Well, as predicted, the camera played up something rotten, but photos were still taken, and the shop is now up to date, with all the new sock yarns!

NEW Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Plums

NEW Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Light Plums

Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Marmalade

NEW Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Candyfloss

Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Biscuit

Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Gold

NEW Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn: Iris

 I’m back!

Actually I didn’t go anywhere – I was here, quietly dyeing away, but I was being a bit *too* quiet on the blogging front, and so it seems right to say ‘I’m back!’

Tomorrow, (assuming the camera doesn’t die on me), I’m planning to update the shop with all the new sock yarns I’ve been working on. There is the return of some old favourites, as well as new colours, but I’ll sort out a proper post tomorrow, to show you what’s what.

As ever, I want to knit with them myself, but I have to remind myself that I can (usually) always dye more. 🙂

I am also planning to sort out space in the shop for doing custom orders – I’ve done a couple for people I know, and given I have the ability to dye about 900g or so of yarn in one go, it’s definately possible to dye enough for a garment-worth in one of the yarn weights I have in stock.

The image above is a custom order I did for Liz at Thomasina Knits,  (you can see a better, daylight photo of the yarn here). She is knitting a Tatami out of it, and having knit one already, I knew it worked well with a bit more colour variation that the usual OKY semi solid. A good excuse for some experimenting!

What she got was a mixture of dark and light versions of the same dye, which knitted up, is giving an amazing caramel zebra effect. (Keep an eye out on her blog for pictures that are sure to turn up soon. 😉

Both she and I are very pleased with how it has worked out.

Anyway what this means for you, is that I’m currently ironing out how the custom orders are going to work. Once I have everything sorted I’ll let you know. 🙂

There are lots of other things to tell you, (I always think I have nothing to say until I start writing), but given that I am planning to post with more regularity, I think I’ll save them for later.

However, unrelated to anything else I will mention Stephen Fry’s new Podcast, which I listen to while I was labeling up all the yarn.  I really think he’s a national treasure.

More Tomorrow… *coddles camera*

I have been meaning to post about the finished jumper for ages, but W wouldn’t stop wearing it so that i could block it, and then *I* wouldn’t stop wearing it so that i could block it (it is COLD here at the moment!)

And so it’s only in the last week that we went out for a walk in enough daylight to pretend we were shooting for Rowan. or something.

EZ Hybrid Jumper by Elizabeth Zimmermann (From Knitting Without Tears)
My Ravelry Post: here
Yarn: Garthenor organic jacob wool, black aran (Garthenor are great – all their yarn is organic, incredibly well priced, and the yarn arrived amazingly quickly. Plus I met lovely people who run it, at the London Stitch n Bitch, and… well, they are lovely. Buy some of their yarn! I definitely will again. 🙂
Needles: 6mm
Notes: This jumper took 9 days to complete. It is the first jumper I have knit for W, and amazingly it’s exactly what he wanted.  He wears it all the time, (and so do I, because – freakily – it also looks great on me. In fact I’m planning on knitting a dk version in a totally different yarn, for me, later on this year.)

Basically I’m very proud of it, a very happy with it. I might even knit another one in a different colour, even.

It is incredibly satisfying, watching the back stitches get gobbled up by the yoke. Incredibly satisfying.

You can tell that a) this jumper has yet to be blocked, and b) it has been worn ALOT given that is it starting to pill just a little bit on the front. This doesn’t worry me at all.

W looks like he’s in the middle of the countryside, doesn’t he? Yet he’s about 5 minutes from the center of town. Ah the joys of being surrounded by rivers and floodplain. (Proper joy – not sarcastic joy. It’s lovely, really. Especially when you don’t live on a bit that can flood. Which we don’t.)