Jen Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

It's MY colour

A couple of my birthday presents really captured what I see as "my" colour palette. My knitting friends really did hit the colour theme nail on the head. First up was a skein of Posh Yarn Elinor in the Fair Wind and a Following Sea colourway.

Never before has a skein of yarn so perfectly emboidied my favourite shade of teal green. Kim, you hit the nail bang on with this lovely yarn.

Hot on the heels of the perfect yarn, was the perfect pair of socks! Jen knitted a beautiful pair of green socks for me. I have spoken before about what a treasure it is to be knitted for, and I really do apreciate every single stitch of this wonderful pair of socks.

I couldn't help but whip my feet out and display the glory of this fantastic creation! And on my return home, I noticed that the socks are exactly the same shade as my lovely Namaste handbag (the colour is actually much closer than it appears in the picture below).

If you take a look at either my stash or my projects pages on Ravelry, you won't be able to avoid noticing how much I love greens and blues, and particularly TEAL! If I could only have one colour for the rest of my life it would definitely be teal.

What would your colour be?

Running a close second in my favourite colour stakes would have to be red. You may have noticed that my blog has had a bit of a facelift... and I now have a brilliant colour theme (there's some teal in it, don't worry, it's just not obvious on the blog) and it's all organised! Nic has done all the hard work, and there are a few more exciting things in hand which will be revealed in due course...

Travels: A pair of yarn shops

I'm back from my journeying, and have news of two lovely yarn shops that I visited. First up is Yarn in Chilwell, Nottingham. We were staying with friends not far from this well-stocked shop, and following a delicious lunch at the Victoria Pub in Beeston (this pub is worth a journey - the food and beer are amazing), I persuaded Jim that it would be rude not to go and check it out.

The lady working behind the counter was just the right combination of friendly and helpful, while leaving us to browse. I had a good old look through the yarn - they stock a very wide range of Rowan yarns, and I was able to fondle some of their newer ranges that I hadn't previously met in person. I hesitate to say that they stock the full range, but they must come pretty close. I was quite restrained though, and only picked up City Retreat - a pattern collection by Martin Storey all using their new Creative Focus Worsted yarn. I love the colours in this range, as well as the wearable shapes of many of the designs in the book. I think I know what I will knit from it, but it might have to wait a few months as I work my way through my queue!

The second shop that we visited was one that we stumbled on completely by accident. I know that this seems unlikely, but it really is true. We were visiting my godmother in Stone, Staffs, and arrived a bit earlier than we had expected. So we parked up in the middle of town and wandered towards some shops, thinking that we would pass a half-hour with a cup of coffee. What should we see as we turned the corner though?

Yes! A small but perfectly formed yarn shop - Yarn Gathering of Stone. Jim's heart must have sunk as he hopefully suggested that perhaps it was shut! Happily it wasn't and we passed the time looking round and chatting to Jeanette, the shop's owner.

Here I gave in and had to purchase some yarn (I had to, really I did!).

I picked up a copy of Ysolda's new book, Saturday Treat, which uses her special colours of Fyberspates Scrumptious Yarns. It's a lovely collection, and there are a few patterns which will make it onto my queue in the coming weeks, I feel sure. As well as the book, I also picked up a ball of sock yarn for socks for Jim. I have a fair amount of sock yarn in my stash, but most of it really isn't suitable for boy socks, so I asked Jim to choose his own. He went for this Regia 4ply which will knit up mostly in blue with little flashes of green every so often. I think it will make some great socks (but maybe not untile Christmas! :-D). Yarn Gathering has a lovely selection to choose from. She has quite a few more unusual yarns, with plenty of Natural Dye Studio, some Artist's Palette, and a good selection of basics from Rico as well. A particular highlight was the wide range of independent designers' patterns. Jeanette has all of Ysolda's books, but also single patterns from the likes of Gudrun Johnston and Alana Dakos. Again, if you are in the area, then this is a shop that's well worth finding.

So, that's it for me little treats from my travels. Have you been to any nice yarn shops recently?

Please don't laugh too hard...

