Fyberspates Blog

Sansa's Summer

 

The design lovefest continues with another fab design in Fyberspates yarn from Avril Lang. We have finally got some sunshine here in the UK and the cool blue of this sample reminds us of blue skies and the need for cute coverups in the evenings.


Sansa's Summer is a reference to the popular Game of Thrones series. This pattern is for Sansa Stark and is particularly inspired by her character in the first book. She is a child who wishes she were a woman and loves pretty things, gallant knights and beautiful ladies. We think Avril captured that character perfectly with the delicate details balanced with the practical vest.

This vest is simple and quick to make, but gives a great end result. This pattern is knit from the top down in one piece and is available in sizes 31 inch bust- 55 inch bust. The vest is not meant to close fully, but rather has a little gap between the fronts when worn. If you wish your vest to close fully, consider making the next size up.


Sansa's Summer is available for download on Ravelry as a single pattern and calls for Scrumptious DK Worsted. To match the gorgeous colour of the sample in the 45% Silk and 55% Merino blend, we would suggest the Teal colourway which looks great for Summer and Spring. For more colour options, please check out the Fyberspates shop here or your local yarn shop.

Provence

Jeni is lucky enough to be taking part in a wonderful craft tour this September and as there's still a couple of places left, so we thought we should share the details!


The Knitting Tour is an organised holiday of sun, food and crafting. You get 7 nights in a deluxe villa with fees and drivers for the fabulous cultural tours all taken care of. The villa is located in historic Mormoiron, at the base of Mount Ventoux and there is a strong emphasis on time to knit, natter, eat and drink!


Jeni is providing a dye workshop as part of this fabulous holiday so if you're interested, hop over to the website to book your place on the 29th September- 6th October 2012. See you there!

It's All About Colour

We warned you that there was going to be quite a bit of design action going on here on the blog and this post is no exception. We were blown away by the intensity of colour in this recent design by Heike Gittens so we asked her to tell us a little about her design and why she chose Scrumptious yarns. Here's what she had to say:


The inspiration for this shawl came from large and lush forests leading to long golden
beaches that can be found on the largest of the German Baltic Sea Islands, Rügen. This led to the name of the pattern, Rügen Shawl.

I love designing shawls where the main body is a different colour to the edging and I
particularly love this exaggerated winged shape. The main body of this shawl is knitted first, increasing until a specific number of stitches is reached, before the edge is added. I like to make my designs available to knitters of all abilities and want anyone to feel confident to try knitting projects that involve lace.



Fyberspates Scrumptous 4 Ply with its wonderful drape and slight sheen is, in my view, the perfect yarn for every knitter to enjoy knitting shawls, no matter how new they might be to this technique. I used one skein of Scrumptious 4ply Sport in the colours Teal and Gold to work this shawl up on 4mm needles and when finished, the shawl should measure 130cm (51.5in) wide – 62cm (23.5in) deep (after blocking).


Heike's shawl is available on Ravelry or from her website here. To start picking your favourite colour combination to make this shawl, please visit the Scrumptious 4 ply Sport section on the shop here.

New Stockists

As many of you avid Scrumptious and Fyberspates fans know, we've been expanding rapidly and have now added Italy to our empire. Fili & Colori is a new stockist of the Scrumptious Yarn Range in Italy and we're so pleased to have them as part of the extensive list of stockists.

So whether you're holidaying abroad and fancy a quick yarn shop (who doesn't) or are local to this wonderful store, do check out some Scrumptious and their wonderful range of knit products. Products are available at their online store here.

Channelling Brucie....

It's starting to feel a little like a 'Strictly Come Dancing' moment where the out of breath dancer and celebrity get to Bruce and are told 'you're my favourites' because we have so many of our favourite designers using our yarns at the moment! Get ready for a run of posts about some fab new designs that we've spotted. Seriously, we can't get enough!

As you know, Jeni got to hang out with some pretty cool British designers in TNNA and one of them was the ever so talented Ann Kingstone. Ann recently published a collection called 'A Time To Knit' and in it we spied a stunning pullover that made us go a little weak at the knees quite frankly. The pattern is called 'Mallorn' and calls for both Scrumptious Sport and Scrumptious Lace to work the incredible lace yoke.

Image credit Verity Britton

This uniquely constructed yoke consists of an overlace and contrast underlayer that are knitted separately on picked up stitches from the same circle of icord. The two layers are joined at the bottom of the yoke with a three needle icord bind-off. The remainder of the body and sleeves are knitted on picked up stitches from the icord bind-off. Short rows drop the front neck for a flattering fit on curvier ladies.

Image credit Verity Britton

Mallorn is available as either a single pattern or as part of the A Time To Knit collection and can be purchased directly on Ravelry. The pattern is available in a range of 14 sizes from 32" - 58" at the full bust measurement.

