Live Stitch @ Little Knits

A quick entry…a very quick entry.

We are back from TNNA and have many surprises in the works for you.  You just wait!

And, new colors of Malabrigo Sock are in and they are lovely.  Some eye candy is in order:

Arbol   

Ravelry Red   and Light of Love 

And a new dye lot of Alcaucil 

I hope you like them too.  Back to work and to my somewhat sad thoughts about my thorn up kitchen.

I have been knitting.  Yes, I have been knitting and doing so somewhat obsessively.

The lovely people at Malabrigo Yarn was nice enough to send me a hank of their new yarn, Twist, a super soft baby merino that is loosely plied.  I tried to get a closeup of the ply to show you the difference in the thicknesses of the baby merino

that is plied together, which makes the yarn feel more organic/natural.   Twist is a pleasure to work with and makes a rather solid knitted fiber and I know I said it before but it is very soft and feels wonderful next to skin.

I looked for a project for my single skein and found Prismatic Scraf on Ravelry, a free pattern that works

beautifully with this hand-dyed yarn.  I am using my favorite needles (HiyaHiya circulars), in U.S. size 9 for this pattern but I think I could have gone up to size 10 as the yarn makes for a pretty substantial knitted fiber.  I think I will be able to soften the drape of the scarf if I block it with some vigor.  We have ordered all the colors Malabrigo had ready for shipment for the Twist and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

As to the pattern, Prismatic Scarf is a great (free!) pattern for hand-dyed yarns as it shows their beauty by allowing the colors distribute evenly on the knitted fiber.

I know that I will be knitting a few as gifts – it is a quick and easy knit and it is addictive like your favorite snack that you cannot put down.

We also got a new yarn in from Fleece Artist.  Nyoni is a merino, mohair and silk blend yarn that can be used for sock and lace projects and has a subtle sheen.  Nyoni is very similar to Fleece Artist’s Somoko with a slight difference in gauge and comes in 125 gram hanks at a great price point.  One hank is sufficient for a pair of socks for most sizes, two hanks is sufficient for a mid-sized shawl, and three hanks would make a large shawl or stole.  Another great project idea for this yarn is Tempest by Weaver Designs, which you can find on Knitty as a free pattern.  And here are a few of my favorite colors:

Pewter   Wine 

Boreal 

I am looking for a shawl pattern for Nyoni as I have put away a few skeins for self.  This shawl will be knitted for myself.  I say I am allowed to give myself a Christmas gift and so should you!

Hope you are all well and knitting and crocheting with a smile.

Just a quick blog entry to let you know that our retail location will be closed on Saturday the 21st in preparation of a large end-of-year inventory sale.

We will reopen on Sunday, the 22nd at 11 AM for the first day of our sale.  New and old inventory from lines such as Debbie Bliss, Mondial, Katia, Cherry Three, Louisa Harding and Rowan will be reduced from 50-75% including books and magazines.

We hope to see you at Little Knits in West Seattle this Sunday and during the rest of the year when you can make it over.

I cannot leave you without a little eye candy.  We have new and beautiful color lines in for Handmaiden’s Sea Silk.  Here is Boreal and The Ozarks in all their beauty:

Welcome to the world of Evilla Artyarn!  I was expecting a Kauni Effektgarn clone but I found something a little different.  The color repeats are long, the same as Kauni, the weight is the same as Kauni; not proving my point too well, am I?  The difference is . . . the feel.

Evilla Artyarn is a fingering weight Shetland yarn.  Shetland has a reputation of being coarse and a little rough on the hands and skin when worn.  I happen to LOVE Shetland so I definitely don’t have a problem with knitting it or wearing it.  A quick FYI, you can get Evilla in different hank sizes – anywhere from 100 grams to 400 grams – and the yardage and prices change based on the weight of each hank.

Those with sensitive skin will be pleasantly surprised.  When I began to wind it into cakes, this color is A46 – repeats of plum, cranberry and rose; rich, soft, subtle and very beautiful.  I noticed there were no breaks, it was smooth and even – I couldn’t wait to try it!

I wanted to try a pattern and had been on Ravelry.com in the Little Knits group Activity tab.  Someone had in their queue the Cables and Eyelet Cowl and I absolutely love the pattern.  I am working on a pattern which may use some elements of this pattern, so this became my swatch pattern.  At first the yarn felt coated, like a lotion (this is the natural lanolin on the fiber).  I wasn’t too sure about that but kept going.  Within a few minutes I realized I was gliding along.  

