You won’t be disappointed, here is my haul from the last club.

Then, a few months ago, a friend tipped me off that the sKNITches Cinema Club was open for subscriptions and I jumped.

September: I am the Arm

The Lowdown:

The Theme:

It’s a Cinema club, so each month’s yarn and goodies is based on a different film. Each month comes with a popcorn box (very cute touch), a little movie poster and a row of ‘admit one’ tokens.

September’s film was Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, October was ET, November was Cast Away and December was Little Shop of Horrors.

The theme was really cohesive and you could tell that sKNITches worked really hard at making everything that was in the package was related to the theme and it really made the club a lot of fun.

The Yarns:

September contained a GORGEOUS colourway called ‘I am the Arm’, made up of a range of reds and black on a 70% superwash, 30% silk base. Just fantastic.

October was a self-striping colourway called ‘Phone Home’ made up of brown, pink, white and blue on a superwash merino base.

November’s base was 50% superwash merino, 50% tencel, in a great beachy colourway called ‘Wilson’ made up of browns, sand and blues.

December’s was a self-striping colourway called ‘Feed Me Seymour!’ on a superwash merino base.

November: Phone Home

The Goodies:

Four months meant four gorgeous skeins of yarn and associated booty. The first month contained a stitch marker and some popcorn shaped mini soaps. The second month contained a glow stick, reeces pieces, and a wee halloween candy bowl/container. The third month contained a set of seaside tea light candles. The fourth, my favourite month, contained a pair of walking, chattering teeth, a wee venus fly trap (no one tell Aussie Customs, though), a candy cane and a little flower stitch marker

The Price:

The club cost $165, plus an extra $7 for postage to Australia. It’s one of the more expensive clubs that I’m currently a member of, but I do think it was good value.

As I mentioned, you could tell that a lot of thought and effort went into the packages each month, plus they were posted with delivery confirmation.

Two of the four yarns were what I would consider premium yarns. Actually, the silk content of ‘I am the Arm’ bumps it up into the luxury yarn category for me. As someone who dyes self-striping yarns, I think that the superwash merino being self-stripers makes them premium yarns, too.

The extras were nice. I really love the popcorn boxes and they’re being recycled into our fathers’ Christmas hampers this year (along with movie tickets and treats) but the rest? I LOVED the final month but I wasn’t that keen on the candles and the rest of it was kind of disposable, to me, but they really came together into a fun package that has been the highlight of my mail box each month.

November: Wilson

The Conclusion:

For my money, the club was great value.

Any communication I had with sKNITches was prompt and polite and very professional. The range of yarns was a delight to experience, the colourways were appropriate to the films they were supposed to represent (although Pants thought the Wilson colourway should have been more… volleyball coloured - I’m glad it wasn’t!) and the extras were thoughtful and interesting.

The fact that one of the colourways was self-striping and it’s more or less the perfect club for the Spiraling crew.

When do signups for the next one open?

Five skeins out of five.

I designed this little pattern for a swap over on Ravelry’s OTF group. We’re making stockings, popping in a few little treats and posting them off to each other for some festive cheer.

They’re just a very simplified, easily adaptable sock pattern. I wouldn’t suggest using this heel on a real pair of socks, but it works very well for something decorative.

This pattern looks great in a variety of sizes, from the smallest lace weight stocking to put on a gift to the larger sizes to hang on the foot of a bed with something nice tucked inside.

You will need the yarn of your choice and a circular needle or DPNs in the size recommended on the label, plus a tapestry needle to close the toe..

For my sample knits, I used the following:

2 g of Dream in Color Baby and 2 mm / US0 needles (green)

89g of Cleckheaton Gusto 10 and 10mm / US15 needles (black and aqua)

10g of Malabrigo Worsted and 5mm / US8 needles (red)

4 g of Tempted Good Grrl and 2.25mm / US1 needles (navy and purple)

Using long tail cast on, and leaving a foot or two of yarn in the tail, co 24 stitches.

Join in the round, being careful not to twist your stitches. Mark beginning of round.

Knit 20 rows.

