Agyness - A Kit with Justyna Lorkowska

And starting with possibly the cutest collaboration EVER!

Lete and I teamed up way back in the Spring to put together a kit called Agyness.

This fingering weight raglan pullover is very easy to make even for adventurous beginners. 
Clean I-cord edges give it a polished look, while the striped sleeve adds a little bit of spice :-)

image (c) Justyna Lorkowska

image (c) Justyna Lorkowska

This kit contains King of the Jungle 100% Merino & the pattern as a digital download:

2 x 100 grams in Main Colour (790 yards) 

Options: 
Shapes in the Clouds (grey)
Moonlight (light blue-grey)
Remedy (grey leaning blue-green)
Constellations (dark green leaning BLUE)
Brighton Beach (Speckled cream-brown)


6 x 5 grams* in ‘rainbow’ colours 
1 x 25gms* Constellations 

To make the three largest sizes (6-10 years) you’ll need to purchase a 3rd skein in the main colour.

Kits are priced at £42 + postage, extra skeins are £15 each and will go in the shop on Saturday 26th July at 7pm BST.

These kits will be posted in the third week of August.

Justyna says about the pattern: 

Little girls love to brawl with their older siblings. Okay, maybe not all little girls, but my baby sure does. She walks briskly after her older brother and plays with blocks and cars. However, this does not mean that her girly spirit disappears. Quite the contrary! She just needs a light and comfortable jumper to keep up with her brother. A sweater just like Agyness.

Oh! A Belly Cardi!

My daughter is a worthwhile recipient of knitwear. She gushes. She wears her knitted garments with pride. She takes them off to eat. She tells everyone 'My mummy made this for me'.

I didn't make this gorgeous sweater though, Karen did. The pattern, Bella, is now available on ravelry, and Karen was one of my patient testers. She made the three years size and it fits Noo with plenty of growing room. The yarn is Karen's own hand-spun which she sells (along with the handmade buttons!) at GiftofGraceHandspun








When Noo talks about this cardi she says 'This is my Belly cardi. It's not from the Postman, it's from Karen'.

I'll say 'This is the cardigan she mastered skipping in'. Because that's what I'll remember.

Thank you so much Karen, from me and Noo, we feel very special!

Thoughts on Knitted Gifts

With Christmas around the corner there's been a lot of talk about gift knitting. If, like me, you know you're going to knit some gifts, most of which will never get finished, in fact most will be started far too late to be finished in time for the holidays, then there's really only two rules worth making:

1) DON'T tell anyone they will be getting a knitted gift.

2) Have a back up plan (which you can always keep, save for later or give to someone else if you miraculously finish the knitted gift).

Following these two rules will ensure that you don't need to go through the embarrassment of wrapping a half finished hat and, MOST IMPORTANTLY you can enjoy your gift knitting, indulge your startitis, justify those Christmas shopping personal yarn purchases (come on, it's not just me, surely?) and to help get you started early, I'm offering a discount code for all my individual patterns from now until the end of November.

Enter the coupon knitgiftsnow to get a 25% discount on any single pattern (e-books not included)

If you're discerning about who you knit for and what you knit them, your recipient might happily wear their knitted gift everyday, like my friend below wears his new fingerless mitts: 

If I can get my act together, I'll put together a free pattern for these mitts, so you can make them for your friends too!

A Hereditary Disease

I look at my kids, and I want them to inherit a healthy world, that's all.

It easy not to think about it, because it's scary, but it's worth a little thought...

How to Justify Not Writing a Pattern

Make an adult version, ahem, because you need to, to um, do the maths ;)

For the main colour I used my own hand dyed BFL DK in the colourway 'Shapes in the Clouds'. This yarn feels really sturdy and is warm and soft, I think it's the perfect sweater yarn.  

The contrasting yarn is Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted in colourway 'Early Light'. 

This sweater is the perfect length. originally, I worked the same cable detail from the yoke for the hem of the body, but found that it didn't sit right, so I ripped back and worked a plain garter stitch band instead, and now it's perfect.

Notice that the sleeve cuffs have the cable detail too...

I added short rows between the cabled sections for a higher neck back. I was worried it would be very noticeable, but it worked well, and makes for a good fit.

