Hello!

Free Yarn!

Special offer.

Buy two skeins of yarn or fibre or any combination and I'll send you a free skein of Croft semi solid until I run out of them!

There are lots of single colours which would take forever to put on the site and I need that bedroom cleared by the weekend...

New fibre, 70% alpaca and 30% BFL.... very, very soft. And more yarn at never to be repeated prices. The "bedroom" code is no longer valid, but many of the yarns have been reduced in price to make way for a young man who is bigger than I am... and for new yarns too.

n

OUCH!

As many of you know if you follow me on twitter or visit the shed on ravelry I have been troubled by a bit of "backage" recently. It started about ten days ago, lasted for 24 hours and then came back again on Sunday. Not fun at all. I've been munching the ibuprofen and keeping it at bay but it has slowed me down somewhat.

I wasn't able to do much yesterday but staying mobile (gently) seems to be helping. However, not working (much) yesterday has created a backlog and I have a simply HUGE pile of orders to process today.

Many of you have taken advantage of the 25% off offer. Some of you have chosen the dyed-to-order 1-6B and 1-6T Summer Collection colourways. Such is the love for Toddy that I have run out! A new delivery will be here tomorrow but it won't be dyed until Thursday at the earliest (depending on the backage), and possibly Friday. I will do it as soon as I can.

The 25% off will stay there for the rest of today and then things will be back to normal, I have more yarn (BFL-beautiful) ready for the shop update on Thursday and some brand new fibre too.

BFN 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

Take 5

I do my best, but try as I might there are times when I can't keep the shop as fully stocked as I would like. This is especially true in the fibre department, where sometimes it seems to fly off the shelves as fast as I stack them. It seemed to me that there was a "hungry gap" which was crying out to be filled with something.
After a lot of thought, I've decided to stock some not-dyed-by-me fibre.
I want to offer you a treat which I can't produce myself, so I hope you will love these as much as I do.

There are five colourways.

Juniper

Pomegranate

Cinnamon

Peppercorns

Mulberry

The fibre is a blend of 80% New Zealand merino (22 micron) and 20% silk, and as you can see the colours run along the full length of the roving rather than across it as you would expect with a hand dyed colourway.
I'll be taking the entire collection to Woolfish tomorrow, and I'll put them in the shop on Monday (if there are any left). I'm planning to keep them in stock all the time.

What do you think?

n

PS.  I am working flat out today to get everything done.
The G2 Quick crossword is here, in the middle of the page.
Please just talk among yourselves, and I'll drop in when I'm having my soup at lunchtime.

Do not adjust your set.

I am often asked about my camera and how I take the photos to get accurate colours.
I have no training in photography at all, thank goodness for digital cameras!

The camera is a Canon EOS 450D, and I use a light tent and daylight photographic lights.
The yarns and fibres are lit from one side only because it gives a better impression of the light and shade and how that affects the yarn or fibre. None of us walk about in shadowless daylight, even in the height of summer at noon.
The background is cream children's art paper... about 1.20 a roll I think - I have tried the white background which came with the tent but I find the paper easier to use... I don't have to iron it for a start!

I don't tweak the photos for colour at all. I don't use photoshop or any other software and I use the iPhoto standard set-up on the mac to upload/download. Occasionally I adjust the focus, but I never adjust the colours.

You see what I see.

So, without further ado, I give you Do It Yourself 3 Ply.

After some thought I'm offering these as 50g half-braids. I planned to do them as one third braids but several of you said that for a three ply you would prefer 150g of fibre, and of course 2 x 50g is fine if you would prefer a two ply yarn.

Picking three colours at random.

A burnt orange/copper, a dusky pink and a warm chocolate. Who would have thought that the pink would fit so well.

The same chocolate and burnt orange but with a lemon yellow (including white zesty bits) instead of the pink. I haven't changed the camera settings or the lighting rig or position, this is just one photo after another.

Now let's try three new colours.

This time it's a group from the same sort of colour family, but the top one is a blue toned purple and the bottom is a pink toned one.

Keep the pink in the middle, and add a much brighter pink on top and a very bitter chocolate with blue/purple tinges at the base.

Keep the bitter chocolate which now looks much less warm without the neighbouring pinks, and add a duck egg blue-green and a sky blue.

And finally, keep the duck-egg and add olive green and a slightly paler blue.

Remember, I haven't adjusted the camera at all. The slight alterations in the background tone are entirely due to reflected light bouncing off the fibre and onto the paper.

All of these braids are hand dyed so within each one there is variation and movement, these are not flat toned machine made solids.

I will put these in the shop in an hour or two. There are eighteen colours which means (I think) at least a hundred different combinations ... I am sure one of the mathematicians amongst you can tell me the magic formula for working it out. (Please... I would really like to know!)

