A Look Back at the Yarn and Pattern Club

It has been a steep learning curve for me, this yarn and pattern club and it's been alot of fun! With January's subscriptions appearing in the shop in a few hours, and the last of the Autumn club parcels going in the post on Monday, I thought I'd do a little summary of the Autumn Club ~

It kicked off with a fabulous mystery pattern from Lisa Mutch of Northbound Knitting. I love Lisa's work, and I knew I could trust her to keep her design under wraps, although we were both dying to reveal it! The Canadian Postal strike meant she didn't receive her yarn in time to knit the sample in the mystery skein ~ Silky Sock in colourway 'Emma', so her sample of Deviate was knitted in a skein of Lioness Arts BFL Sock which she luckily had already stashed, phew! Below is my test knit, in Lioness Arts Symphony Sock in the Club colourway ~

At the end of August I gleefully mailed out 2 skeins of BFL Sock in colourways Heartache and Honey Moon, accompanied by the gorgeous Henslowe pattern by Beth Kling. Below is Beth's sample, in Heartache, and mine, in Honey Moon:

Its no secret that I'm a huge Veera Valimaki fan, and I loved knitting her Club pattern ~ Northanger Abbey. Her sample is in the repeatable colourway Picking Violets, but the Club colours are Keepsake and Forget Me Not, a variegated pink and a semi-solid blue on my 100% merino high twist base, King of the Jungle. By the way, Veera has a fab new website..

And the last Club yarn is King of the Jungle's soft and snuggly sister, Lioness Sock. A high twist heavy fingering like her 100% Merino counterpart, Lioness sock is 80% Merino 10% Nylon 10% Cashmere, and are accomanied by Micheline, a beautiful Stole / Scarf from Ariane Caron-Lacoste aka Falling Stitches

Thanks so much to Lisa, Beth, Veera and Ariane for joining me on this adventure, to everyone who tested the patterns and of course to everyone who signed up, there wouldn't be a club without you!

Little Rose

Here's a picture of my little rose Leonie, wearing her new tunic. The main colour I used is Old Rose on Viola merino fingering. I bought it several months ago from the Viola Etsy shop, and it's been waiting patiently for the perfect project. The yarn was lovely to work with. For the contrasting colour I used my very own lady dedlock on King of the Jungle 100% Merino, some of the yarn leftover from my Northanger Abbey hat test knit.

The pattern is now available on Ravelry, and in the Lioness Arts Etsy shop too

They Mess You Up, Your Mum And Dad...

So, I guess if your mum loves wool, and your dad loves books, this is how you spend your days ;)

KAL and Yarn Club Fun!

I'm so excited about the upcoming Lioness Arts Yarn Club! The club begins with a mystery skein and pattern and continues with beautiful yarn and patterns from Beth Kling, Veera Valimaki and Ariane Caron-Lacoste, finishing at the end of October.

I'm offering single skein membership as a prize in the Lioness Arts KAL. Use any Lioness Arts pattern or yarn and post a pic in the FO thread by 31st July for a chance to win!

So many colours!

I'm finding Spring so inspiring! The weather changes so suddenly and the world goes from bright greens, pinks and yellows to moody grey-blues in moments. And so does my dyepot! I know I've been a little manic lately between opening the Lioness Arts Etsy shop:

releasing the Leonie cardigan pattern:

and at the same time working on a huge project which will hopefully be revealed soon...

Noo Pattern - a hat

So just a quick post to say last week I released Noo, my new hat pattern. The samples I knit were in Skein Merino/cashmere - one of my favourite yarns at the moment, its so, so buttery soft. I gave the hat I made for myself to my mother though, as it suits her perfectly. Good job I'll be testing this lovely pattern by owlish soon...

I got the dyeing bug!

I really wanted to find out more about what happens to yarn between the animals and my needles and well, I thought I'd have some fun too... so I booked myself onto one of Alice Yu's Dye-I-Y workshops. One word - Brilliant. It was so much FUN. I learnt loads about yarn and dyeing, I met some really nice people, and I came home with some really beautiful yarn - that I dyed myself, under Alice's guidance and with her beautifully mixed colours. I bought this book - Hand Dyeing, which seems really clear and I feel pretty confident about having a go at home soon.

Here are some pics of the Socktopus Sokkusu Original I dyed myself at the workshop:

I wrote a pattern

Wow, what an adventure!
I learned so much from writing the pattern for this little child's cowl. Thanks so much to all the testers who gave their time. Now it's available to download on Ravelry here, and I love the idea of it keeping little people warm and cosy.

How to buy a camera

I'm not a photographer. I make things, mainly out of wool, sometimes out of fabric.

I was taking pictures of my beautiful things, and my pictures were, well, ugly. So I decided it was time to splash out. I read some reviews. But what I found was that people are terribly subjective. People love their cameras, and everybody has their favourite feature. I did find this guide really helped me to work out what I wanted, but I was still stumped. I knew what I wanted my pictures to look like, but I didn't know what features I needed to get there.

So I did something old fashioned in a very modern way. I logged onto Ravelry, that wonderful community of yarn lovers, and I found 13 people who took beautiful beautiful photos of themselves, their loved ones, their projects and their yarn, and I asked for help. I just asked them what sort of camera they used. I got much more. Every single complete stranger I emailed got back to me (most within 24 hours!), was happy to help, told me what make of camera they used, some gave links to the specs, others listed comparable cameras. Nearly everone had a few top tips on taking photos. It was great.

So I'm still not a camera expert, but I had the confidence to buy a camera, of course it helped that all the people I contacted (barring one) used either a Canon or a Nikon, or both! So my advice on buying a camera would be, find some photos you really like, and ask the person or people who took them for advice!

In the end by the way I opted for a Canon G12 and I'm very very happy with it. I haven't worked out all the bits and bobs and gadgets yet. But here's a photo I took:

The yarn in the photo is organic merino fingering by theuncommonthread