The house is eerily empty today. Just me and Rose and the cat occasionally popping in and out. So after making a start of clearing through six weeks’ worth of dust, we gave up and went shopping for bargain yarn instead.

Lidl occasionally have yarn in on special offer. Usually it’s just something acrylic that doesn’t interest me, but this time they have actual wool/nylon sock yarn and that interests me greatly.

Four 50g balls for £2.99 is a bargain and I snapped up some navy and grey solids and some green and brown variegated. I was tempted to buy some of all the solids, just because they’d be handy for mittens, but I resisted. The yarn feels fairly soft which surprised me; softer than Opal or Trekking, which is my benchmark for softness-of-sock-yarn. I think it might suit being knitted fairly tightly. And of course now I have potential for six pairs of handknitted socks for less than nine quid which is not to be sniffed at.

The August shipment of the Waterloo Wools Sock Yarn Club has landed!

This month’s colourway is called “Family Vacation” and is inspired by this photo:

As the person who gave away Wollmeise because it was orange, I think it’s pretty clear that I won’t be using this yarn for anything for *me*! But I can think of a couple of people who would love the colours and it’s gone into the pile for Christmas knits. If I can use that word in August.

The club is taking a break for September which I think is probably a good thing for my stash as I can hopefully make a bit more space before it restarts.

Last week, Mr B had to make a business trip to Seattle. I armed him with lists of yarn shops that he could possibly visit if he had the time and he duly arrived home last Friday bearing gifts. Amongst which was a giant bag of American candy for the boys and a giant bag of yarn for me.

He’d visited Weaving Works which was happily very near his hotel and where he was apparently treated very nicely indeed. The alpaca is particularly scrummy. It’s from a local-to-the-store alpaca farm and comes from an alpaca names Krista. No idea what I’ll actually do with the yarn as it’s really the sort that needs an ultimate special project to make the most of it.

I think for those of you in the UK, the Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride yarns aren’t that unusual, but the Berocco Ultra Alpaca which is 50% alpaca/50% wool is the softest yarn imaginable. And continuing with the alpaca theme, the Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace is like a cloud. Each ball has around 400 metres, so enough for a little shawlette in each.

The colour selection was all his own, too! I deliberately didn’t suggest anything because I am awkward and I think he made some brilliant choices. I just need to find the time to knit it all.

Apparently the postal service is currently operating a new system where mail travels across the seas in a rocket. The July shipment of the Waterloo Wools Sock Yarn Club arrived on my doormat yesterday morning, just four days after it was posted in Canada.

And to tenuously bring this together, this month’s gorgeous, purple-infused colourway is called “Purple Peony” and is inspired by fireworks. As each colourway is inspired by a photo, I thought I’d also post the picture that inspired this month’s yarn:

IMG_9277, originally uploaded by lligett

The base yarn this month is 100% merino, so this is another yarn for the non-sock pile. The colours are so rich and warm that I’m already toying with the idea of an autumn shawl. And I know it’s still summer.

The only time I’ve ever bought any Wollmeise yarn is back before it suddenly became the most popular yarn in the universe and I could carefully choose a colour. I have tried to buy more since then, but I never manage to snag any when the shop is updated. Until last week…

I happened to randomly visit the shop after Rubbishknitter updated her blog with her lovely Wollmeise cardigan and there was one – one! – skein of 80/20 Twin left. No photo, but I didn’t care; I snapped it up before you could say unnecessary-yarn-buying-just-because-it’s-popular. I did notice that the name of the yarn was “Karotten” and though it’s a while since I took GCSE German, I don’t think it takes a genius to work out that it probably means “carrot” and I hate orange. But I was getting Wollmeise!

And then it arrived.

It is ORANGE. Not just a bit semi-solid which I could cope with but, very very very orange indeed and proud of it.

There is no way on Earth I will ever use this yarn. It smells wonderful and feels divine but I just can’t look at it. I could sell it on, perhaps, but instead I’d rather give it to someone who really wants it and will make something suitable with it.

So to win this very orange skein of yarn, please leave a comment saying what you would knit or crochet with it. The yarn will go to the person who has what I consider the best suggestion! Comments will close Sunday evening, around 9pm UK time.

Though I never find supremely wonderful charity shop knitting bargains, I do hope that one day I will find a bag of cashmere for 50p or something. In the meantime, I think yesterday’s find wasn’t too shabby.

