As you may have noticed, I’m working furiously on the website. I’ve decided to make some big changes around here, namely to the shop. I really hope this leads to much more fiber, yarn, and patterns for my customers, much more sanity for me, and much more blogging for all of us.

Fiber club will continue as always and shop updates will be big and a heck of a lot more often. This change had to be made for a couple of reasons and I feel really great about the possibility of spending my days in my little dye room, making fun colorways.

As far as the shop itself is concerned, gone are the bulk fibers and spinning supplies. It’s going to be all hand-dyed all the time. There’s a brand new shop and everything (bookmark it!) and it’s a lot simpler than the old shop. There are no accounts and all payments will come through PayPal. You can pay by credit card as well as bank-funded PayPal. See here for more information. Some things of beauty are: items put in your cart stay there for an hour so there’s no rush to check out, there’s a product RSS feed so you can be notified when I add items, and the shop is simple to run and not hosted by me so I really think it can handle some serious abuse.

I’m going to have a sneak attack update in the very near future. Subscribe to the feed, keep your eyes peeled, and let’s give the new shop a workout, shall we?

Pattern: You’re Putting Me On Socks by Judy Gibson (rav link)
Yarn: worsted weight 2 ply spun from Spunky Eclectic’s hand-dyed Corriepaca in the Mountain Majesty colorway. 387 yards/ 8 oz. I used all of the yarn.
Gauge: 5.5 sts. per inch.
Needle: 3US/3.25mm

What a super pattern! I know it started as a joke, but a pattern for super plain toe-up socks is exactly what I need when knitting with handspun. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and it would stink to not have enough for that one last toe.

I followed the pattern exactly for the foot, then increased up the back of the leg, 2 sts. ever 5 rows, to 54 sts. Decreased to 52 at the top and finished with 2×2 rib. They fit like a glove. I don’t know if it’s the yarn weight, the dense knitting, or the shaping, but these socks crack me up- they look like legs!

I loooove the fiber I spun the yarn from- Spunky Eclectic Corriepaca. It’s an 80/20 blend of Corriedale wool and Alpaca fiber and mmmmm, it’s strong, shiny, and a delight to spin. It should make for quite sturdy socks, too.

I’d make these socks again in a heartbeat. In fact, I am.

DK weight yarn is a favorite of mine, so I had quite a stash to choose from. After some swatching, I settled on Rauma 3 ply Strikkegarn, a Norwegian yarn that, if it isn’t made for mittens, certainly seems like it is! It’s got that crunchy, crispy feel and deep sheen of a long wool, along with a long wool’s strength. The colors are absolutely striking. I doubt these mittens will ever wear out. One of my testers of the Fiddlehead Mittens pattern used Blue Sky Alpacas’ Brushed Suri for her lining and I’ve been wanting to use it myself, ever since. It’s soft as can be and amazingly warm, and a perfect weight for lining DK and worsted weight mittens.

Pattern: Northman Mittens by David Schulz (PDF may be purchased on Ravelry)
Yarn: Rauma 3 ply Strikkegarn in colors 141 (purple), 198 (lime green), 155 (blue), and 127 (orange), with Blue Sky Alpacas’ Brushed Suri in Gingersnap for the lining.
Needle: US 1.5/ 2.5mm (I am the loosest knitter on the planet.)
Size: medium
Gauge: 28 sts. = 4″

I used:
MC (purple)- 42 grams/ 97 yards
CC1 (orange) 12 grams/ 27 yards
CC2 (light blue) 26 grams/ 60 yards
a smidge of the lime green

Almost all of the skein of Brushed Suri- there are only a few yards left.

The mittens are:
9.5” long
9” around above the thumb
8” around the wrist

The pattern was an absolute pleasure to knit. The charts are clear and large, so knitting just zipped along. The linings make the mittens into cozy little pillows for my hands. It’s just what I needed during these cold months.

Fiber Club:

The fiber club renewals are up for February - April. If you’re a current member and would like to join again, go get ‘em! I’ll leave this up until the 26th, then start emailing people on the waiting list to invite them, if there are any slots left. Please note: I sent out a newsletter today and, as usual, about 20 were returned. Please add adrian at helloyarn dot com to your contacts. Please also note that the waiting list for the club is closed. If I ever manage to get through the current one, it will be so long from now that people’s email addresses will have changed. Starting a fresh one at that time seems like the best plan.

