Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Not so Mellow Yellow


Vintage Sweetcorn is the same hue & looks amazing on little girls and boys
 Yellow is a quirky colour in the yarn trade.  It's a colour that will never break sales records, and yet we still have yellows in our colour stories.  Why?  Well, Yellow makes other colours in a range 'pop'.  It is also a great contrast for colour work & every decade or two it crops up as a fashion 'must have' colour.

Double Strand Perendale Papaya & knit this simple Garter stitch jumper on 10mm needles
That's the case at the moment.  Starting with saffron & mustard styles of yellow a few seasons ago & now graduating to full on zingy citrus & buttercup hues - yellow is out, loud & proud.  And not just as accessories either - jumpers & jackets in the sunny shade are spicing up Winter wardrobes in the this hemisphere.

Urban Papaya would help achieve this look
If you are wanting to brighten up your Winter knitting check out the selection of yellow's we have.  From the vibrant Papaya in Urban, Perendale or Whisper, to the rich Gold in merino Soft 4ply or the subtle Vintage Sweetcorn. I am sure we will have a Yellow to butter you up!
Yellow is a great way to brighten up geometric prints.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Scrap Happy


We've all got them.  You know, those bags of little bits of yarn  The part balls, the left overs from projects, but not quite enough to do something useful on their own.  The Scraps Bag.  Don't feel bad, I have more than one & in our Skeinz Shop we also have the Thread waste bin, our very own version of the scraps bag.

Last Years 'Rugby' Cushion - Knitted when watching All Blacks test matches
I thought I would share with you my favorite solution for all those extra wee bits.  I am on a quest at home to recover all my cushions from boring store bought to quirky fun hand knitted creations.  I reworked a pattern from Mason-Dixon knitting, abstracting the traditional quilters Log Cabin into a knitted format.

Mix it up - it doesn't have to be logs
The advantages are:  No sewing other than the outside seams, you can just keep stacking your 'logs' up until you get the right size to custom fit your cushions & most importantly, it uses up all those scraps of yarn.  Really there are no rules with this, so let your imagination go wild - you can work 'logs', stripes, blocks - get scrapping now!
My abstract version finished this week.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Black Sheep


I watched this clip last week of Gin Wigmore's appearance on the Ellen show & like any proud Kiwi I thought I should brag about it.  For those of you who aren't in Australasia, Gin pretty big news down here, so it's great to see her spread her wings.  What you also may not know is that she knits!  Like many celeb's she uses down time of the road to pick the needles up & get knitting - read more here.
This MW DK 100% Wool is a steal at $2 a ball!

So that got be to thinking about all things Black.  We have a great selection of Black yarn in all sorts of weights & textures.  Whilst you see black everywhere in fashion pages, catwalks & on the streets, it's a colour that many hand knitters avoid. Crazy really especially as we have black 100% Wool  DK MW going for an unbelievable $2 on sale!  It's time to search out some patterns & start tapping into your inner darkness.
So I thought I would give a plug to going black - because as Gin says "Once you go black you never go back!"