Iona

It's taken me two years to complete these socks - far too many distractions with other projects!  It's been well worth the wait, I'm so pleased with the result. 

Wollmeise yarn is such a joy to knit with and produces such wonderful stitch definition.  This cable pattern is one I found in an old stitch book.  I love the stitch so much I decided to create a pattern with it.  The beauty of this cable pattern is that although it is an 16 row pattern repeat, only 3 of the rows are cabling, the rest are knit and purl - so easy to execute and memorise. 

The sock pattern itself is toe up with a simple wrap and turn heel.  Aimed at the intermediate knitter with experience of cabling.  I've called it 'Iona', which is a small island off the western coast of Scotland - a island renowned for its tranquility and natural beauty.

Yarn:  Wollmeise 100% Merino Superwash
Colour:  Saffran
Needles:  2.5 mm
Size:  Medium-Large
Pattern:  My own - it will be released as soon as I've written it up.

Enjoy the rest of your Bank Holiday weekend UK peops :)

Karen

Shop Update

Just a teeny weeny update of self-striping yarn for this week, which I will be adding to the shop on Friday.

Four new colourways for this week......

Pink-a-Dink in Tangy Sock
(a lovely rich Emerald green and bright pink)

Blue Grass in Zingy Sock
(Lime and bright blue)

Summer Daze in Tangy Sock
(definitely my favourite, lovely bright shades of lime, orange and pink - knit it if you dare! I've already had an extra order for this yarn, so it may be popular!)

Windermere in Tangy Sock
(inspired by my trip to the Lake District at the weekend and all the lovely blues and greens on Lake Windermere)

....and this weekend I will be doing repeat colourways for Aztec and Grasshopper, a custom order and maybe a few new colourways ;)

All these yarns will produce approximately 1" stripes, if knitted at a tension of 16 sts to 2" over 64 sts. This is a slightly wider stripe than I've previously dyed, but I thought they'd be fabulous for shawls and scarves, as well as socks. I hope to do a test knit on a shawl soon just to see how they knit up. However, if you fancy giving it a go before I do, feel free :)

~ Karen ~

Pre Launch Shop Blog

Tomorrow is definitely launch day, come rain or shine! EVEN if I only manage to list a few items ;) Today's blog is another little taster of the knitterly delights I will be listing in the shop.

Mini Felted Bags
What a pleasure these little bags were to make. Easy and quick to knit up, it was the felting that took the most effort and elbow grease. I prefer to felt by hand in order to get the texture 'just right' and managed to worked up quite a sweat! Here is where my sewing skills came in; the bags are fully lined and I have hand-sewn on the flowers and beading to the front. I haven't done much sewing for a while and found it surprisingly therapeutic.

These pretty little bags are perfect as presents; I gave one to my mum for Mother's Day and popped inside a lovely scented soap, with a bath bomb and one of my hand-knitted wash cloths - it went down very well......

.......and I've also recently discovered they make the perfect knitting project bags; for small knits such as socks and gloves. They are the perfect size for holding a ball of yarn, sock needles and the little necessities, such as a tape measure, stitch markers etc. With no awkward fasteners, such as zips etc, you can just pop in your knitting and go!


Wash/Spa Cloths
Finally my little wash cloths. Made from pure cotton these cloths come in lovely clean and vibrant colours and make the perfect little gift or just to say 'thank you'. I'm selling them as wash/spa cloths, but they would also make great dish cloths too. They come in two designs, in a set of two, and are tied together with a pretty ribbon.

Now all I need to do is get all this up on my shop....I suspect I'll be very busy for the next 24 hours ;) Right! I'd better get cracking!

Karen :)

Almost there...

Oh my goodness is it really December since I last blogged? Doesn't time fly? Well the excitement of the imminent opening of my Etsy shop has galvanised me into action and I'm itching to blog about it.

The last few months have been filled with lots of knitting, designing and dyeing yarn. I have been really busy knitting little knitted goodies for my Etsy shop which I (finally) hope to open on Sunday. Time has flown, but I have enjoyed every minute of it; I am at my happiest when I am doing something creative and the incentive to get my shop up and running has kept my creative juices flowing!

As you will gather from previous blogs, I am addicted to sock knitting, so my shop will be stocking some of my hand-knitted sock creations, along with my other little knitted designs, such as fingerless gloves, felted bags and wash/spa cloths and hand-painted yarn. A little peek of these is pictured below:

A pile of socks.....





Fingerless mitts......



Due to the interest and encouragement I have received on Ravelry, I will also be stocking some of my hand-painted yarn. Specialising in self-striping yarn, but there will also be some variegated and semi-solid yarn available, all in my favourite, gorgeous and bright colours.

Self-striping yarn....


Variegated and semi-solid yarn.......

There will be another little shop update tomorrow and then the grand opening on Sunday :)

Karen :)

Cornflower Sock Pattern Release

It's up and on Ravelry as a free download as of yesterday. What better way to celebrate the end of 2009 than with my first sock pattern release! The Ravelry link is here and if you're not on Ravelry you can access the pattern here.

A big thank you to my test knitters and especially to my 'chief test knitter' Elaine!



Happy knitting and a Happy New Year to one and all.

Cornflower Socks

Pattern: Cornflower Socks (my own)
Needles: 2.25 mm
Yarn: Wildfire Fibres Fantasia in Cornflower colourway

It's been 3 weeks since my last blog, I'm getting very lax! My Cornflower Socks are now complete. Trying to get a decent photograph of these socks to show them off at their best has been a real nightmare! However, I'm really very pleased with the way these socks have turned out and they were a pleasure to knit. The yarn was beautiful for work with and shows off the stitch definition beautifully. The name of the socks was initially inspired by the colour of the yarn, but as I was knitting them up I also thought the little cable design looked like rows of little Cornflowers - look closely they really do!