So now I really need to write up this pattern and the original 'Bella', which will come in child sizes up to 10 years. I'll just put the kettle on first...

A Day of Epic Embarrassment

So this week I took a huge number of parcels to the post office. As many as I could carry in the 3 large reusable bags I keep for just this purpose. I lugged them happily up the hill, with the usual relief (phew, glad that's done), satisfaction (a job well done) and excitement (I can't wait for them to get their yarn!!) Emma and I had spent the best part of the day before carefully packing up Artichaut kits and update orders. I love packing kits with Emma, because often she'll be seeing the yarn for the first time and will say gratifying things like 'Ooh, it'll be gorgeous in that colour'. And I get excited all over again. Usually our packing involves her doing all the oragnising, making lists of who gets what and which orders need to be combined and who needs a postage refund, and me, still reskeining yarn that's only just dry, forgetting to make the tea and nattering incessantly (because only my hands are busy) while she tries to concentrate. If you buy yarn from the shop, it's thanks to Emma that anything gets done with a modicum of order and efficiency, so send her a happy thought while you open your parcel.

Anyway, I get to the post office - and there's no queue!! Whoop! - at least until lovely Wendy has processed  my 2 dozen or so parcels and announced the large sum of money to pay while I'm fumbling in my purse for my bank card which I HAVE LEFT AT HOME because I removed ALL MY CARDS to purchase a new electric hob (for dyeing sweater quantities, yay). Wendy kindly told me to go home and get my card and come back when the post office reopened at 2pm to pay for the already processed packages. Mortified. So I  went to work to drop off my stuff, then walked back home to pick up my cards only to find the weekly food shop that I was expecting to be delivered that evening had been only ten minutes earlier, because I had got the time wrong. So I had to call the supermarket (who were less accommodating than the post office) to apologise and arrange a redelivery for that evening so that my family could eat that day (while I would still be at work).

It was one of those days that was clearly going downhill, and was saved by the fact that no-one treated my like the moron I felt like. And if I hadn't had to go home to pick up my cards I wouldn't have been able to reorganise the food shop delivery and I would have had a very hungry family that evening...

Here's my own Artichaut in Alpaca Silk Sport in Iris:

Wuthering Heights

I'm finally reading Wuthering Heights. So what? Well, I guess I thought I should, I mean, it's attested to be one of the most original pieces of literature ever written. And it was written in Haworth ~ which (insert drum-roll here) is the name of my personal favourite of my colourways. I'd rather read Jane Eyre, but I don't have it to hand...


This post is a little late. That's because I really wanted to record a little story to tell you about my recent trip to Haworth when I announced the winner of the colourway competition, but I just haven't had time, and I didn't want to leave you hanging any longer ;-)


So from all the people who guessed Haworth in their comment on the last blog post I picked two random winners, and they are:


pebbledash and Octonat

Please contact me at lionessarts@gmail.com with your favourite colourway and yarn base and your address and I'll post your lovely prize next week!

Thanks to everyone who left a comment and for all the birthday wishes...

Hopefully sometime soon I'll post that story on the blog...


Here's a picture of Haworth on MCN DK:

Colourway Competition!

The 29th April 2012 will be the Lioness Arts Etsy Shop's first birthday and I'm planning some party games

To win a skein in your favourite colourway leave a comment blelow with the answer to the following question:

What is my favourite of all my colourways so far?


Here is the sold section of the Etsy shop if you need inspiration ;-)
All correct answers will be put tinto the random number generator and 2 winners will be announced on April 29th :)

We Love to Reskein: Part 2

Here are some of the sweet little mini skeins I made up with my dinky sample sized niddy noddy:

I just love them!

We Love to Reskein

I just bought a new toy, um, I mean tool ;-)

The Ashford Skeiner:

This really is a great piece of kit! As I reskein all the yarn that goes in the shop, it is important to have tools that make work a pleasure. 

I also bought a Sampler Size Niddy Noddy as I'll be putting together lots of sweet mini skeins for the Rainbow Gathering Stripes kits this week:

(By the way there'll be more kits in the shops once I've posted out the current kits)

These were shipped promptly from Forest Fibres via Amazon.co.uk, and although currently unavailable from Amazon it seems they can also be purchased through Forest Fibres directly or Handspinner.co.uk

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