the end of the week - unfortunately neither the exchange rate nor the Royal Mail are under my control. Sorry.

Weekend wanderings.

There are lots of links in this post, and I think they should all open in on new pages in your browser, but don't forget to come back here to see all of them if you get side-tracked ... no wandering off in a daze!

Friday was a bit of a blur so the Update for the shop will be on Monday instead.
There is yarn (lochan, toddy, bonny) and fibre (merino silk, and BFL). This is the last of the merino silk fibre until the next order arrives, so you might want to bear that in mind.

I've been asked for some Hug in inky blue, so that's on the dye-list for Monday morning's session. I'm planning to dye lots of solids this week in readiness for CookieA's new book release, Sock Innovation - if you have any special requests do let me know. The book is available on amazon and also from The Book Depository.

amazon have it for £11.49 PLUS delivery.
TBD have it for £11.99 with FREE delivery.

I found a new gardening blog this week.
LittleGemsAllotment.

And a Use-Up-Your-Lefovers food and recipe website.
The book is sold out on amazon, but The Book Depository have it. It's on my book buying list.

Today is the day of Earth Hour.
The idea is for everyone to switch off their lights for one hour this evening between 20.30 and 21.30.
Just the lights. Not the radio, fridge, kettle, and washing machine - although I suppose you could if you wanted to - just the lights.

I think that's all the wanderings for today.
Knitting.
Garden.
Food.
Environment.

Oh yes, and you wanted to see Knitting pics too...
None from me this time, so here are some CKP's (Clever Knitter Pics) instead.

Sussex Yorkie's Jam sock (a former Club colourway). I love the frilly top, and the rib hided the ankle flashing you get on flap-and-gusset socks beautifully.

Woollywarbler's Print of the Waves stole, knitted in Mist.

If you have any photos of items knitted in Yarn Yard yarns (or spinning), there are now flickr groups where you can upload them - and go for inspiration!

The Yarn Yard

The Yarn Yard Sock Club

The Yarn Yard Solid yarn Club

and

The Yarn Yard Fibre Club

These were organised by Katie, so a HUGE thank you for doing that for us all is in order.

Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!

n

Taking Stock

I'll be taking the shop offline in the morning to stock-take, update yarn quantities and load new yarns onto the shelves, so if you are visiting, don't worry, it will be open again later with new colours to peruse/consider/admire.

I'm planning to get the drum carder out too...

There is still time to vote in the polls, the results are interesting, don't you think?
Clearly I need to knit more!

I am reconsidering lace patterns and thinking perhaps I need to try something a little less ambitious to start off with.
Since I now know that many of you are not on ravelry I have scoured the blogosphere for the potential candidates...

Twilight Scarf can be seen here  and another 24 are on ravelry here.

Road Not Taken is featured here (unblocked and blocked) and here (unblocked). Ravelers can see 47 versions of it here.

Both of these are taken from Lisa Lloyd's book, "A Fine Fleece" which I was given for Christmas.
I am leaning towards the Road Not Taken. I like the swirlyness.
Not sure about the yarn yet... maybe Betwixt?

See you in the morning.

n

This is probably going to mean blocking wires, isn't it?
And mats from the Early Learning Centre...

Questions.

I know many of my readers and customers are users of ravelry, but a lot of you are occasional rather than frequent visitors to the ravelry site, and although I have a group over there called The Garden Shed, my blog stats tell me that I have significantly more blog visitors and subscribers than there are Shed members - about 270 people are Sheddites, but quite a few haven't logged into ravelry for several months. Blog readership is double this, every day.

Over the last month or so I have been trying to blog more often, I am wary of putting all my eggs in the ravelry basket, if you know what I mean. The blog gives me more freedom to add photos and links and to chatter away about this and that. For me it's important that non-ravellers don't feel like second-class citizens, so when I choose a new pattern to knit which I think you might like to hear about, I always try to make sure that it's available to everyone, and that it is not just a ravelry pattern.

Writing a blog is a strange activity. Those of you who have your own blogs will know what I mean. We burble away about what interests us, and if we are writing for other people and not just for ourselves, it can be quite hard to know if we are getting it right.
So this is your chance to have your say.
There are two widgets in the side-bar to your right (the link is there for those getting the blog in a feed-reader), one about ravelry and one about the blog content.
Not everyone will want to vote, and that's fine. It's anonymous so I won't know who is saying what.
If you have anything to add, please let me know in the comments at the end of this post, or by sending an email using the link on the left below the photo.

Thanks for joining in!

n

L(ace) plates.

So, I went to SkipNorth.
This is the story of last year (with lots of photos of stained glass).

This year, Isabella and I went down a day early, it's a four to five hour drive and we didn't want to be exhausted by the time we got there, and we also didn't want to be late for the workshops. (The link gives a comprehensive report on the whole event from her perspective as well.)