The colourway used for the main body is 'Gold' and calls for Scrumptious 4ply Sport.  The contrast was created in the 'Cherry' colourway before using Scrumptious Lace to create the delicate golden lace overlay.  We can see lots of stunning contrast colours such as Gold and Teal or for something more subtle, a delicate Rose and Slate combination would be jaw dropping.

Thanks for giving us hours of conjuring up colour combinations Ann!

 

 

TNNA 2012 - Seriously picture heavy!

This year I had the opportunity to attend TNNA in the USA. TNNA is The National Needlearts Association. It's one of the biggest yarn and needlecraft trade shows in the USA, and is where companies show off their wares to shops and yarn stores. Why was I there? Well, because Lantern Moon (LM) are my distributor in the USA, I went to help them sell Scrumptious, and to take lots of orders for the Autumn-Winter season.

Phew, ok thats the "science bit" over with! Now for the fun description!

So obviously I was there to work... and I did! I helped LM set up their stand and sell, and we had LOTS of business dinners.... those guys are so well connected! I got to go to dinner with Craftsy, attend the Vogue Knitting party, we had dinner with Interweave (which was a complete pleasure), lunch with Annie and her beautiful daughter, Annie always makes me chuckle so much! Really it was awesome, I had to keep pinching myself.

This time I made myself go and talk to people. It can be quite scary to go and chat to people - I always assume no one knows who I am - but apparently people know Fyberspates and Scrumptious! That made me so chuffed! Round the corner from our booth was Bonne Marie Burns. I have followed her designs for years and years, so I felt a bit star struck to meet her, and she was LOVELY. You can see her website here: Chic Knits.

OK, lets have some pictures, huh?

So the LM stand looked wonderful, Sharon and the girls made wonderful bird cages as displays, with felted nests inside, they were awesome:

The LM stand was split over 2 sides of the walkway this was the yarn/scrumptious....

They have had some really sweet patterns commissioned for Scrumptious like this pretty cape with pearls in:

I was so excited to see the British designers really had a good presence this year, someone commented that the British were taking over! :D

Here is Woolly Wormhead on her stand.. her hats looked brilliant.

Then there was Ann Kingstone, she had a couple of designs in Scrumptious .. and a sweater with a very interesting construction:

Ruth (Rock + Purl) also came on the trip with Woolly and Anne , sadly I don't have any photo's of her, but we got a little more time together, and she is ALOT of fun, certainly full of life that girl! Also super excited because she is designing for the next collection :)

Here are Woolly and Anne  on Grace's stand. Grace's designs I especially liked. Her use of colour and texture with hand-dyed yarns was excellent. I urge you to check them out here:

Then there was Steph... you might know her Hexipuffs, bu all her designs are so CUTE!

I mean damn.... this is really not so much my thing but now I have seen it, I want to make it so much!

It's the first time I have met Stephanie, and she is as cute as in her videos and such a sweetie :)

And then of course there was this sweetiepie.....

At one point during set-up I felt rather anxious for her, as she was nailing and banging bits of wood together to make her window frames... Yes, you read that right, she made her own window frames for the shop, it looked BRILLIANT, I love the effort she puts into her stands.

And there were baby garments... I don't have photos of those, but boy are they cute!

Here is Ishbel knitted in Scrumptious Lace treacle toffee... :)

Someone brought the most amazing shawl to the stand to show me, and I think we will showcase this in a separate post, as it's stunning, but the only photo I have is Joel being silly in it lol!

I did have a little chance to do a little shopping, on the day after the show, before the flight home. I went for brunch with the girls and ate the most amazing black bean cakes with poached eggs and Jalepeno hollandaise... honest I have to write it here so I don't forget it ever!

Sharon (Lantern Moon) on the left next to Ysolda, and Sarah opposite, and Ravelry's Mary Heather.

Then we went shopping and then we ate ice cream... but it wasn't any ordinary ice cream. This ice cream rocks above all ice cream. It's called Jeni's Ice Cream - you get to try as many flavours as you want... I got the cook book! This is me trying very hard not to laugh, I hate photos...

And finally Sharon and I... I felt sad I had to leave. I never feel like Sharon and I get enough time together. In fact I feel like all the Lantern Moonies are family... Steve, Cathy, Annette and Joel. They are all lovely.

Owl Babies

In our post about Woolfest, we talked about how popular our fab Tawny Owl kits were and so here are some more details for those of you who also just have to have one of these adorable little owls.

The Tawny Owl Kit is a collaboration between Ella Austin and Fyberspates yarn and each kit contains the owl pattern by Ella Austin; an instruction booklet with clear directions, charts, photographs and illustrations; Faerywings yarn by Fyberspates hand dyed in a custom colour and Scrumptious 4ply in Oyster and Slate; 100% lambswool stuffing, and two olive wood buttons.