Stuff I Love:

* Woodstoves- As you might guess from the first photo above, there’s wood to be hauled around here! We installed a very beautiful woodstove this winter and have switched to heating with wood. Our lives very much revolve around chopping wood and feeding the fire, as well as enjoying the wonderful heat the stove provides. I’ve even bought a book on woodstove cookery. We’ll see how that goes! So far, it’s been fantastic to proof and raise bread dough by. I can’t recommend Morso stoves highly enough, if you’re in the market. This little tyke is heating our home wonderfully.

* Peanut Butter- My life is changed. I’ve never had Hell’s Kitchen’s peanut butter before, but the recipe is online and holy doodle, this peanut butter is beyond imagining. Caro pointed out the recipe to me, as she is a fan of the restaurant’s peanut butter, and she also advised that the peanuts would be better roasted at 275F. Caro knows of what she speaks, so I did what I was told. The recipe makes about a liter, so I shared with 2 neighbors, who called last night to ask me to marry them. It’s that good.

* The Outlander Series- How did I miss these books all these years? I am angry at every person I know who read this and didn’t command me to. A couple of friends and I are reading them now and giggle like schoolgirls over Jamie. The fact that he knits only adds to his charms. If you’re going to be kept indoors by the frigid weather, you might as well have a giant redheaded Highlander to entertain you!

These mittens were inspired by a teeny little photo of a Quaker cross stitch sampler that I saw in a magazine back in September. I made a sketch of the mitten, but was wishing I had a better view of the sampler, so poked around the internet and lo and behold, they are famous! And rightly so. Here’s a much better view of the sampler I saw that little photo of. Isn’t it lovely?

I knit about 5 different squirrels before I was satisfied, put stylized acorns all over the palms, added a picot edge and textured braids, and even an optional 3D acorn.

Pattern: Squirrel Sampler Mittens, my own design, which is for sale in electronic form, both [on this website] and [on Ravelry]
Yarn: Harrisville New England Shetland, in Pearl and Cocoa, and Misti Alpaca Lace Canada in Blue Mist Melange for the lining
Needles: size 0 Addi Turbo, for magic loop
Gauge: 9 sts per inch
Size: S

The lining is picked up from the inside hem edge and then pushed up inside after it’s knit. It is soft, soft, soft.

OMG, acorns!

OMG, stuffed acorn!

A ton of thanks to Pamela Wynne for allowing me to reprint her darling Wee Twee Tiny Acorn pattern. It’s available on Ravelry for all your tiny acorn needs.

Many thanks to David for forcing me to design a new pattern. He is a harsh taskmaster and had me sitting at the dining room table first thing every morning, working on stranded knitting on size 0 needles before I’d even had a reasonable amount of coffee.

Also thanks to my awesome test knitters and tech editor for all their help. It’d be a sad pattern without them!

I grew food, foraged for some more, cooked it and ate it and preserved the rest. Lots of food. TONS! We have a freezer full and I canned 116 jars (info here), with more to come, now that apples are in full swing. I never expected the warm, toasty feeling that comes from preserving all that food and seeing the jars in neat little rows, but I suppose I should have. I get the same feeling from piles of sweaters I’ve made. It’s that much work, too. Goodness! I spent the summer pretty sweaty and tired.

Pippa:

Pippa is well and enjoying life. She spent an idyllic (bar the ticks) summer hiking every morning with Mr. HelloYarn and enjoying her fenced yard and having friends over to play in it. She has grown into a fantastic dog who’s just a pleasure to be around (bar the ticks).

What’s up now:

Fall is here, there are epic piles of leaves around our house, and it’s almost time for Rhinebeck! I’ll be there, shopping like a maniac and waiting in the artichoke line. I look forward to seeing all my woolly friends there. If I really knit a lot this week, I’ll even have a finished sweater. I’ve actually done a bunch of knitting that I haven’t showed here. I’ll be back with proper discussions and photos.

Fiber Club:

The fiber club renewals are up for November through January. If you’re a current member and would like to join again, go get ‘em! I’ll leave this up for 2 weeks, then start emailing people on the waiting list to invite them, if there are any slots left. Please note: I sent out a newsletter today and, as usual, about 20 were returned. Please add adrian at helloyarn dot com to your contacts.

Stuff I Love:

* Guardians of Russian Art Museums- Check out this wonderful series of photos.