All of them are superwash BFL.

n

Amaryllis II

There has been knitting (of which more later).
There has been spinning.
And there has been growing.

My cut-price amaryllis which has such an unpromising start is a source of daily delight.
I think that if I stood still long enough I could actually watch the cells replicating in the growth tips.

Isn't it amazing?
All that growing in just 12 days.

I also have other progress to show you.

Meet Euridice.
She is a fleece I have had stashed away for about a year, waiting to be turned into a Gavin-thing.
Originally I thought she would be a jumper, but now that he has one of those, knitted by my own fair hand, she is going to be a waistcoat instead.

She was carded on the drum carder using the no-system-at-all method and has become a rather interesting thick and thin rustic yarn. This is the first 100g, about 170m, varying from sockyarn to aran in a single skein, which is entirely intentional.

He has put in a request for a simple waistcoat, and after seeking the advice of my own personal knitting advisor I'm not going to knit it on circs, but in pieces, because the side seams will add some stability and help to stop it drooping. Which has to be a good thing, really.

There has been other knitting but I can't reveal it until later in the week because it's with the prototype sock club yarn and it would completely give the game away if I showed it to you... I can reveal the pattern, which is for the the Primavera socks, and it's lovely. I always thought that stocking stitch socks were my kind of knitting because they let the yarn (and the dyer) do the work, but these are just such fun to do. The pattern is free.
I find myself doing "just one more repeat" - which is only six rows - and they are fairly flying along. The heel is turned and the gusset decreases are half completed.
There will be photos later in the week, probably on Friday.

I will leave you with the last Amaryllis photo.

Look!
A second shoot has emerged.
How wonderful.

n

PS  Check out the totaliser in the sidebar (I am a Blue Peter kid at heart).
£308.13.
Over 60%.
Thank you so much to everyone who has donated.
Ruth is having a blogiversary raffle with excellent prizes linked to p/hop donations. Why not download the Primavera pattern and donate 50p... go on, you know you want that pattern, and every 50p will make a difference to the life of someone who really needs it.

Knit your own wellies?

I promised photos yesterday and just ran out of time. So here, for your delectation are the first of the Sweater Packs of fibre.

They are in the shop.

These are offered in packs of 5 braids which is 500g. And this time they are all BFL superwash.
It's surprisingly tricky to dye identical fibres. I make my stock solutions as a very concentrated liquid and then I dilute. Using water at different temperatures to do the diluting affects the colour, so all of these were diluted with cold water to make them the same. My fingers were blue, and it wasn't the gloves leaking either.

Normally semi-solid fibre is £9 per 100g, but some of that cost is not the fibre, dye, electricity and so on, some of it is the admin side of running the Yard. Since these will go out in larger packs I am passing the time (and cost) saving on to you. So these are £35 for 500g of hand-dyed fibre which is just £7 a braid.
If you would like to make a child-sweater with handspun then according to my Knitter's Handy Book of Sweaters, a drop shoulder sweater for a 36 inch chest will take about 1400m at 7 st per inch. This is about 300m per 100g.
A sweater for a 40 inch chest takes about 2000m.

A child-sweater, or something sleeveless should be very possible from 500g.
An adult sweater is more tricky, because the difference between fitted and unfitted and knitting for someone of 5 foot 3 or for someone who is a foot taller but the same chest size will mess up the maths, big time. So I am offering all these colours in 500g lots but in most cases there are actually 2 x 500g available.
I absolutely cannot replicate colours, so please choose the appropriate amount. Semi-solid fibre is versatile stuff so it can be used for socks or shawls or given as a gift, it certainly won't go to waste.

If you choose 2 x 500g then as a special Christmas treat I will give you ten braids for the price of nine, and I'll send you an e-voucher for £7.00 which you can use against your next purchase. This makes each braid only £6.30!
I won't be able to keep this offer in place for ever, so if you are tempted, grab them quickly... or tell Father Christmas.
I don't think there will be any more sweater packs until January after these are gone.

In other news...

Gavin has a hole in his wellies, I think they have just split from lots of use.
He went this morning to the Post Office to buy another pair. Don't laugh, it wasn't the village Post Office, it was the one in the next village which is bigger and sells seeds, copies of Smallholder News and Pig-keeper Monthly and The Farmer alongside Hello and The Beano.
It also sells screws, saucepans, cheese-graters, acrylic yarn, sandpaper and macaroon bars ... you get the idea.

There were no wellies.
So he went to the Garden Centre which is next to the Feed Store (sounds like the Prairies) which is where we get dog food, dog chews, wild bird seed and menopausal-chicken feed. The Garden Centre didn't have wellies either.
They told him that wellies were very hard to get at the moment.
There is a national wellie shortage.

He is wearing a poly bag over one sock.
He needs new wellies.

I am on a wellie hunt.
I'll let you know how I get on.

n