Three more new colorways we shipped to Woolgirl last week. These should be up in the near future!
Blackberry Jam:
Blueberry Festival:
And Cucumber Watercress:
We also sent several skeins of Fig Tart on Juliet:
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February 26th, 2008
Thought you’d like to see what we’re working on. We’ve had requests for semi solids that provide visual interest, but make for a quieter sock.
Without further ado!
Chilled Cantaloupe, with several shades of peach, orange, and pink:
Summer Sangria, with wine, burgundy, reds, and purples:
And Daffodil Buttercream, with butter yellows, creams, daffodil, and hints of pale green:
These are all on Marianne Dashwood, a yummy yummy yummy 100% Merino Superwash yarn. (Sport weight.) These should be available at Woolgirl soon!
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February 12th, 2008
Do you knit Yarn Love? We’d love to see projects that you’ve made using Yarn Love yarn! We’ve seen photos of your lovely knits on Ravlery, but aren’t up for using photos of your creations without permission. So send us a photo of your Yarn Love project, along with pattern name and notes, and we’ll post about them periodically here at the blog.
If you are a current Ravlery member, you can easily see projects knit from our yarns posted by other members. On the Yarn tab, search for Yarn Love, and then click the Projects link under each type of yarn that interests you.
On Katie’s Needles
I’ve been a busy gal lately. We celebrate Christmas in our household and it seems like the Christmas season is just a magnet for extra activities. For instance, this weekend I’m participating in our family Baking Day. That’s where all the women in the family get together and spend 8 hours baking. (The men help out by watching kids who are too little to participate.) Then we pile all the goodies onto every available surface, divide them up and send them home. Everyone bakes something different, so there’s a huge variety of treats to go around. Of course, there is the inevitable shopping that goes along with such an endeavor and all the other domestic arrangements for me to be away from home.
All that is to say the knitting has been going slowly. The perky mitten pictured above is my only current project. They’re knit from our Marianne Dashwood, sport weight yarn with dyed to match roving for the thrums. I used Hello Yarn’s Pulse Warmer chart (Slightly modified to fit the mittens.) for the cuffs, and a generic mitten pattern for the rest. I love how they’re turning out. They are a gift for a friend, and I have about a week to finish them up. Wish me luck! I’m going to be knitting like a mad women to finish the second.
~katie
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December 7th, 2007
Just a little random post about things that I love. It’s a bit of a busy time of the year, and that makes personal reflection a bit harder with all the concerns about holiday celebrations, gifting, baking and more. So here are a few random things that I love that might inspire you this holiday season.
Buy Handmade Pledge
I ran across this group while perusing Etsy. I think it’s a great concept, and one that I try to adhere to as much as possible. We are still a hybrid family - we both buy commercially produced items with a very healthy mix of purchased hand made items and personally made items. This year, we’re really upping the ratio of hand made to store bought things by adding some gifts from our kitchen as well as my fiber art talents. Now is the perfect time to start thinking about how you can transform your holiday season into one with a focus on quality, and meaningful hand made gifts. (There are also great hand made shopping links along the sidebar of this site!)
Etsy
I’ve loved Etsy for a while now. It’s simply a mecca of hand made items available from independent artists. It’s great if you’re a fiber artist - you can easily find lots of hand dyed yarn, spinning fiber, hand spun yarn plus unique stitch markers and more. I have plans to purchase several bars of hand made soaps for stocking stuffers this year. I can’t get enough of the simple pleasure of using herb scented, “real” bar soap brings, and I like to pass that on.
I also have purchased several art print and hand crafted greeting cards over the years. For one Valentine’s day instead of a greeting card, I purchased an original, miniature art piece. We still have it two years later. That’s always a great option, especially with the high cost of most commercially produced greeting cards.
I hope you have perusing these sites and dreaming up your very own, hand made holiday!
~katie
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November 29th, 2007
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! If perhaps getting out at O’Dark Hundred to go shopping on Black Friday isn’t your thing, may we respectfully suggest some retail therapy from the comfort and warmth of your own home? The Loopy Ewe has just stocked our newest yarn, Elizabeth Bennet. She is not to be missed. Her particular mix of luxury fibers is great for socks, but don’t stop there. Winter is upon us (At least up north, where I live!)….feel free to think the warmest, softest mittens, hat, gloves, scarf you’ve ever had. Did you know that silk is actually slightly more insulating than wool? It is! So don’t be put off by the 15% silk content thinking you’ll be cold. You won’t. You’ll be warmer and toastier than ever before! (Ok. That particular statement might be a bit over the top. But you know what I mean. )
Happy yarn shopping!
~katie
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November 27th, 2007
Yarn Shipped to The Loopy Ewe
We just sent a large shipment of our newest yarn (and exclusively ours!): Elizabeth Bennet to Sheri and the gals over at The Loopy Ewe. We’ve included a couple of our most requested colorways in the shipment, so if you’ve made suggestions/requests, be sure to cruise by TLE in the upcoming weeks.