Make a basic short row heel as follows:

Row 1: k6, turn work, slip 1 purlwise, purl 11, turn work
Row 2: slip 1, k10, turn
Row 3: slip 1 purlwise, p9, turn
Row 4: slip 1, k8, turn
Row 5: slip 1 purlwise, p7, turn
Row 6: slip 1, k7, turn
Row 7: slip 1 purlwise, p8, turn
Row 8: slip 1, k9, turn
Row 9: slip 1 purlwise, p10, turn
Row 10: slip 1, k11

Return to working in the round. Don’t worry too much if you have small holes in your heel, it won’t see too much wear and tear and you can sew up the holes later.

Knit 15 rows. Your round will end in line with the middle of the heel.

Make toe as follows, with twelve stitches on each needle, N1 will have the round marker in the centre.

Row 1: knit to last three stitches, k2tog, k1
Row 2: k1, ssk, knit to last three stitches, k2tog, k
Row 3: k1, ssk, knit to end
Row 4: knit

Repeat rows 1 – 4 twice and rows 1 – 3 once more.

You will have 12 stitches in total remaining.

Graft stitches together using kitchener stitch, or simply bind off and sew the two sides together.

There are two ways to make the hanging loop:

1. Pick up two stitches beside the cast on tail and knit an inch or so of icord (length dependant on the size of your stocking), loop it around and secure it to the inside of the stocking.
2. Cut a length of yarn twice the length of the cast on tail, thread it through the stocking beside the tail and braid an inch or so (length dependant on the size of your stocking), loop it around and secure it to the inside of the stocking.

Notes on personalising your stocking:

• You can use any yarn you fancy, just use the recommended needle size.
• Try striping two different colours of the same yarn.
• Try knitting the first few rows with a novelty yarn before switching to your main yarn.
• Knit two rows, purl two rows for an interesting effect.
• Use it as a small canvas to try a new technique, like intarsia or duplicate stitch.
• Try a small cable on the leg of the stocking. Remember that the cable will draw in the rows, so you may want to shorten the leg and foot by a few rows.

Enjoy!

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

I’ve had a few skeins of Baby pass through the doors of the Spiraling workroom, two of Happy Forest and one of Blue Lagoon. The Happy Forest became an (award winning!) Woodland Shawl and a wee stocking and the Blue Lagoon is on it’s way to becoming a Red Emperor.

I wore the shawl to a family dinner in Glasgow and pants’ cousin (who we were staying with) raved over it. She loved the colours and the size (it blocked out to 6 x 2 feet) and showed me her favourite skirt that matched it, so I left it with her as a thanks when we left. She’s told us that she’s worn it to effusive complements since.

The Low Down:

The Swatch:

Using 2.5 mm / US 1.5 needles, I achieved a gauge of 9.5 stitches, 15 rows per inch.

The Knitting:

I’ll be honest, I HATED knitting with this yarn. It was like knitting twine and I kept pulling out weird fibrous bits that felt (and passed the burn test) like plastic. It was really just the great pattern (and, admittedly, the fabulous colours) that kept me knitting.

The First Wash:

The first wash turned this yarn into the miracle yarn. It bloomed beautifully, the yarn fluffed up and became soft, so soft. It blocked in an insane way, too, going from about 5 x 1.5 feet to over 6 x 2.

The Wearing:

The shawl has found a new home and I only managed to wear it a handful of times, without washing. I wore it on a long-haul flight (Singapore to London) and it kept me toasty warm, despite the laciness of the pattern.

The Price:

At $22.50 a skein, it’s not cheap, but it’s not prohibitive, either. Each skein is 4oz and 700 yards, which is enough for a decent shawl. For my woodland, I used about 1 1/3 skeins and it was enormous. When you consider that my beautiful, huge shawl that’s made someone so happy cost me around $30, you can’t really go wrong.

The Conclusion:

Even though it was a bit painful to knit with, the end result made it all worthwhile. So worthwhile, in fact, that I’ve just cast on another project in another colourway and I’m considering using my winnings (a voucher for The Loopy Ewe to buy more of the gorgeous green Happy Forest colourway to recreate my woodland shawl.

Four and a half skeins out of five.

