Good morning, and happy Wednesday to you. I decided to send my newsletter a couple days early this week because I have a few important things to share with you today.
Last Shipping Day
First of all, I’ll be taking some time off to spend Christmas with my family. I’ll be leaving the shop open, and you are welcome to place orders, but today is the last day to order and have me ship your ready-to-ship squishy mail before the New Year.
I am looking forward to lots of time to spend with family, and I expect to have more time to knit than usual, so that will be great too. I am hoping to finally be able to finish knitting the sample for my upcoming Metamorphosis Shawl. I can’t wait to share that with you. Because my knitting time is limited, it has taken a lot longer to knit up than I had hoped, and I’m anxious to get it to you and share the new colorway I created for it too. Here’s a sneak peak:
It’s a triangular crescent that starts at the bottom with just a few stitches and then increases on both sides all the way up. I used Peacock Feathers on Stained Glass Sock as the assigned pooling colorway along with an entirely new colorway I made to go with it. I combined several different stitch patterns, so it’s a lot of fun to knit. More about that after the holidays!
Fresh from the Dye Pots
This was a nicely productive week for dyeing yarn. I dyed Beowulf on lots of different yarn bases. I love this colorway for winter. It just fits. Here it is on Sparkly Merino Sock:
I also dyed Burgundy Rose on several yarn bases. Here it is on So Silky Sock:
Last but not least I dyed Crocuses in Snow. Here it is on Sock Perfection:
Crocuses in Snow is an assigned pooling colorway with a deep purple at one end and purple, lilac, and berry speckles for the rest of the skein.
Deborah Bowanko used this colorway along with Eggplant for her beautiful Pools of Color shawl.
…and I used it for one of the samples of my Long Way Round pattern:
January Club Colorway
It’s a new year and a new beginning as well for my monthly art-inspired yarn and fiber club. We will continue to go by artistic era, but we are starting fresh at the beginning of art history. This month I decided to choose the very oldest painting I could find that had enough variation in color to look good as yarn and art batts. I went a really long way back to what was thought to be the very oldest human art until recently.
This is the Great Bull from the Lascaux caves in Southwestern France. The paintings are thought to be about 20,000 years old, and the bull shown here is an astonishing 17 feet long. These cave paintings were discovered at the turn of the 20th century, and they did a great deal to change how we think of our very ancient ancestors. It is my view that creating is an integral part of our humanity, and I think it is both fascinating and wonderful that our oldest forebears created in much the same way that we do now.
Once again, we will be moving forward chronologically by art period. I’m planning to include ancient mosaics and oriental vases as well as traditional paintings this time around. I expect it will take around two years to get all the way back through art history, and of course we’ll be using entirely different paintings from the ones I have used in the past. You can see past club colorways here, and you can join the clubs here.
New Club Yarn Base
Moreover, I have decided to add a new yarn base option for the yarn club. In addition to the four yarn bases I currently offer for the clubs, I have added Squoosh Worsted, which is just like Squoosh DK but heavier. It is a 4-ply yarn made of extra soft superwash merino, and it comes in big 4 ounce skeins with 213 yards per skein.
This is a great yarn base for sweaters, shawls, and more, but I was especially thinking how nice it would be to use this yarn base to make a blanket, creating a square or rectangular section of the blanket month after month, so you’ll have an art-history blanket. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to use and enjoy the yarn?
Here are just a few pattern ideas:
- Ten Stitch Blanket by Frankie Brown (knit pattern)
- Bespoke Bliss Blanket by Crochet 365 (crochet)
- Bahama Blanket by Toni Lipsy (Tunisian crochet)
You can find the new Squoosh Worsted option and all the others right here on my website. As always, the deadline to join the club or switch yarn bases is the 1st of the month.
New Colorways from the Advent Calendar?
I have had some requests to take some of the colorways from this year’s Lord of the Rings Advent calendar and make them into regular colorways. I have a few favorites of my own, but I would love to get your thoughts as well.
If you got one of my yarn Advent calendars this year, which colorway or colorways have been your favorites? Which ones would you like to see as full-sized skeins in my shop? I’m hoping to pick around three colorways to add to the shop.
I will be sharing the entire set of yarn at once early next year, but in the meantime, one of my lovely customers, Alie, has been sharing the colorways as she opens them day by day on her youtube channel. She’s an absolute delight. If you would like to follow along, you can see Alie’s channel right here.
I think that’s everything. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!