Just over 200g of pure wool, aran weight, price: £1.90. Well, I’m saying it’s pure wool. I’m basing this purely on the fact that a) it’s in skeins and b) feels like pure wool. The test will be if it felts. Not that I’m going to use it for felting, but it would be perfect for the background of the whales on the Pod of Cetaceans Cardigan I’m planning for Rose (once I’ve knitted her Willie, which I don’t even have the yarn for yet…) and that needs steekable yarn. It also needs to match the tension of any other yarn I use… but hey! Yarn bargain!

The June instalment of the Waterloo Wools Sock Yarn Club arrived yesterday. Called “Castle Krumlov”, it’s a 50% merino/50% tencel blend yarn in a shimmery, jewel-like combination of reds, oranges, purples and blues. Definitely destined to be a shawl, I think any of the patterns I picked for the February yarn would also work with this one.

I’m really enjoying this club. I like the surprise (well, semi-surprise as I often sneak a peek at the spoiler thread in the Waterloo Wools Ravelry Group!) each month of getting a yarn in colours I wouldn’t necessarily choose myself and the ability to pay monthly, which is probably an incitement for me to stay a member for longer. And just getting squishy parcels every four weeks, which always magically manage to arrive at exactly the right time – for example, when I have a grumpy baby or it’s raining – and I am suitably cheered. My only regret is that I am so slow at getting projects finished right now, and I can’t knit the yarns up fast enough!

The May 2010 instalment of the Waterloo Wools Sock Yarn Club is named “Fisherman’s Bastion”. I love this colourway, even though I know the yarn is headed straight onto Mr B’s feet (with a brief detour via my ball winder and needles). It’s so manly, I can feel the testosterone oozing from the fibres.

This is the Waterloo Wools Sock Club February 2010 yarn, “Cave Diving”. Yes, you read that correctly, the FEBRUARY yarn. Nearly three months after it was posted, it turned up on Saturday (except I wasn’t in so it went to the sorting office where it stayed til Tuesday because of the bank holiday ). Sadly, the envelope wasn’t covered in franking marks where it had travelled around the world before it arrived at its destination, but I like to think that it saw something of Canada and the US before it took the plane to get to me.

The colourway is probably close to what I’d choose for myself for a yarn that wasn’t purple, so not really stepping out of my safety zone, but it’s gorgeous. I love the mix of earthy browns and greens. The base is 100% wool, so this is going nowhere near any feet but will be a simple-ish shawl, possibly Wandering the Moor to appeal to my Bronte obsession, Aestlight, which seems to work well with variegated yarn, or the snappily titled Shoulder Shawl in Cherry Leaf Pattern from Victorian Lace Today.

When I got back from my travels, a squishy parcel was awaiting me: the April instalment of the Waterloo Wools sock yarn club. The colourway is called “Magic Carpet” and is a very cheery blend of yellows, blues, pinks and a bit of orange. Definitely for socks that need showing off! Though I may make something for Rose with it. For now it’ll just be squeezed occasionally until the perfect pattern comes to me.

The club is open for signups again for anyone else who wants to join. It’s really convenient, too. You pay monthly and can choose when to quit at any time, so don’t need to commit to several months’ worth of yarn. I love this, though it’s a sure-fire way of me accumulating stash..!

I have always resisted joining a yarn club of any sort. I felt that I wanted to choose the colours of the yarn I bought and didn’t want a surprise which resulted in me having yarn I didn’t want to use. Plus, it was usually an big investment of money all in one go for said surprise and I just didn’t feel a huge desire to join in. So I sat in my non-sock yarn club corner and played with my skeins of purple sock yarn.

And then a couple of things happened. There was Rose’s Infamous January Growth Spurt which coincided with reading on Lindsey’s blog that she was opening sign-ups for the Waterloo Wools sock yarn club and payments were monthly. I considered it for a brief moment and figured that a) I was in need of some serious cheering up and b) a person can have too much purple sock yarn – and joined.

However, thanks to the crappy postal service, the February instalment has yet to arrive, if it hasn’t already been pilfered by a sock knitting postie, so my first yarn is the March colourway, which arrived this morning.

This colourway is called “Paris Nights” and is inspired by a photo of the Eiffel Tower at dusk, and is just lovely. Completely not what I would ever choose off my own back, but I still really like it and the yarn itself is wonderfully sproingy. And as it’s a 20% nylon sock yarn, it’s already earmarked as being a pair of making-up-for-felting-the-other-socks-socks for Mr B.