I won this gorgeous yarn last year in a competition on MaiaSpins (the blog of one of the owners of Tactile Fibre Arts), and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

At the time, I was a non-knitter with an aesthetic interest in sock knitting I was offered fingering or sport, took the thickest, easiest to knit option, and when she said that it would be naturally dyed, I expected blah, washed out colours that would end up in the back of a drawer somewhere, never to see the sight of knitting needles.

I realised my mistake when this gorgeous skein landed on my doorstep.

The Lowdown:

The Swatch:

Using 2.5mm / US 1.5, I achieved 7.5 stitches and 10 rows to the inch.

The Knitting:

Fantastic! Sport weight makes whipping up a pair of socks a comparitive breeze and watching the colours spiral around as I knit was more than enough to keep me interested. The yarn is soft and sproingy and a pleasure to knit.

The First Wash:

No real noticable change, I washed and ironed them before I gave them away.

The Wearing:

Still gorgeous, I gave these socks to my mother for Christmas last year and they’re still looking as new. The yarn is showing no signs of wear, the colour is as vibrant as the leftovers that have never been washed and they still fit like, well, a sock.

The Price:

This pair was the magic price of $0, but other sock yarns from the Tactile website are around the $30 mark. I have some of their gorgeous merino tencel (the superwash merino sport isn’t available on the website) and it’s beautiful. I recognise that $30 is a LOT of money to pay for a skein of yarn, but for beautiful yarn, naturally dyed in such gorgeous colours, it’s absolutely worth treating yourself. That said, I’m looking for the perfect pattern for this skein, probably not socks, so that I can get the best use out of it.

I wouldn’t buy enough of this yarn to make a sweater or skirt, but a single skein is an affordable indulgence and the Tactile crew are expert posters.

The Conclusion:

This yarn is a solid performer, a great base yarn combined with the good feeling of natural dyes, all enhanced by the superior dye job of the brand’s owners. I love it and would happily knit and wear their fibres more or less all of the time, if only it were in the budget.

Five skeins out of five.

In the end, I settled on some Araucania Nature Wool instead, it’s devine.

]]> http://spiralingreview.com/blog/archives/the-scene-in-the-spiraling-bunker-yesterday/feed/ http://spiralingreview.com/blog/archives/home-again-home-again/ http://spiralingreview.com/blog/archives/home-again-home-again/#comments Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:21:22 +0000 admin http://spiralingreview.com/blog/?p=29 We’ve returned from our epic overseas jaunt (and smaller road trip to buy quad bikes and hang out with some of our favourite Aussie fibrous friends and artisans) to a house full of boxes to unpack and find homes for, an unregistered motorbike, no internet and only a single pair of socks to show for all of those flights and knitting time.

Some good news, though, in our travels we managed to visit a few nice local yarn stores and buy some lovely bits of souvenir yarns, and we had record traffic here on the Spiraling Review, thanks to some lovely links.

The trip was fantastic, our cousin’s Scottish wedding was as outrageous as could be expected, Birthdays were celebrated, favourite bands were seen, knitted gifts were given and (hopefully) appreciated and, importantly, delicious knits were worn.

Exciting things are afoot here at Casa Spiraling, with a line up of reviews and patterns awaiting the publish button.

Thanks for visiting and for your comments and emails.

J&A Spiraling

I recently bought some really gorgeous Perchance to Knit sock yarn that I can’t wait to knit up.

The first skein is called Columbia:

and the second is Peony:

I bought mine at the Loopy Ewe and each skein came with a matching crystal stitch marker, which I’ve cleaverly managed to obscure in my photos.

I’m taking the skein of Peony along on our travels and hopefully one of us will manage to get it knit up into something gorgeous.

Check out knitty for a great written (by the inventor) description, but here’s a quick clip I found on youtube.

Once again, the calibre of videos on youtube are appalling, this is the shaky best that I could find.

I’m seriously considering breaking out the camera and recording a few of my own when I get back from my travels.

Alas, onward to the technique:

Five skeins out of five.

l-r: Tiefer See, Maria’s Deepest Purple, Suzanne, Rittersporn, Rosenrot.

Yum!