...but my attempts at stash control didn't go so well last week. I was in London teaching a 2 day course on Technical Editing (more on that shortly...), so I decided it was a good excuse to catch up with some lovely friends, and to head to Angel in order to visit Loop and Ray Stitch (follow those links at your own risk). With hindsight, it was perhaps a bit foolish to put so much temptation in my path.

I picked up some beautiful Cherry MadelineTosh Tosh Sock yarn at Loop - I can't wait to get this wound, and cast on for some socks. I've heard a lot about MadelineTosh yarns over the last couple of years, but this is my first purchase.

This Quince & Co Osprey also found its way into my shopping basket. Sadly, 2 hanks is nowhere near enough to knit the beautiful Cara sweater from Gudrun Johnston. I tech edited this pattern before Christmas, and now that it's turned cold I wish I had time to knit one up for myself. It just looks so snuggly, and would be brilliant in this shade of Osprey. Instead, I think these hanks are destined to become a large cowl, which will also be lovely.

That was the limits of my yarn purchases... Not too bad I suppose, given the extent of the temptation at Loop! However, I did also pick up a couple of pattern books, and my pattern stash is almost as overwhelming as my yarn (in fact, it may even be worse). I now have 5,108 patterns in my library! First up is Juju's Loops. This is a book of patterns from Juju Vail and Susan Cropper of Loop. Their own book!

It's a pretty little volume, with a mixture of accessory and garment designs. There are a couple of things I would happily cast on tomorrow if I had no work to do. I really like the format of the book - the cover flaps list all the book's abbreviations and you can use them to mark your page easily. Hopefully I'll get to some of these patterns before too long.

I wasn't planning to purchase Coastal Knits. I had looked at the projects on Ravelry, as people have been raving about it on blogs and podcasts that I read/listen to, but although I liked everything, nothing made me want to "have it NOW!" But then Naughty Rachel made me pick up the book, and it was an entirely different matter. The book is beautiful! There is heaps to read, and it is really thoughtfully laid out. I just want to curl up and dream over it for a few hours every day. What's even worse is that every non-knitting female friend who has seen it has made knitting requests. People who aren't normally that bothered by knitwear have gone weak at the knees in the face of the designs in Coastal Knits.

This is a dangerously appealing book. Don't pick it up unless you are prepared to part with your money. You have been warned!!

In the afternoon, I headed over to Ray Stitch to catch up with Belinda. She had refused to take any responsibility for my fabric purchases, so we duly enabled each other!

First up was this gorgeous bundle of 12 fat quarters from the Savannah range by Sara Morgan. I think I might turn this into a plain HST (half square triangle) quilt for my Gran's 90th birthday at the end of April. The colours are very "her". If that's my plan, I should really get a shimmy on. Perhaps someone would poke me into action if I haven't shown any signs of starting it by March?

Then I simply couldn't resist these fat quarters from Cloud9. They are simply stunning.

Those are herons on the top FQ, and the lower one features stunning lime green dragonflies. I have NO idea at all what to do with just 2 special fat quarters. I could just look at them all day, but that seems to defeat the point somewhat. So, if anyone has any bright ideas, please do leave them in the comments...

It's probably a good thing that I didn't actually commit to not buying yarn or fabric, isn't it?! *shakes head at lack of self-control* Please don't laugh at me - I'm laughing quite hard at myself.

In other news, I'm on to the yoke of my Warm Jacket with unusual bubble stitch yoke, so hopefully I might finish it at the weekend. It's going to be the perfect warm cardigan. I can't wait!

FO: Luxurious Tweedy Cowl

About 8 weeks ago, I had a call from a former colleague, asking me whether I would like to try some new yarn from an Italian spinner who specialises in cashmere. These sorts of phonecalls don't happen very often, so I toddled off to have a look at the website and excitedly accepted the offer.

The company in question is called Gomitoli's, and they have been producing fine yarns for the clothing industry for more than a hundred years, but only recently started selling yarn to hand knitters. I browsed through the yarns on offer, and settled on a ball of gorgeous Tweed in the perfect shade of red. I was enticed by the fibre composition of 70% Extrafine lambswool and 30% Cashmere - as you know, I enjoy knitting with yarns that have some bounce and life to them, so the high lambswool content was appealing!