Tawny Owl is a quick and satisfying knit. This enchanting toy will appeal to all ages as a cuddly companion or a delightful ornament. The finished dimensions  of our little friend is 14cm (5.5”) so a cute and huggable critter to keep you company and enjoy knitting up.

To make yourself a knitted lovely, you will need to know how to knit in the round, be able to read charts and use a few simple increases and decreases. There is also some stranded knitting to work the lovely patterned belly and finally some i-cord for the finishing touch.


The three skeins included in the kit are Faerywings (67% silk, 23% mohair, 10% nylon), hand dyed in the custom colour' Owls', as well as  Scrumptious 4ply (45% silk, 55% superwash merino) in Oyster and Slate. All packaging and the printed booklet use 100% recycled materials and are 100% recyclable.

We love this little knitted creature and think it would make a great gift or totally selfish knitting project. Whoever you decide to be the lucky recipient, you can purchase your kit here.

 

Oh What Fun We Had!

JenAC and Nic took on the booth at Woolfest this time round while Jeni was being an international lady of awesome at TNNA. Here's how they got on....


One of the best things about fibre festivals is the opportunity to meet so many people and this event was no exception. We met lots of wonderful customers old and new - it's brilliant to meet previous customers and hear about what they made (or didn't get round to!) from last year's haul. As always, a massive thank you for everyone who came and said hi, squooshed yarn and bought. We love seeing you all!


Popular at the event this time round were:

• The new 150g hanks went down a storm in the Sparkle Sock - perfect for a good sized shawl or shoulder covering cowl. Hurry, there's still a few left in the shop! Click here to grab your skein. 
• Ysolda's Saturday Treat book was exactly the (Friday and) Saturday Treat that many of our customers were looking for, with the Pear Drop and Barley Sugar designs being the most popular. If you've not got your copy yet, you can get your weekend off to a flying start by purchasing one on the website here.
• Yarn for the Midnight Ocean and Song of The Sea patterns by Louise Zass-Bangham that both feature Fyberspates yarn. Stay tuned for a feature about this fab designer and these designs here on the blog soon. 
• The adorable Tawny Owl kits from Ella Austin who we'll be featuring soon too. If you can't wait, there's still kits to be had on the shop. 

We saw many friends, and were particularly excited to see Sarah Hatton sporting a new cardigan that she has designed using Fyberspates Scrumptious Aran - watch this space for more details about the pattern when it is launched. You can read all about the cardigan in the blog post that she wrote about it here.  

We were also saved from our shivers by some of the shop samples and our friend Susan Crawford lending out fabulous sweaters from her stall to help keep us going. JenAC went for the layered look, sporting Jeni's 'Challow' jumper from The Scrumptious Collection Volume 1 AND Susan Crawford's rather fabulous 'Swagger Coat' knit in Scrumptious Aran. The Scrumptious Aran samples are becoming a fibre festival staple this year, so warm with all this dreadful weather we've been having.

Did we mention that it was wet...... and it was amazingly cold?

But the customers were wonderful, and we can't wait for next year!

The results are in!

We are so proud to announce the final results of the ‘Sheep to Sweater’ challenge and the fantastic effort by all who participated. This event represented a challenge to break the Guinness World Record for shearing a sheep, spinning and plying the yarn, and knitting a sweater to the International Wool Challenge pattern standards. 

The team with the finished sweater

The record attempt took place on May 12^th 2012 at Tuin Pension Groenewoud. The international team, sponsored by Fyberspates, was judged to be the fastest of 2012 and the team was declared winner of the 18th International Back to Back Wool Challenge. They also become holders of the Netherlands Record and the Mainland Europe Record. The challenge was completed in 6 hours 3 minutes and 28 seconds. The Guinness record was not broken and the current record is 4 hours, 51 minutes and 14 seconds.

Well done to the team for this amazing effort! You can watch the events unfold in a fab video from the event by clicking the link here.

 

 

Scoria

One of our favourite designers (oh there are so many) has recently featured Scrumptious 4ply in a stunning design for The Knitter Magazine. The pattern is featured in Issue 46 for those of you who would love to knit it up and of course, there are lots of colours to create it in on the Fyberspates website.

Scoria is a garment that is worked bottom up and in pieces. Kyoko says she normally favours circular knitting but the horizontal lace and herringbone pattern needed this flat construction. It's a delicate piece that is stylish and will suit many different body types.

The lace is worked first and then blocked before stitches are then picked up and worked upwards. The garment features a biased neckband which is worked in the round before being blocked and attached at the end. This gives a sophisticated and structured feel to the whole garment.

Kyoko told us that the inspiration comes from moving volcanic lava and contrast hard rocks around it. The aim was to create something feminine and mysterious and the texture of Scrumptious yarn and the shimmer that it brings to the garment enabled Kyoko to really push her volcanic vision to the full.

Well done Kyoko, another fab design!