* * * * *

I also realise how much I am off the radar when only today I discover that Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting is being republished this year. This is momentous news: even Mr B understands the great importance of this event as he helped me try to find a library copy of this book last year to no avail – apparently there are three or four copies in libraries throughout the country but they can’t be inter-library loaned, probably because they have to be kept under lock and key for fear of obsessive knitters pilfering them. Me, I just wanted to knit St Brigid. But now it’ll be an early Christmas present and there was happy dancing aplenty. Here’s to Tudor Roses for 2011.

One of the many things I love about the huge number of knitting blogs I read is that there is always new yarn to discover. And when I’m in the market for the perfect yarn for a design, my radar is going beep-beep-beep at the merest sniff of something fibre-related.

It was because of this that when Rubbishknitter linked to Skeins I was off ogling yarn like a madwoman. I’d been looking for a while for a yarn I’d had in my head. Something DK weight in a leafy sort of green. And voila!

This is their DK Shetland in Moss Cottage, which is soft and squishy and I can’t wait to start knitting with it.

Especially when it comes to manly socks. When I read on Rubbishknitter’s blog that Kemp’s had Regia sock yarn reduced to £1.20 a ball, I snapped up enough for a couple of pairs. This should keep me going for manly sock knitting for the next year, based on my current production rate.

The multicoloured yarn is self-striping, so will be nice mindless sock knitting for a bit. The other yarn, however, will need a pattern of some sort and I’m hoping inspiration will strike…

Five months late, but I finally spent my birthday yarn gift certificate at Stash today.

It’s been a very non-knitting sort of week due to the evil heat. I’ve spent most days in very little clothing with an electric fan wafting over me in an attempt to cool me down. So my Wimbledon knitting hasn’t progressed much further than the photos from last week. Fortunately, today was better and trekking into town wasn’t that bad and hopefully I can pick up the needles again now the temperature has dropped below 30 degrees, especially as I have new goodies!

I bought five squishy balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK in a lovely rich cranberry red colour which is earmarked for a Pea Pod Baby Sweater (Ravelry link). I also bought a Dale of Norway baby pattern book for some steeking fun . You can see all the patterns in the book here. There are hats with ears, so it was kind of calling out to me!

I do maintain that I am trying to use only stash yarn at the moment to clear out some of the oddments that I have which are just right for baby-size knits. It makes good sense to save my yarn money for more important stuff like nappies and other useful baby paraphernalia, and I’d also like to be able to shut the lids on the plastic boxes which hold my stash… It’s not an ideal scheme: I still choose patterns according to what I want to knit rather than necessarily choosing them according to the yarn have in my stash, which means that I have bought the odd ball of yarn recently. But sometimes something that I did months ago will also cause my stash to increase…

Back in early February, I pre-ordered two skeins of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi from The Woolly Workshop. Not surprisingly, I’d half-forgotten about it over the following months but then it arrived on my doormat and I am smitten.

I chose the Neptune Rainbow colourway as I plan to use it for manly socks for Mr B’s spoilt feet. He approves of the colours, too, which means I can’t use that as a reason to knit socks for me instead, sadly. It’s a gorgeous blend of blues, greens and purples which are a lot brighter than the photo on the Crystal Palace website, and he so wouldn’t have chosen it for his socks until I started knitting them!

The yarn has a 20% nylon content which should mean it wears well and it feels wonderfully soft and is named after an actual cat which is just silly and I love it. It does seem to be slightly unevenly spun, but I like that. I know there are a lot of comments on Ravelry about it being prone to knots and splitty, but hopefully this being a new batch will mean my yarn is unaffected.

Once the Having Hope socks are done, these are the next manly socks in line. Though they’d make wonderful Wimbledon knitting in plain stocking stitch, which might mean a bit of queue jumping!

It feels like AGES since I bought some yarn. I think it was probably back in January, when I bought the New Lanark DK for my Deep V Argyle Vest. I still have the gift certificate for Stash which I got for my birthday and I must go and spend it!

Since deciding to wait and see what colour bump I was having before I started the Cabled Raglan Sweater, I’ve been itching to cast on for a larger baby project. I briefly considered knitting a shawl, and got as far as casting on before I realised that I really wasn’t going to use it and it was a big undertaking to then be put away in a drawer for evermore. Plus my grandma has my baby blanket needs covered already (knitting it in green so it’s nice and unisex!) so I went back to looking at cardigans.