* Postcards from Yo Momma- A Depository of Moden Day Maternal Correspondence. Mom, I swear I won’t send any of your emails in.

* New House Textiles- The hearts! The mushrooms!

* Cooking- My new favorite recipes are this Vidalia Onion Tarte Tatin, this apple cake, cream scones, and this tomato galette. Nom nom nom.

See you at Rhinebeck!

June’s club has shipped and I’ve got a sneak peek, if you like.

I dyed up some extra, like last month, and if you’d like some it’s $16 per 4 oz. bag. Email me at adrian@helloyarn.com. Members only, please.

Thanks!

PS: I’m going out of town for a couple of days this week. I’ll hopefully have internet access, but if I don’t answer lickety-split, don’t fret. I will respond.

Jared, I’m done! He looks cute in it! I’m super late to this game, obviously, as Jared’s vest is now a pattern and 22 people have knit it/are knitting it, including at least one other in my fiber, the lovely David’s, which is super fun to see. I didn’t use his pattern, but they’re totally the same idea.

The Info:
Pattern: my made-to-measure
Yarn: my handspun Spicery Shetland wool yarn and Shetland yarn from Whitney Acres Farm, which is down the road from the pizza place in the next town over.
Needles: 7 for the body and 5 for the ribbing
Size: 40″ with no ease- the fit reminds me of a schoolboy’s vest

This vest was knit in the round with steeks to preserve the color shifts on both sides of the v-neck. I did crochet steek reinforcements, like for this vest and this vest. It’s so tidy, makes knitting so much simpler, and looks so good that I’d never do it another way.

I left no ease (knit a 40″ vest for a 40″ chest) and Mr. HelloYarn felt it was a big snug for his taste. It looked great to me, but with a second, pinned-out wet block (Mr. HelloYarn helped, perhaps because he does not trust me not to strangle him with a tight vest again), it felt great to him, too. No more zero ease for him!

And for the Pippa fans:

Pippa’s doing well, in case you wondered. She’s learning new things every day and now that our village is getting busy (it’s a popular summer tourist stop), she’s getting a taste of crowds. Other than one incident with a woman and an ice cream cone (no ice cream was damaged, but it was certainly threatened), she’s generally made of awesome. We’re getting a picket fence in a couple of weeks (what color to paint it is my obsession at the moment, and along with that comes the question of what color to paint the house) and once she has a secure place to really run her head off, we can really get busy with her “circus dog” training. She loves to jump through hoops!

Stuff I love this week:

-Graham Annable’s Children of the Night & Their Dad prints. They’re not only fantastic illustrations, they’re wonderfully, as well.

-Sherman Alexie’s young adult book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I’d highly recommend this for young people, unlike some other young adult books I’ve read. This one is hilarious, painfully true, and hopeful. If I didn’t already have a crush on Mr. Alexie, I would now!

- True Blood- I can hardly wait for the new season to start on Sunday. I look forward to Eric, Eric, and more Eric and finding out what happened to Lafayette, the skank.

- Those teensy tiny Ravelry symbols alerting you that you’re following a link into Ravelry. Want them for your blog? Here you go- scroll down to the bottom.

May’s fiber is on its way right now. I hope you all love it!

Want to see it?

This is a fiber I’ve done before for the club, but it came from a new source and it’s quite different from what I usually get. It drafts like a DREAM, so should be a fun spin for everyone. It’s a great middle-of-the-road wool that would be suited for a variety of projects.

I dyed some extra fiber this month and will make it a point to do so in the future. There’s a limited amount, but if you’d like some more of this month’s fiber and are currently in the club, let me know at adrian@helloyarn.com. It’s $15 per 4 oz. bag and I’m happy to ship it with next month’s club to save you shipping.

It’s a sad post without any photos, so would you like to see the baby chipmunk we saw in our yard the other day? I thought so.

Thanks!

I’ll be back with photos of Mr. HelloYarn in his handspun striped vest as soon as I can get him to pose, hopefully tomorrow. I’ve been letting finished projects pile up. Whoops!

Woot! I’m done! Between practicing my crochet and trying to settle on a pattern for the swap, I must have made 10 potholders, so when it came time to do my 5, I was kind of sick of them. Great behavior for one of the hosts, right?

It turns out this pattern is super fun and I started a 6th last night, just because there was one more color combination that I needed to do.