I had cast on with US 5 (3.75mm) needles and setup 4 pattern repeat rows with a 3-stitch garter stitch edge. This is not a tight gauge (5.5 – 6 sts/inch).  After blocking and drying, the cables popped as the swatch flattened out, and the stitches were defined and even.  Even though I knitted a 10” x 7” swatch, I still didn’t see any color change. . .this may give you an idea for how long the repeats are.  And you could go down a needle size or two for a denser fabric.  

I wanted to see what another color looked like as well as create a stockinette stitch swatch. So I pulled out the Evilla in A97 – Basil/Sage. . . well, green. 

Again the yarn feels soothing to the skin. The stitch definition is great if you are using texture stitches in your pattern.  But for straight stockinette stitch, it is a nice smooth finish.  The gauge is the same as the patterned swatch above. If you want to create a timeless garment in a yarn that will show off your pattern and last, Evilla should be on your list.

Please feel free to let Fulay or me know if this review is helpful to you or if there are other yarns you are interested in seeing a review posted.

If you have been lurking, chatting and/or posting on the Little Knits Group on Ravelry, we have probably crossed paths.  I am gwynneknit, please stop by and say “hi!”   

Blessings,

Gwynne

Emphasis on the “mmmmm” for the new test yarns that flew into our shop today.  I opened the box and suddenly a swarm of Mal junkies blinded me for about 15 minutes.  When I was able to see again I noticed that some of the hanks were gone! 

We received a fingering weight 80% merino wool, 20% cashmere in 100 gram hanks.  Each hank has 450 yards of merino-cashmere yarn.  This beautiful yarn has a lovely hand and begs to be knitted, crocheted and worn next to skin.  Malabrigo Merino/Cashmere Fingering comes in Stonechat, Teal Feather, Azul Profundo and Ravelry Red color lines.  They are pretty and beautifully dyed in richly saturated color lines.

We also received lace weight 80/20 merino/cashmere that is put up in 100 gram hanks with tons of yardage, 1170 yards per hank to be exact.  We got only one color, Indiecita.

And finally, there was a gorgeous hank of 100% bamboo thrown in for good measure.  It is a HUGE 480 gram hank of bamboo yarn that is a 6-ply.  The label for the yarn does not give too much info but the weight appears to be light worsted and I am guessing the hank has approximately 950-1050 yards of bamboo yarn with a silky sheen.    Color line was not named and I have not been able to guess.  Any suggestions?

I am off to work on the site – I have another surprise for you for tomorrow morning.  Must go get a cup of tea first.

For the last few days I have been photographing and listing Evilla Artyarn colors.   And just when I think I am done new colors come in.  So I decided to post about it tonight without further delay.

If you have ever worked with Kauni you know the super gradual and long color exchanges of their yarn.  Evilla Artyarn has the same gradual and long color exchanges, has the same yarn base (the gauge is exactly the same), only with a much wider color range.  It seems that I will never get done photographing and posting new colors.

In addition, Evilla seems to be rich in lanolin and has a ever so slightly softer hand.  When we opened our first box and grabbed our respective hanks the first thing we did was to smell the yarn and we loved the lanolin aroma.  The fiber seems almost directly from the sheep and you will feel the lanolin on your hands as you work with the yarn.

The colors…the colors of Evilla are simply stunning and makes me love this yarn.

Evilla Artyarn can easily be used as a substitute for Kauni.  If you are on Ravelry do a yarn search for Kauni and look at the projects.  Now multiply the potential for color lines by ten and you have Evilla.     Another cool thing about Evilla is that it comes in various weights.  We have not yet received the DK or Worsted weights in Evilla Artyarn but we hope to have those in the near future, which I thought would be ideal for heavier projects and for felting.

I have so many photos that I would like to share with you but I think I will stop with just one more.  Please excuse my enthusiasm, Evilla colors have me spell bound. 

Sending you my best from a late night in Seattle. 

And my furry baby Rontoo.  It is the latest we have been up for a while and as you can see he is rather tired.    So he told me to make this quick so that he can finally go to his bed upstairs and snooze.  Sorry his photo is not one of my best, I was hurrying to get him before he rolled over but you get the idea, right?