We weren't quick enough to get into the YH at Haworth, so Isabella cleverly booked us into the fabulously named Mankinholes YH near Hebden Bridge.

We stopped off along the way for a little fibre-enhancement which meant we arrived later than planned, and yes, there really was an irate woman driver who stopped her car in front of me, undid her seat belt and waved her fists at me for having the temerity to not drive at 40mph in a built up area with a 30 mph speed limit, when I there was so much rush hour traffic the lane markings on the road were obscured by vehicles.

Beware, should you go to the Youth Hostel, it is at the top of a hill on the edge of the moors and there are hairpin bends all over the place which are either bounded by nothing at all, no barriers of any description, or they are bounded by eight foot high walls and the roads are about a car width wide. Let's just say I got plenty of practice doing hill starts.

Sue was destashing, and I was lucky enough to be given a copy of Jan Eaton's Ripple Stitch Patterns, which is one of those books I have been picking up and meaning to buy for years but the only copy shops ever have is the one which has been used as a reference copy by a gazillion other knitters.
She also destashed some sock yarn in Margarete's direction. I'm not going to mention the dyer, but let's just say this stuff has the reputation on the web for being less than colourfast.  With the assistance of a niddy noddy it was wound from a ball back into a skein, and soaked. And yes, the water turned an interesting pale peacock colour. We had no vinegar, but we did have a Biochemist in the shape of Sally, who suggested a Diet Coke as a substitute! Isabella generously offered one of her cans to the project, and after a further soak in a carefully measured (glug-slurp-glug) 50% solution of Diet Coke and warm water, followed by a wrapping in cling film and 8 minutes in the Youth Hostel microwave (I took the decision that this was safe, Diet Coke being food of a sort), it emerged, colourfast! I suspect things rather less wholesome have been microwaved in it in the past, and I did clean it afterwards...

The next morning was misty.

But the light at the YH was lovely.

This was in the garden.

The painting on the side seemed to say Servis, like the washing machine brand, but looking at it again here, I wonder if it doesn't actually say "Gents"!

The next morning saw us visiting Texere in Bradford before heading off to the YH at Haworth to meet up with the other Skippers. There were A Lot Of Knitters, and possibly... can this be true... even more people spinning than knitting?

I learned to knit Judy's Magic cast on again in a rather more fluid fashion than I had done at home, and Jane ably assisted by Ruth (who now has tonsilitis), had me wrapping and turning as if I was skipping across a dance floor! And thanks to Dianne, I can now read lace charts.

The evening saw us having a giant destash in the sitting room - however Karen cleverly kept back the better items and they were destashed separately for Honesty Box p/hop donations. She did a great job of describing all the items and they were whisked away, in most cases barely before her words were uttered. I started out being very polite, but realised very quickly that she who hesitates is lost, so I became rather less ladylike! Donations are now rolling in from this event, so if you were one of the lucky ones, the Just Giving Page is at your disposal. Thank you to everyone who participated.

Now the bit you've all been waiting for... Lace News.

Well I have good news and not-so-good news.

The good news is that I rather like this making holes thing. It's rather appropriate that I learned it on a weekend where I stayed at a YH with almost the same name.

The bad news is that I have frogged it.

Of course you could be generous and say I was swatching!

I remembered to take a photo before I pulled it out completely...
It seemed to me that the needles, 3.75mm addi lace ones and the yarn, which is this...

... just make a fabric which is a bit too holey on the solid bits for my liking.
It's the recommended combination, but I think the needles need to be thinner or the yarn needs to be fatter.

The main issue I have, however is with the pattern.
It's a lovely pattern, clearly written and error free (I checked), click on the link and you can see how pretty it is (and click again to make it bigger too).
However, the charts are rather small.
They start off OK, but as the shawl gets bigger, the charts stay in the same page layout so they are reduced in size overall.

This is chart 2 (on the right) and chart 6 (on the left), with a pencil for scale.
I just can't see me managing with it being so small. My scanner doesn't enlarge things.
The only thing I can think of doing is taking a photo of each chart and then printing it off on ordinary paper on the B&W laser printer in A4 landscape size.
Would that work, do you think?

In the meantime I may cast on for something different just to keep the mojo flowing.

n

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig.

Got home last night after four days away at SkipNorth.
Very tired.
Information to follow on...

• Aggressive female drivers who honk at strangers in a threatening manner causing me to feel the need to lock us in the car at a junction in Huddersfield.
• Mankinholes.
• Hill-starts on junctions where the driver behind you (a different one) thinks it's amusing to stop 3 centimetres from your rear bumper - In. The. Dark.
• Spindling enablement - moi?  Enable someone into spinning?  You might think that... I couldn't possibly comment.
• And the fact that someone did the deed you have all been waiting for, and enabled me right back. I now understand charts (lace), have a pattern (lace), yarn (lace, not mine - well it is mine since I bought it, but you know what I mean), and addi circs (lace - the ones with the knobbly ends).

