I hope we all got a bit of distance from our holiday spending, and are thinking of maybe a treat for yourselves… or maybe your birthday is coming up and you’ll need to drop some hints to loved ones about what you’d like, right? That’s what I thought! Here are some inspiring ideas to get you going…

Name: Bijou Basin Ranch 

What They Are All About: Carl and Eileen have a family-run Yak ranch in Colorado. They sell amazing yak fiber and yarns that are both 100% yak and blended with other fibers (like bamboo or merino) to give the yarn strength and variety. And if you haven’t tried yak fiber before, you are missing out- it’s very soft and very good for those that have wool allergies. And if you want free shipping (who doesn’t want free shipping?!) Use the coupon code “KNITBLISS” at checkout!

A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: Of course I’m going to point out that my most recent design was knit with Xanadu Cashmere yarn, so I was really excited when they decided to put some kits together! Each kit comes with a tote bag, the printed pattern, stitch markers, yarn in your choice of colours, and some allure wash for knits.  I love the Lhasa Wilderness Yak/Bamboo blend of fingering weight in this beautiful Lohengrin colourway- it would would a stunning fingering weight shawl, I think. And then there is this exclusive Miss Babs custom colourway is ‘Bistro’, which is on Bijou Basin Ranch’s Tibetan Dream fingering weight base, which is perfect for socks with 85% Tibetan yak and 15% nylon. Sock knitters, you know- you need that nylon for durability!

Name: Knittin’ Little 

What They Are All About: Andrea Sanchez is the brains behind Knittin’ Little, which features adorable knits for kids. The Winter 2015 collection has 9 patterns that feature an assortment of garments and accessories, most of which are easily made for either boys or girls. If you like knitting for kids, it’s worth checking out the site- they also have a book club that features kids books with knitting themes, and the blog often features round ups like this free kids sock pattern round up.

 A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: I love this sweet little cardigan featuring adorable pockets and a sweet twisted stitch design on the fronts that looks like a trellis. It’s called Growing Up Twisted (an odd pattern name), and the sizes run from 6 months to 12 years. The Hasu Hat is in sizes from baby to a teen (and I bet it’s pretty easy to add in some stitch repeats to make it adult sized) and is so awesome I’d wear it myself. I love how it looks in both solid and variegated yarns.  The Mountaintop Pullover would be great for boys or girls, depending on the colours you choose for the contrast, and the pattern has sizes from 2-12 years old.

Name: Ancient Arts Fibre Crafts

What They Are All About: The team at AAFC dye a huge array of both tonal and variegated colourways available in a wide choice of yarn bases (most from chunky to laceweight, plus a variety of fiber bases within each weight- like merino, silk, linen, etc.), specializing in the Meow Collection and Woof Collection, which are colourways inspired by cat and dog breeds and a portion of the sales are donated to Best Friends Animal Society to help animals in need. If you are a pet lover, I bet there is a colourway that matches your furry friend!

A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: Weimaraner is a perfectly warm, beige-y grey that I love- this would be a great neutral colourway to knit a garment that you you want to wear with everything. Inspired is a beautiful, bright yarn that reminds me of Mondrian paintings and is available in a whole range of bases and weights. If you are curious to see how a colourway like this knits up, check out this stole. Vivacious is a stunning colour that is universally flattering- try it out and you’ll see what I mean.

Name: Biscotte Yarns

What They Are All About: Biscotte Yarns specialize 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! And a bonus to my fellow Canadians- not buying yarn because the exchange rate is dismal? Biscotte Yarns is offering 20% to help offset the exchange rate, using the code cadpal20.

A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right:  I love the paintbox sock yarn kit (Strawberry Shortcake is this colour palette) which comes with 5 gradient skeins that combined have over a thousand yards included.  This would be perfect for a striped shawl pattern (like this). I am smitten with this single ply Aran weight merino and silk blend in ‘Amazing Green‘- green is my favourite colour! And because Biscotte Yarn does self striping yarns so well, how about this pretty skein in the Rond Rond Macaron colourway?

Name: Fuzzy Mitten 

What She is All About: Barbara designs the most adorable knitted soft toys, and has patterns for all sorts of clothing for them, too! They are great value, as every pattern comes with instructions for more than just the animal- there’s always something for them to wear, or an accessory or two. Knitted toys have a special quality to them- even people I know that aren’t that fussed about hand knits think knitted toys are amazing.

A Few of My Favourite Things, from Left to Right: How adorable are these little space robots?! Spacebot pattern, which includes the spacebot, jet pack, and robo-kitty.  This Owl and Baby pattern is so sweet, and think how cute it could be in a whole bunch of different colours (or even striped).This Pupster is so cute- I love the little sweater and scarf included in the pattern. He’s perfect for Valentine’s day, especially if you made his little heart sweater in red.

 So what do you think- Anything going on your wish list? Or possibly on your “have to have it!” list?