Elizabeth Bennet is spun exclusively for Yarn Love, and is an amazing blend of 60% Superfine Merino Wool / 15% Silk / 25% Bamboo. It’s extremely soft and a great choice for many winter accessories including socks.
Yarn Love Revisited
You may have already noticed that we’ve updated the site. Be sure to check out the colorways tab for a full listing of our beautiful color combinations. (There are at least two fantastic photos of each colorway.) Plus information about each of our base yarns as well.
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November 13th, 2007
It’s true. No matter how many pounds of yarn pass through my house, I still find myself reaching out, grabbing an armful of fluffy yarn and inhaling deeply. Wool yarn always carries just a hint of the sheepy 
smell, even if it’s been religiously scoured and spinning oil applied. (I also have mill preferences based on the way their spinning oil smells.) I usually try to do the Yarn Sniffing clandestinedly so that no other adults think I’m weird, but sometimes I’ll look up and my husband will be staring at me. This has been going on so long, he usually doesn’t comment, but he has the “Oh, boy. There she goes again with the yarn sniffing.” I’ve finally convinced myself that this odd part of my yarn fondling behavior is really a quality control check and that if I were to stop sniffing the yarn the quality could be in danger of taking a hit.
My most favorite time to sniff yarn is while I’m taking it off the drying rack and twisting it into skeins on it’s way to the skeiner. It’s been freshly dyed, washed and dried. It’s extremely soft, with just a hint of sweetness from the wool wash. It’s a feast for the nose, skin and eyes.
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November 13th, 2007
People ask me about my inspiration sources all the time. The truth is, it comes in many forms. It comes in the form of artwork. Today I’m particularly liking this triptych :
(It comes from this shop, if you’re interested. )
I’m also inspired by the interplay between neutrals and focus colors. Browns with bright colors, vanilla with deep colors, gray with jewel tones, etc. I particularly love unusual color combinations. For example, bright salmon, pale chartreuse, indigo, and tan.
Another example of the neutral/brights combination, what the girls at Mason Dixon Knitting refer to as, “Drab” and “Juicy.”
The way colors look on a skein is of great importance to me. Sunshower is one of my favorite colorways — I love how when the hank is twisted into a skein you see the transition from light to dark.
I have certain colors in my repertoire that I can’t seem to stop working with. I am strongly attracted to brown, aqua, emerald, and pink. I could play with ways to build colorways around them forever. Like Fondly:
My husband would think I’m crazy for saying this, so I’ll just tell you and not him. Ready? Lean close, I’ll whisper it to you.
I see colors in my sleep.
I know that sounds weird. But I do. I dream about colors and patterns and textures. Often the only thing I’ll remember after I wake up is the purple and aqua waffle weave blanket I saw on someone’s bed in my dream.
I have an art background. I’m not a painter (sorry, no talent), but I worked in an art gallery in a former life. So I had the good fortune of being fed the good stuff at an early age, and I think that translates into my work. I got to work around stuff like this all day:
(with thanks to the artist, Liz Sivertson)
And around this:
(Jim Brandenburg)
And this:
(Ann Jenkins)
When I hear people say that they’re not creative, I often ask, “Have you ever tried?” They usually tell me that they tried a few times and fell flat on their face, and realized it wasn’t for them. And they’ve never tried since. Creativity can be fostered. Creativity flows more readily with practice — the pump can be primed.
I’m living proof — when you’re creative every day, you get to dream in color.
–Sharon
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November 11th, 2007
Let me count the ways…
I love thee like the summer’s fruitful glass lampwork bounty:
I love thee like tres chic hand scuplted polymer petit fours:
I love thee like the extra teeny desserts from amyville:
I love thee like a lazy Sunday breakfast:
And like a piece of wedding cake eaten the Saturday night before:
I love thee like the strawberrycornonthecobpumpkinpie stitch markers that you are:
I love the way you make my knitting look spectacularly kooky and organized at the same time:
Stitch marker, stitch marker how do I love thee?
I have a sizeable collection of food stitch markers (and this isn’t even all of them!). I don’t know why they’re so appealing to me, but they just speak to me in some way. I buy most of them on etsy, like here:
File this under the 42, 698th item my husband doesn’t understand about me.
Him: “So, you buy little miniature pieces of fake food on rings to put on your knitting needles as decorations?”
Me: “What is wrong with you? Can’t you see the artistry? Can’t you see how integral to the creative process these stitch markers are?
Him: “I see little miniature pieces of fake food on rings.”
Me: “I can’t discuss this with you any longer. Please leave me and my markers in peace.”
What do you use for stitch markers? Are you one of those safety pin and scrap of yarn people? Or are you like me, with a lovely collection of lovelies?
–Sharon
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November 4th, 2007
We’re thrilled you could join us on our brand new Yarn Love blog!
Be on the lookout for a contest related to yarny goodness!
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October 26th, 2007
