I’m so excited by the wonderful goodies from this month’s sponsors- perfect for summer!
Name: Biscotte Yarns
Where You Can Follow Them: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google +
What They Are All About: Biscotte Yarns specializes in self-striping yarns with lots of fun inspiration, but they have all sorts of goodies on offer- fabrics, project bags and kits, patterns, and tonal single ply yarns, as well as a mystery club that you can purchase by individual months, instead of just a whole year- much more affordable. Also, they are looking for product reviews- enter here to win some beautiful free yarn!
A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: This beautiful poolside colourway ‘Sur la Plage’ is perfect for some summer sock knitting, with easy self striping doing all the work for you. If you are a cat love like me, then you need this adorable tote that says “Knit 1, Purr 2”. I love it! And you guys know how much I love palettes- this is the ‘Watermelon’ colourway, all fingering weight.
Name: Madbird
Where You Can Follow Them: Facebook, Instagram
What They are all about: Alecia makes wonderful project bags, project clutches, totes, spindle bags, needle and hook rolls (even for dpns and interchangeables), and zip pouches. With a wide variety of fabrics, you’re sure to find the right size you need in a print you love. If you haven’t tried one of their bags, you are missing out- every detail is perfection and you will have this bag forever. I recommend following them on Facebook to get the updates on new items as well as the flash sales they sometimes have- like right now they have their summer sale going on until June 19th! While you can’t use two coupon codes at the same time, if you miss the sale, you can still get 10% off everything with the code KNITTEDBLISS.
A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: This adorable (and sturdy!) nighttime forest print project bag is reversible, with a great wood grain fabric on the inside. This large project bag with a great seahorse print (gotta love summer project bags!) has a zip close and an interior yarn guide that snaps shut, so the yarn feeds through smoothly but you can switch out the projects easily. If you have an interchangeable needle set, there’s no need to keep it in the blah plastic that it came in. This perfect needle roll has 16 pockets, sized to fit needles and cables, as well as a zippered pouch in the side seam for notions.
Name: Artesano
Where You Can Follow Them: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Ravelry, Pinterest
What They Are All About: Jennifer and Tom run Artesano, which specializes in alpaca, merino, and silk blends of varying weights, as well as a variety of needles, and links to free patterns. UK and European readers, I think you’ll be excited about this- Artesano is based in the UK! And my fellow North Americans, don’t rule it out because it’s the UK- shipping is about $8.50 US for orders under $65. For my fellow Canadians, that’s often way better than shipping from the US! If you sign up for the emails, you get a coupon for 20% off, too.
A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: This lovely 100% alpaca laceweight in ‘Duck Egg’ would be a stunning shawl for summer, don’t you think? Then there’s the 70% alpaca and 30% silk blend fingering weight (4-ply, as they call it in the UK) in ‘Foxglove‘, which would be wonderful for a knitted tank top or tee. Now, I’m bet you are wondering about those needles up there. That’s an asymmetrical circular needle, available in sizes from 2 mm – 6mm. The asymmetrical needles are designed to help prevent laddering (which I have a big problem with), and the join swivels, for greater ease in knitting.
Name: Spirit Trail Fiber Works
Where You Can Follow Them: Ravelry, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, blog
What She is All About: Jennifer has a variety of her hand dyed yarns in a variety of weights and fibers, as well as beautiful (and some very rare breed!) roving and spinning fibers. She produces her colours in small batches with artisanal dye techniques, and really shines at tonals which have incredible depth.
A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: Rich, vibrant greens are in this ‘Malachite’ inspired skein of 75% superwash merino, 15% cashmere and 10% bombyx silk DK weight. Then there is this beautiful variegated blend of blues, grey, and gold in ‘Solace’, a fingering weight 75% Superwash Merino, 15% Cashmere, 10% Silk. The complexity of ‘Afterglow’ is full of peachy reds, burnt orange, and bright carnelian; and is a 100% superwash bluefaced leicester light fingering weight.
Name: The Blue Brick
Where You Can Follow Them: Blog, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Ravelry, Flickr, and Crawftgawker
What She is All About: Shireen is a professional photographer, taking her yarn inspiration straight from the images she captures. These yarns are all hand-dyed in small batches by Shireen and her husband Tito on a variety of bases and weights (the Neutrals and Ombres are all available on a wide variety of options), based on her photographic inspiration (you can read more about the yarn here). Each skein is sent out with a copy of the photo that inspired it- a really beautiful detail that makes me marvel even more at how she can dye the yarn to so closely resemble the photos! Shireen also designs beautiful patterns, as well.
A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: The Longbeach pattern is a perfect summer shawl and works beautifully with any of the ombre skeins. Aurora is a stunning Ombre with long run gradients that are perfect for shawls, sweaters, or cowls- basically anything on the bigger side so that you can full appreciate the colour shifts. Would this be a stunning knitted tee? Powder is one of the wonderful neutrals available– you never realize how well a good neutral light blue goes with such a wide variety of colours, but it pairs beautifully with most of the ombres.
I made a decision to choose products or yarns that are all DK weight or lighter, since i know most of us want to lighten our knitting up a bit in the warmer weather. Did you see anything that caught your eye? Anything that you suddenly have to have?
