Spring has been making an appearance this week so we’ve done our window to match. The ladies cardigan is knitted in Rowan Classic Cotton Jeans from the Coast pattern book. It’s from last year’s Rowan Classic books and our customers have knitted several different designs from that book which just goes to show how great the designs are. So often there is one pattern in a book that everyone knits and none of the others!

The little cardi is from the new Sublime Kid Mohair book, knitted in the gorgeous green and pink by Mary for Jess when she gets a bit bigger. Claudia has been coveting it so that is on my to do list now.

Lovely spring fabrics, some by Heather Bailey, and we now have the new Amy Butler tunic and dress patterns in stock.

Oh, and the much anticipated Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn has arrived! It is typically gorgeous Noro colours and typical Noro yarn, slightly slubby and irregular. We have tried it on a 2.25mm which has worked pretty well. The stripes are quite wide so we think it may suit being used for a patternedsock rather than a plain. Have a go with Jaywalkers! We are test knitting a great toe-up pattern for the Noro which will be in the free patterns soon if it works!

Keen Knitting Parlour visitors will have noticed that we now have a selection of fabrics and Amy Butler patterns available on the website. The fabrics are great for a variety of uses including dressmaking. I made a shirt from 2 of the co-ordinating Amy Butler fabrics and I just love it. Any normal dressmaking pattern can look so different with a bit of flair in the fabric choice and the use of more than 1 fabric can make a huge difference. We have the new Amy Butler garment patterns due in any day!

This month we have been to Stitches, the industry trade show and (you know what it’s like) the day before, I decided I needed a new knit. What can I knit in a day and a night? I picked a great pattern from the new Kim Hargreaves Heartfelt book which is knitted in Rowan Big Wool and takes only 5 balls for the sizes up to medium and 6 for the larger sizes. I did pretty well, it is knitted in 1 piece and I managed to get up the front and halfway down the back before I ran out of time. Luckily in the end it would have been far too hot to wear it anyway so I wasn’t too disappointed!

So here is the finished garment in the current window with my lovely Amy Butler shirt underneath!

Yes, it’s that time of year again! We have lots of goodies in the sale. Because our shop is quite small and we like to cram in as much as we can, inevitably some yarns have to bite the dust in favour of newer or nicer ones and so our sale yarns are usually a mix of all kinds of things that won’t necessarily be discontinuing or be on sale anywhere else. So have a look at our offers and bag yourself a bargain! The sale will run until it’s gone. Hopefully that will be by the end of January as we have all the new season yarns coming on Feb 1st. we already have the new Sirdar Eco-Wool which is probably one of the nicest Sirdar yarns ever. It will be on the website in the next week or so. Look out for our fabrics and Amy Butler patterns too which should be on there this week - Webmaster permitting.

Recent visitors to the shop may have seen us crocheting snowflakes. We entered the Christmas Window Competition and as the theme was ‘Winter Wonderland’ we decided to fill the window with a snowstorm. We started crocheting snowflakes as and when we had a spare few minutes and we had accumulated a small pile of them when we realised that actually to fill the window we would need around 200. So the heat was on and for the past 10 days we had a target of 20 a day between us which was more gruelling than it sounds!

So you could recreate this in your own home with our free snowflake pattern! It’s in the free patterns section. We used Sirdar Blur for ours.

We are also running a competition to guess the number of snowflakes in the window. We didn’t count them before we hung them so we won’t know the answer until after Christmas when we change the window. We are giving away a Kaffe Fassett sock kit to the person who guesses correctly or nearest. There are 3 ways to enter. Every customer who makes a purchase in the shop gets to make one guess, every website order gets one guess and anyone who leaves a comment on the blog can have one guess. Good luck!! All guesses must be in by Saturday 22nd December and the winner will be announced early January.

Here is our latest window, coinciding with a turn for colder weather, it is mainly scarves. Everything in the window is knitted with Mission Falls 1824 wool or cotton. Both are interchangeable and absolutely beautiful to knit with.

The shawl on the left is from the East & West book which will be on the website next week. It’s covered in cables and bobbles and has lovely twisted tassels all around. Thanks to Janet for knitting it for us!

The bag was knitted by Mary and is in the Recollection book. She has lined it with pretty fabric and it has great touches like the cute buttons on the ends of the straps.

The sripey cardi which you can just see on the right is from Wee Knits 3 and is knitted in the cotton by me! Even though the sizing only goes up to 2 years old in the Wee Knits books, they are quite generous and with a bit of extra length it does fit my almost 4 year old.

The scarves are dotted in all the other books and we all had a hand in those. each of them seems to have a great scarf pattern! Please as always e-mail or ring the shop for more info if there is anything in the window which takes your fancy!

The website now has some goodies for Christmas. We have lots of Lantern Moon accessories, new kits and some great knitting needles.

We have taken our sale yarn out of the window as we don’t have an awful lot left.

We have an RYC cabled cardigan from the Coast book, knitted in RYC Cotton Jeans. It has been very popular over the past couple of weeks, people really like the style and the yarn is gorgeous.

If you’re a fan of our free patterns, you may recognise the egg cosy! Any 4ply yarn will work for the pattern but it does look great with self-patterning yarn.

The tea cosy is also featured on the free patterns and we are doing a kit of this although it’s limited so won’t be on the website. Give us a call or e-mail if you’re after the kit, it’s £9.99.

You can find the tablecloth pattern in Tracy Ullman’s book, Knit 2 Together. A wonderful collection of garments and homewares.

In the next couple of weeks we will be updating with all the new Autumn/Winter stock. The Rowan collection is released on 1^st August and the Louisa Harding, Noro and Debbie Bliss is coming in bits and pieces. If you can’t wait to see it appear, please e-mail or call if you want to order anything.

Happy knitting!

It’s July already, it’s sale time! We have our window crammed with bargains at least 30% off our sale lines. Its mostly Debbie Bliss, Louisa Harding and Colinette which we’ve reduced. The garment in the window is a Colinette Giotto cardigan from the Femme Fatale book.Our new autumn/winter stock will start to come in at the beginning of August and we’ll try to get it on the website super quick!

This week in the window we have a gorgeous summer cardi in Sirdar Surfer.
It is a raglan pattern with a wide neck and 3/4 length sleeves.
It’s great to knit with and pretty quick. We haven’t got the pattern on our website,
but please e-mail if you want to knit it. Instead of a press stud fastener we
have used a Rowan kilt pin.

Pat has knitted a great hat from Tracey Ullman’s Knit 2 Together book.
Yes, I know it’s not woolly hat weather but it’s a nice small project for knitting
over the summer. It’s knitted in Noro Iro which is a typical Noro yarn which
self-stripes. You can just about do it with 1 ball but will go into a 2nd
to do the small band.

We’ve been trying out the new Clover felting needle on some bits of felting we
had lying around the shop. I had knitted and felted some Colinette Skye into a bag.
Just 2 squares for a front and back and then a long strap. It took 200g.
I’ve jazzed it up by cutting out a flower and some small hearts from a piece of
felted Noro Kureyon and using the felting tool and mat to attach it.
It looks pretty good and was a lot of fun to do.

We have reduced our back issues of Simply Knitting. The price for back issues
if ordered from Simply Knitting is £5.99 but we are offering them for £3.50.
Please e-mail if there is a specific issue you are looking for.