The yarn arrived safely, packaged in its own travelling-case-styled box, and I enjoyed fondling it for quite some time before starting to look at potential patterns. The yarn has a 2 ply construction and a slightly felted appearance. The tweedy flecks are all in toning colours - paler reds, oranges and browns. If you've worked with Rowan's Felted Tweed, then I would say that the appearance in the ball is not dissimilar. In my opinion, it's quite significantly softer (as you would expect from the fibre composition).

After searching extensively through my pattern collection, I decided to make the Hydrangea Neckwarmer by Anne Hanson from the book, Brave New Knits. This pattern uses 140m of sportweight yarn to make the larger size, which was perfect as my 50g ball of Tweed has a put-up of approx. 175m.

The pattern knitted up a bit too quickly for my liking - I was enjoying using the yarn! Cast on to cast off was just a week, but as ever, I was working on other projects alongside it. I think it took me longer to get myself organised to take the photos than it did to actually knit the cowl!

And here is the finished item! They yarn has enough body to stand up nicely around the neck (so often these little cowls totally collapse if they are knitted in silky-soft yarns), whilst being absolutely ideal for next-to-skin wear. It doesn't have that slipperiness that I associate with pure silks or cashmeres, and for me that's a real plus. The stitch pattern shows up nicely, and I think this yarn would be great for colourwork as well.

Here's a close-up of the leaf edging. The construction of this neckwarmer is neat - you knit the main body from the top-down, and the the leaf edging is knitted on perpendicular to the body, thus effectively casting off the stitches. The two ends of the edging are then grafted together.

I'm trying not to purchase yarn for a while, as I have so many things that I'm keen to knit in the stash already, but I'm certainly putting this on my list of yarns I'd use again. I'd particularly look to it for a small special project that would be worn next to the skin.

Technical details:
Gomitoli's Tweed (found in the Cashmere Lana section of their website)
Shade Red 10039
70% Extrafine Lambswool, 30% Cashmere
175m/50g balls
€9.10 per ball and shipping costs €5.00 for anything up to 20 balls

You can see more on my project notes page on Ravelry here: JenACKnitwear's Luxurious Cowl

Disclaimer: I was given this ball of yarn for free. I didn't receive any other form of payment for writing this blog post or for logging the project on Ravelry (it was just 1 x 50g ball of yarn). If I hadn't enjoyed knitting with it, I wouldn't have hesitated to tell you!

More stash gulping...

Having put the baseline data into Ravelry a couple of weeks ago, I added photos of the stash this weekend, and made another crazy discovery. I have managed to add more than a kilometer of yarn to my stash in the space of a week. I wasn't my fault, honest guvnor!  

Last issue I was picked as Simply Knitting's Subscriber of the month, and the ensuing goody bag included some gorgeous Knit Picks Stroll Tonal sock yarn (422m - far left), a ball of fun Rico Superba Stripy (420m - left) in just my favourite colours, as well as a hank of Colinette Art (172m - right) in a beautiful Monet inspired colourway. 

I then only went and won the p/hop giveaway as well - enter a hank of Yarn Yard Twistle (365m - far right). That makes a total of 1,379m of yarn!

In the same amount of time I have probably knitted up 200m of yarn, and I've given away 400m of sock yarn to the winner of the Strictly sweepstake in the Posh Yarn group on Ravelry. This is not a sustainable position to be in, so I AM going to do something about it.

I've put a few things into the for sale or trade section of my stash on Ravelry.

 

 

 

 

From left to right they are Fyberspates Scrumptious Aran (hand-dyed), Louisa Harding Aimée, Rowan Wool Cotton and Rowan Denim. For more information, please click through to my stash pages on Ravelry, and do contact me there if you are interested in those.

And in the New Year I will be knitting down some of those lovely projects I have queued up. I shall be endeavouring not to add to the stash. I'm not going to say never, but I am going to be as good as I possibly can at resisting temptations. Stash gulp indeed.

Happy Birthday p/hop!

Have you heard of p/hop? It's a knitting campaign in aid of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Knitwear designers donate patterns to p/hop and knitters donate money for the patterns - the idea being that you donate pennies per hour of pleasure (p/hop) for the patterns. P/hop has been running for 3 years and has raised over £30,000 for MSF in that time. Not bad going, eh?!