I can now be found muttering K1, K1, yarn forward, K1, K2 tog, K1, K1, K1, (yes I know that's K3, but I have L(ace) plates), K2 tog backwards (I know what I mean), K1, yarn forward, K1, K1.

Don't all laugh at once, you'll put me off my charts!

n

Pete

Go and look at this.

Click to watch the film.

Amazing.

We did that.

Thank you.

n

PS If everyone who reads this blog, blogged it and twittered it, how soon could we reach the first £1,000 ?

Beckoning Gussets.

I am feeling very clever.

Not only have I mistressed Judy's magic cast on...

...iPhone pics again for speed.

But I have taught myself to cable (yes I know it's not rocket science, but I've never done it before).

And although the pattern didn't tell me to, I reversed the cable for the other side of the foot!

The only problem is that I'm knitting on 2.5mm circs and although some people find they knit more tightly on circs than dpns I am clearly not one of them so these are looser than I would like in the gauge department. And no I am not frogging them! These are a learning experience, the next bit is the all important Learning To Do An Upside Down Gusset, and actually getting my head around doing the dreaded Wrap and Turn is way more important than a simple detail like gauge!

If you knot knit on circs do you find you go up or down a size? Or are you a perfect knitter who stays the same?

SkipNorth is a mere 48 hours away.
Very Very Exciting.
I'm going a day early and staying at the wonderfully evocative sounding Mankinholes Youth Hostel tomorrow night.
See you there!

n

Challenges

Challenge 1.

Get all Clubs in the post by Thursday.
Not as easy as it sounds, the admin and packing and all that takes ages and despite constant cross-referencing (sometimes VERY cross referencing) it seems that there is always a miscount between the parcels I think I should have and the parcels I actually do have. This is almost always in your favour, I have to say, and results in someone getting a parcel they didn't expect (and I just tell them to keep it).

Challenge 2.

The crossword.
8A, 7D, 20D, 18A, 22A, 17D, 16D, 23A
So many I'm not typing them all out today. Clearly I have brain-fug.
The grid is here.
Print and enjoy.

Challenge 3.

After much agonising (and twittering) I finally cast on for the Brainless socks from Yarnissima.
I'm using 689 which was in the shop but isn't any more (you had your chance).

These yarns, which I am beginning to call the Raindrop range, look, I grant you, like a dogs breakfast in the skein.
I simply don't have time to rewind them and prettify them, but I am working on making some of them as permanently available colourways so that will give me the opportunity to make them look a little more photogenic.

Brainless features several things which are new to me.
Judy's magic cast on.
I read this a dozen times before looking on YouTube.
I found this.
Now, I love Cat Bordhi's books and her designs are amazing, but birds flying in and biting the yarn?
Clocks with hands which tock-tock in two directions at once?
Beaks biting your thumb?
I went back to the Knitty article and just did it Very Slowly And Carefully until I got it right.

I have fudged with the pattern already and I didn't start with the side sections until I finished the toes instead of starting as I was still increasing. No point in making life over complicated.

I'm also trying to master (mistress?) socks-on-circs, and as a dpns Luddite it's not my favourite method.

And as if that wasn't enough, I'm doing cables up the sides.
CABLES!
Me?
It's not as if they will ever be seen because they are on the foot and even with sandals the leather on the side of my Birks will wrap them up and hide them.
You will be proud of me though...
... the pattern has them both twisting in the same direction - but I am making the one on the left twist one way, and the one on the right twist the other. Clever-clogs, huh?

This is a phone photo but you can just see the first twist if you look carefully.

And speaking of challenges, have a look at this.
Especially Edna and Dorothy.
And I thought MY life was challenging...

n

Hide and Peek

Last weekend I had a table at the Woolfish Festival, I met lots of lovely people and was very fortunate to have the help all day of Lucy, who just plonked her knitting down next to the table and pitched in. She brought me tea and more tea (and you know how I like a cup of tea).

In return, I taught her to spindle. It seemed like a fair swap!

The table next to mine was full of the most delicious stuff.

How could I resist?

Ginger fluff.
Pure Alpaca.
Sooooooo soft.

And not content with fluff...

Cairndinnis Alpaca 4 ply.
More specifically, Daniella's 4ply.
336m of it.
No idea what I will use it for, but I love it to bits.

And this is a selection of fibre which will be in the shop over the weekend sometime.

705 (merino silk)

706 (BFL)

707 (BFL)

708 (BFL)

709 (BFL)

710 (BFL)

The difference between 709 and 710 is this.

710 (and 706 and 708) on the left is a random dye which will spin a blended yarn.
709 (and 705 and 707) on the right is dyed in a sequence so it's more "organised".

Have a lovely weekend.
I'm going back to stroking the ginger fluff now.

n