Browsing the baby cardigans on Ravelry, I found so many cute versions of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Modular Tomten Jacket that I was won over. I have three versions of the actual pattern, though it apparently appears in about seven different places. I have a reproduction of the original newsletter pattern in The Opinionated Knitter, an updated version in Knitting without Tears and yet another version in Knitting Workshop. The pattern in TOK has the advantage of including notes by Meg Swansen. So the three combined are pretty much the “definitive” jacket!

The beauty of this jacket is that just using a different weight yarn and needles makes it come out to fit different people without changing stitch counts. In KWOT, EZ suggests using baby yarn for a newborn size, and looking through the finished ones, fingering/4ply seemed the way to go. I knew I wanted to knit one using a variegated yarn as the garter stitch is quite plain, and eventually after much umming and ahhing, I chose some yarn!

Kauni Effektgarn in the Rainbow (EQ) colourway. The swatch shows the colour variegation better than the photo of the actual ball; all the greens and blues are hidden inside. I got a whopping 160g ball, which should be plenty. I now need to find a nice coordinating yarn for the i-cord edging. Still debating whether to add buttons or a zip. Zips don’t scare me, but it’s such a hassle getting one as my local department store only stocks dress (closed end) zips – lovely range of colours and lengths, but all totally useless!

Either way, I won’t have to worry about that for a while. I’m just really looking forward to starting my first non-hat or sock baby knitting.

I’m the first person to admit that I am a bit of a fibre snob, but with the disadvantage of not wanting to spend money. The sweater quantities of yarn that I have are sale or eBay purchases or birthday presents. I’m not fussed about brand names or stuff like that; just that the yarn is lovely and has known the backside of a sheep or alpaca or other furry animal.

So I had some festive money left over from buying the New Lanark yarn and with a few projects in mind that used larger quantities of DK yarn than I had stashed, I started looking around just to see what was available. Which lead me to find Melandra Pure Wool DK from Woolshopdirect.

This is handwash only 100% wool. It’s considerably softer than the New Lanark yarn and after washing a swatch, it produced a lovely, even fabric. I’d say it was similar to King Cole Anti Tickle Merino or Stylecraft Pure Wool DK, except that they’re both superwash. Unfortunately, there’s no meterage given on the ball band, so I took the precaution of buying more than I’d need so there’s no danger of me running out. And how much is this yarn? £1.49 for 100g.

*waits for everyone to pick themselves off the floor*

So as I’d swatched, I figured I might as well cast on for something…

Can you tell what it is yet?

Although a vast proportion of my family generally ignore my obsession interest in yarn, sometimes they surprise me. I went to visit my grandma today, and was finally able to hand over her Christmas present of the Beth scarf (which she loved). While I was there, she gave me a bag of yarn which she had found at her local charity shop. Once upon a time she used to churn out sweaters for my little sister and me when we were both much younger, but now she sticks to knitting blankets for the local cat shelter, which means she scours the charity shops for the squeakiest acrylics she can find. But this yarn was too good for the cats so I got it.

Both yarns are so old that the weight is in ounces. Googling them has yielded nothing, which is unsurprising. The Hayfield Babykin is a very fine yarn, probably almong the lines of Patons Fairytale Dreamtime 2ply, though there’s no meterage (or yardage) given on the ball band. I’m guessing that I have a total of approximately 500 metres, which should be enough for a small shawl or scarf.

The other yarn, which is equally as enigmatic (or possibly more so, as I have at least heard of Hayfield), is marked as double knitting, though in reality, it’s more like a fingering/4ply yarn. It’s tweedy and rustic-looking and I think would make lovely mittens used with a dark blue yarn. Again, there’s no meterage on the ball bands, so it’s all guesswork, but there’s easily enough there for a couple of pairs of mitts.

I imagine these yarns were part of an elderly knitter’s stash and maybe like all of us do at some time, she bought the yarn because it was pretty and then put it away, never to be used. Hopefully I can do something with it at last.

Destined for something lacy… all will be revealed!

I did a Google image search for “winter warmers” and this was on the first page. I would LOVE to have a big fire like that right now. *shivers*

Anyway, there is a UK winter warmers swap starting shortly on the UK Swap blog. Signups close on 30th November, so there’s still time to join. I’m looking forward to taking part as the last swap I did was Sockapalooza 4, which is about 18 months ago now! I love all the cloak and dagger stuff with secret emails and cryptic messages. I am a very good stalker, which should probably worry me..!