Pattern: Old-Fashioned Potholders by Cathy Irish (rav link)
Yarn: a mix of Tahki Cotton Classic and Elann Sonata, 66 grams per potholder
Size: 8″ across
Hook: 2.5mm
Extras: plastic drapery rings
For: The Swap!

Verdict: AWESOME! This is a totally simple pattern that lends itself to stripes and fun color combinations.

These potholders have 2 identical sides and are crocheted together on the last round.

White plastic drapery rings are used for the loops. When I got to the end of the joining/ last round, I did single crochet around the plastic rings and slip stitched through the first stitch.

These are heavy duty potholders. There’s no chance a finger could poke through and be burned.

These were very wonky until they had a visit from a steam iron. Don’t freak out if you make them and they won’t stay flat. Give them a good smushing with an iron.

Stuff I Love:

Toddy coffee: I’ve been making mine in a 1/2 gallon jar, straining through first a regular mesh strainer to get out the big bits, then through a fine tea strainer back into the original, now washed, jar. We drinking it iced, 1:1 with vanilla soy milk. I can’t believe it took me so long to try this. It’s excellent!

Mimobot mimoShroom: My new project is going to be to put all of my recipes into this little flash drive, rather than printing out recipes from the internet. Since getting a Dell Mini 9, it’s been super easy to cook from a recipe on the screen.

MASW: I’ll be at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair both days this weekend, shopping, visiting, and helping out AmyBoogie/Spunky Eclectic at her booth. I won’t be selling there, just visiting. Say hi!

The fiber club renewals are up for sale right now and will be available until the 27th. I’m not sure if there will be any slots available to new members this time around. I am running at capacity in the current club. I’ll definitely post here if/when I add new slots.

Life is about to get even busier. I’m preparing for Yarn School, which is May 7-10 this spring. There are a few slots left, if anyone wants to join us. Flights are so cheap! Nikol’s sheep had babies recently, so I’m looking forward to snuzzling some lambs in addition to hanging out with a bunch of awesome fibery people.

I’ve been all over the place as far as making stuff goes. Crochet took over for awhile:

It’s going to take over again because, despite being one of the hosts of the potholder swap, I haven’t made any potholders. I spent a lot of time practicing stitches and reading charts, especially in Japanese books.

The book on the right is phenomenal. It’s Crochet Patterns Book Motifs Edgings 300 (ISBN9784529042338) and it’s all charts and very easy to understand, despite being a Japanese book.

Stuff I Love:

Green Porno: Isabella Rossellini’s very short films (viewable on the Sundance Channel’s website, although I watched them On Demand) about animal sexual behavior are a trip! Be sure to get your Green Porno name. I’m Pisces Pincertail.

TtV Photos: I only took my first Through the Viewfinder photos last night, but I can tell it’s my new favorite. I’ve got a Kodak Duaflex II and an Argus Seventy-Five that I’ll use with my Nikon D50 with 50mm f1.8 lens with 2x closeup filter. I’ve built the connecting contraption (shoddily) for the Kodak and have taken a few photos, including the one of seedlings below. The deal is, for anyone who isn’t familiar, you set it up so that your digital camera takes photos through the viewfinder of an old reflex camera. Super fun!

Gardening: We’ve been doing a lot more outdoor stuff now that the snow is gone. Raised beds have been built for vegetable gardens and seedlings are growing in the house.

We always had a little kitchen garden in the city and had success with strawberries and herbs, but the sun was never quite bright enough for a bounty of anything. The new yard is a different story. Between the raspberry and blueberry bushes that were already in the yard and our two big raised beds, there should be a lot of canning and freezing in my future. I can’t wait!

Baby Animals: They’re everywhere! Local fiber artist/farmer Barb Parry’s sheep are lambing like crazy. Nikol Lohr’s sheep weren’t supposed to be knocked up but someone’s got three lambs. Watch them jump and listen to Nikol’s infectious laugh! My other favorite critters are Flickr’s LisaNH’s Tamworth piglets. She generously posts nearly daily pictures of their progress. Lovely.

The Commons on Flickr: Many institutions are publishing old photos on Flickr. The Library of Congress has enormous sets of beautiful images to peruse. Check out the 1930’s-1940’s in Color.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: I haven’t read the books, but I certainly love the television show! It’s charming, funny, takes place in a super interesting place, and the characters and actors are wonderful. I find myself checking the DVR for it days before a new episode airs, like it will appear just because I want it to.