I will be publishing the pattern at some stage, but in the meantime I feel I need to play around with the sizing a little. These socks have turn out small/medium, which is perfect for me but I feel would be too small for the average foot size. I'm going to knit them again in a slightly larger size and I'll feel much happier. Then I'll be looking for test knitters if anyone is interested?! I'm also trying to find a little image of a blue Cornflower on a white background (Copyright and download free) to put on my published pattern - please let me know if you can find such an image on the Internet anywhere...

In the meantime, I'm knitting up a cowl in the same design. This is working out wonderfully and I hope to have the cowl finished and the pattern written up by the end of next week. I think I have a test knitter all lined up too ;) The cowl is knitted in DK/8 ply, is a fairly quick knit and therefore an excellent last minute present, hence why I need to get this all published before Christmas! More info on the cowl next week :)

9" Circular Sock Needles

It's about time I blogged about these fantastic little needles, a few people have approached me about them recently; asking for info about where I got them and how to use them etc. I started using them for my sock knitting in about May/June this year after getting my hands on a set of bamboo ones in varying sizes from America. Whilst they're a little fiddly to use at first, you soon get used to them and I have to say they have made my life so much easier, especially when knitting lace socks or doing colourwork.

The cable is only 9" long, so to enable you to knit completely in the round the actual needle size has shrunk to around 4 cm. See the picture below to give you an idea of the scale.

The second photo below shows how you knit completely in the round. The only exception to this is for the heel flap (for a top down sock) and the toes for toe up or top down socks. I usually swap to dpns or Magic Loop for this bit. It's quite easy to adapt a dpn or Magic Loop sock pattern for use with these needles, but you do have to do a little bit of fiddling about when it comes to the heel and toe. I have actually just written a basic top down sock pattern specifically for use with 9" circular needles, but it's still very much in note form and I think at the moment only I will be able to understand it! ;)



Sadly at the moment the only outlet in the UK appears to be Sarah at Brownberry Yarns. I think she has been inundated with requests for the smaller sizes and has now consequently sold out, however I'm fairly certain you can pre-order from her if you're desperate to try them. Maybe I should keep this quiet, so Shhhhh don't tell anyone ;)

If anyone knows anywhere else that sells them in the UK please let me know, or even an overseas stockist with reasonable shipping costs to the UK. I could do with a few spare pairs! :)

Diary of a Sock

My Sock Diary so far for 2009 - finished socks, socks in progress and socks to knit by the end of December. The links to the sock patterns will probably only work if you're a member of the knitting forum Ravelry.

January

None!

February

Crofter Socks - What was I thinking?! Knitted on two needles - heavens above all that re-joining yarn and fiddling about - I thought it was the easy option! Turned out okay though and my mum loved them. The pattern used was from a Sirdar Crofter leaflet.

March

Rainbow Feet - Basic Tubular Socks. Nice easy pattern, first go at Magic Loop.

April

None! I can't ever imagine going a month without knitting a sock now.

May

Happy Capricons - Jaywalkers. Loved this pattern, really enjoyed knitting it and the yarn really suited the pattern - loved the way it knitted up in zig-zags.

June

Scarlet Seven of Hearts AND Pro Natura Cauchy. Seven of Hearts knitted up really quickly because it was DK weight - had to do a different heel. Enjoyed knitting Cauchy, although I wasn't that impressed with the yarn.



July

Random Flowers (my own design) AND Tropical Heatwave (my own design and own hand-dyed).

Rest of July/August

Still on the needles, not much to see at the moment:

Swedish Fish, Turquoise Glynis, Fresh Berry Monkeys, Kelp Spring Forward

August to December

A continually growing list of socks I will hopefully get around to knitting, if not this year then next year, along with a few of my own designs.

That's it for now; 7 socks completed, 4 still on the needles and lots more to come before the end of 2009. Hooray for socks!

Heatwave

If only it really was a heatwave! Tropical Heatwave is the name of my newly finished socks. These socks are a bit of a milestone for me because they are the first socks I've designed myself from scratch AND I've used the first yarn I've ever dyed. Okay, the yarn colours are not to everyone's taste, but I love bright colours and these have really grown on me. The lace pattern is only very simple, but I feel I've really achieved something and this is the first step on the ladder to becoming a 'proper designer'!



I used KoolAid dye (well it's a drink powder from America) to dye the yarn. It's a good start for beginners because it contains Citric Acid, so you don't need to add a fixer. It's really easy to use and not very messy. However, the only drawback is your yarn does seem to come out candy colours (it's like being in a sweet shop!) AND it won't dye plant fibres, such as cotton, only animal fibres. If you want to try it I purchased it from DT Crafts. Recently I've been using acid dyes and Sugarflair food colouring, the world's your oyster - dyeing is so much fun!

This morning I received my lovely new 9" HiyaHiya circular needles from Sarah at Brownberry Yarns. Whatever did I do without these needles?! They are perfect for sock knitting and so light they just glide along. I've found the steel ones much nicer to use than bamboo. They are like gold dust here in the UK and I think Brownberry Yarns are the only UK supplier at the moment - get them while you can.

The teeny weeny needles are pictured here on one of my latest sock projects (Cookie A's Glynis, from her book Sock Innovation). Ooooh I just love them!