Today I was busy opening boxes and right about the second one I hit red!  The red I speak of is called Blue Blood Red and came in the Lamb’s Pride Bulky format.  I was weak so I took enough for a hat.  This is going to make a very warm hat, which will be perfect for windy days and Puget-cold-rain. 

I kept opening boxes and hit the Noro jackpot.  A whole bunch of Silk Garden Lite closeouts with a great color range.  Usually we get one or two colors that are similar this time it was not so.  Here is the beautiful deep colors of #2014  

and then the more playful colors of #2046  

and the fall like #2047.    There is more and you can see it all under Noro Silk Garden Lite.

That is all for now.  Tomorrow it is Friday and I have to have some energy for my 4 year old who requires mom’s continuous attention and lots of play time.

Today was one of those days where I kept trying to get things done, picking up one thing and getting distracted by another, and not getting much done.  While this can be rather frustrating I like it, most of the time.  First because it makes for a fast paced day and I am never bored.  And, second because once things start getting done it is like a great Tetris game, pieces start falling in place all at once and your box is suddenly empty (I love Tetris).

Here is the good – I can tell you that we received over 700 pounds of new yarn that I think you will like.  Here is the bad – we recently lost some storage space and therefore have a bunch of big boxes in our retail space.  So if you come in to our retail store be ready for an impressive array of boxes.

I am off to bed.  My apologies for the lack of photos.  I promise there will be plenty of eye candy in my next post. 

Hope to see you here tomorrow.  I have decided to continue posting to see how long I can keep the streak going. 

I am almost done with my 30 posts.  Technically speaking this post should be the last one but I am going to go on until the end of the month just to lock it.  Especially given that I have already given away 1/4 of my promised funds. 

In the interim, I have been doing some research in order to figure out where to donate the remaining amount and some of the information I have found has left me astounded.

By doing simple research online one can learn quite a bit about charitable organizations.  What astounded me was the financial disclosures made by some of these organizations.  Here is an example, a small local charity that has approximately $5M in contributions paid its executive director $140K a year.  That is a 3 percent expense right off the top.  Does that seem high to you too?  Their overall rating is one out of four stars, not surprising. 

While I thought the above example was bad, I found another Seattle charity with annual revenues of $1.7M that paid its executive director $105K.  That is almost 6 percent and here is the kicker this charity had a $130K deficit at the end of the year!  I am blown away.

Please don’t get me wrong, I think these folks should be compensated for the work they do but I think if the organization is running a deficit and the director is being paid 6 figures there may be something wrong.

But then I found that organizations like the above two were in the minority and there is a large pool of great charities out there.  So I am still deciding and I will most likely stick to local charities given that we have limited funds and I think our donations would make the biggest impact with small charities.

And, my friends have thrown down the gauntlet once again.  I have been told if I can do a blog entry everyday for another 11 months they will multiply their pledge by five and then find corporate donors that will match their donation.  While I would love to do this I doubt I have the stamina.  Can you imagine, a readable, somewhat interesting new entry every day for another 11 months.  My head hurts just thinking about it. 

Well, rain is back in Seattle.  But we had a great summer so I am not complaining.  Plus rain makes Deb happy and a happy Deb is a good thing.

Hope to you see here tomorrow.

I have been taking photos of Classic Elite’s Alpaca Sox , which means that I have to handle all the hanks, see the new colors and appreciate the feel.  This is usually when I get in trouble with stash related issues.  This time no such thing.  I did pick a hank and put it away into a basket intended as a house warming gift.  Hah, how is that for not feeling guilty!

And, of course, there are some new colors.  Here is my favorite and it happens to be a solid color.  We call it Velvet Plum and it is lovely.   I would rather wear this color near my face so I would most likely opt out of socks and go for a hat or a scarf but that is just me.  Of the new multi-colors I think the Moss-Malachite  and Lapis is lovely.  And then there is the rather unique Fall/Winter color line that we have named “Please name this color.”    That concludes the yarn related portion of this post and I go on to the next topic where I ask for your help. 

I need to come up with Halloween themed snacks that are healthy and fun for kids.  Minimum baking and cooking would be great.  A smoking bowl full of eyeballs would be lovely but how can I achieve that with healthy food that is actually edible?  Anything gruesome and/or funny and edible would be great.  And one final note, no candy allowed.

Hope you are all well and knitting and crocheting with a smile.  And, hope to see you here tomorrow.