I was lucky enough to win this wonderful prize from p/hop in their 3rd Birthday Giveaway yesterday (thanks Yarn Yard and Undercover Owl!):

If you fancy downloading a pattern, making a donation, or entering the birthday giveaway competition, just head over to the p/hop website to find out more. If you're quick there's still time to enter the Day 9 giveaway (it closes at 2pm on Wednesday 14th December 2011), and there will be 12 Days of giveaways in total.

To keep up to date with p/hop's activities, you can check out their blog, and also follow them on Twitter, where they are @msf_phop

Thanks again p/hop, and happy knitting one and all. xx

Woah Woolfest!

Wowzers, what a Woolfest. It was the most fabulous weekend, but it has taken me a few days to catch up with sleep and work that were neglected while I was away. There will be a flurry of blog activity now, but then I am expecting to be pretty quiet again while I'm away in France for the show in Lot and some R&R in Marseille afterwards. I hope to get in a lot of knitting time though.

Woolfest was completely non-stop. We set up the Fyberspates stand on Thursday afternoon, and then sold all day Friday and Saturday before packing up and driving back down to Chester. We were so overwhelmed by the reaction to the book, that it's actually quite hard to describe it in words. Check out the slightly stunned look on my face as I open yet another package of books!

Selling on the Fyberspates stand at Woolfest (thanks to Nic for the pic).

We christened the new stand set-up arrangement, and it seemed to make it really easy to keep track of all the different shades of Scrumptious. I must say that it is incredibly hard work to be surrounded by such beautiful yarn and not buy it all for myself!!

Lots of lovely Fyberspates yarn to fondle.

I just end up telling myself that none of it is for sale - it's just for looking at like some type of modern art installation. However, in the little bit of time that I had wandering the other stands with Amanda and Lily (France from the book super-team), I succumbed to a few treats for myself. It wouldn't be a trip to a show if I didn't buy anything would it?

Knit by Numbers from Fibre Harvest.

First up is this irresistible 100% merino DK yarn from John and Juliet Arbon at Fibre Harvest. It's called Knit by Numbers and starting with solid dyed tops, the yarn is spun with increasing amounts of white fibre to give this beautiful graduated effect. I think there are more than 50 shades already, with more planned. I can't wait for the greens... I had to rein myself in from sticking with my usual teal. Everyone has assured me that this yellow palette really suits me, so it's a new dawn here at the A-C household, who knows what might be next. Tea drinking? Or eating sprouts? Eughh no thanks, just knitting with yellow for now.

A little fabric and some silk.

One of the stalls that really sucked me in for a good look was Cocoon. I adore my Japanese knitting pattern books, and love Habu yarns, so it was a great stand for me. I gave in and went back for my cheque book so that I could purchase some Habu silk and these pretty fat quarters. It's probably very good for the bank balance that they didn't take cheques or I might have really fallen down a Habu rabbit hole. I must have enough fabric for a house-sized quilt by now! Better get sewing.

Dazzle sock from The Natural Dye Studio.

Lastly for the photos is some squishy Dazzle Sock from The Natural Dye Studio. Along with a group of friends we are knitting a blanket for another friend. I'm quite certain she doesn't read the blog, but just in case I'm going to leave it pretty vague. I already had 6 hanks of this lovely Bluefaced Leicester yarn in my stash, so I just wanted to top it up with another couple of hanks to ensure we had enough for a lovely big, snuggly blanket. Hmmm, the yellow reminds me of trousers.

My final purchase was some handspun faux-cashmere from Daniela Klopmann. This is all wrapped and ready for a SnB friend. She wasn't at knitting on Tuesday, so I'm hoping I might bump into her at the pub tomorrow.

Phew - a long post. Congratulations on getting to the bottom. Tomorrow's won't be quite as long, but I have got a few lovelies stored up to share with you...

Resisting Temptation

I think that I deserve some kind of award! I have been staying with Jeni for 3 days, and hanging out at the workshop, and so far at least, no new yarn has made its way into my bag.

via fibrespates.blogs.com

My first post to Jeni's blog at Fyberspates.