I am trying to find a way to write this post without breaking my self-imposed rule about no festive knitting til November. But it seems ages since I had some yarn pr0n to share, so bum to that!

I’d been thinking what to make my Grandma for Christmas. She loves the Bertie scarf I made her a couple of Christmases ago, so I thought another snuggly scarf would be perfect. I have a few suitable patterns in my queue, and I was almost going to knit her a Lily of the Valley Estonian Lace Scarf but then Diane published her Beth pattern and like the fickle person I am, it was a case of must! knit! that! scarf! now!

I could have used some stash yarn, of course. But I wanted something soft and slightly fuzzy in a solid, Grandma-suitable colour. As I was sure nothing in my stash would do, I bought this:

Two balls of Angora 50 in sage green from The Little Knitting Company. It’s 50% angora, 30% wool and 20% nylon. The yarn is perfect as it has the softness and slight fuzz from the angora, but is a bit more substantial than pure angora yarns. The colour is nicely muted, too. Not that someone over eighty *can’t* wear shocking pink and luminous green, but I think my grandma is not the sort of person that *would* wear those colours. And the best part? It cost a measly £1.95 per 115m ball. No, the even better part was that the service from TLKC was brilliant. I ordered the yarn yesterday, got a phone call from Ruth in the afternoon to apologise that she had missed the post for it to be sent Recorded and did I want it just sent regular first class, which I said was fine so she refunded the difference!

Now all I have to do is knit it..! Can anyone tell me how to make a 36 hour day?

Diane’s right, of course. There’s been far too much secret knitting going on here of late. And as it’s not just an odd pair of socks, it takes longer to complete, or even longer if I have a bloggable project on the go at the same time.

But I have done other things other than sit with my secret projects and ignoring my blog. A while ago now, Diane posted details of her oven dyeing technique and as it seemed fairly idiot proof, I had a go.

Not having proper dyes available to me, I used Sugarflair food colouring pastes, of which I have plenty. Mainly in garish colours, mind, but I selected Dark Brown and Ice Blue for a relatively harmless and, hopefully, manly combination.

I’m actually very happy with how it turned out. The proof will be in the knitting of course, but it was fun to do and I’m tempted to try with some “proper” dyes next time!

I was going to post that I haven’t bought any yarn this year because people keep giving it to me, but then I realised that wasn’t quite true, seeing as I had bought the yarn for Mr B’s boring socks and then the yarn for the Catherine Socks. So maybe I’ll rephrase that and say that I haven’t bought any yarn for a project all for ME ME ME! Until now, that is.

Today I received a squishy parcel of Wild Fire Fibres Superwash Blue Faced Leicester in “Blueberry Muffin”. Vikki even enclosed a tiny box (the sort of size that is perfect for a mouse to keep their best hat in) containing some stitchmarkers.

The yarn is gorgeous. The purpleness drew me to it in the first place, and I have never tried Blue Faced Leicester for socks before, so clearly it was a matter of doing important yarn research that I buy it.

And in one of those lovely coincidental happenings that must happen because the knitting gods are smiling at me and saying “buy yarn because you’ll need it!”, while I was waiting for it to arrive, lovely if spinning wheel obsessed Kai has published her first ever pattern, Lotus Lace Socks!

The pattern is just perfect for my new yarn. They look lovely in purple, and the lace isn’t going to be overpowered by the yarn variegation. I can’t wait to cast on as soon as I possibly can!

So other than eating muffins yesterday, I also got to fondle yarn.

Diane brought me a gift from her trip to Australia: a skein of Touch Yarns “Exclusive”, a kid mohair/merino blend yarn. It’s like having a little purple curly pet and will make the snuggliest scarf imaginable next winter.

…a pig flying overhead, and a confirmed sighting of the Loch Ness monster. All things I expect to happen today, because this parcel was delivered:

My Rowan International membership gift! I renewed my membership in July last year. A whole nine months ago. I had given up pretty much ever receiving the gift as I was holding out for the purple colourway and it was never in stock. Clearly I’m not alone in my purple obsession. But to give Rowan their due, it arrived!

I don’t intend knitting either the waistcoat or shawl patterns that came with the yarn as the stitch pattern doesn’t appeal to me. But it’s good to know that you can get a shawl from 4 balls of yarn and I might do something lacy of my own instead.

Now off to hunt four leaf clovers and see if that rainbow has a pot of gold at the end of it..!