Knitted to a T

My blogfriend Tonia sent out an email that she'd opened her webstore, http://www.knittedtoat.com/, on Sunday. I immediately ordered something from her (some of her own hand-dyed yarn); she has her own hand-dyed and hand-spun-and-dyed yarns available, along with lots of goodies. I was very tickled when she emailed me that I was her very first online customer, and as such, she'd included a few goodies with my order.

It arrived at work yesterday, waiting for me this morning when I came in for my first day of the new school year. I opened it, but when I saw how nicely it was packaged, I had to wait until I could get home and take photos of everything before I messed them up.

So pretty!!!

There were four packs of Eucalan wool wash in assorted flavors, along with a beautiful handmade charm with a black and a natural tie:


This darling little stuffed sheep:


And, of course, the gorgeous, squishy-soft, Tri-Color Daisy colorway, exclusively Tonia's, sock yarn!

This will make the perfect pair of socks to wear all winter long; when I need to be cheered up, I can just look down at my feet and feel the bliss.

Go to her website and order yourself some of her lovely goodies and see for yourself what a wonderful addition to the knitting world we have!!!

Destash!

My dear friend, Tonia, is destashing some really nice yarn because her insurance is balking at paying legitimate medical bills. Go on over and check out the yarn; I'm buying some recycled silk that I've always wanted. I'd much rather that the money go to Tonia than the yarn company!

Gotta brag!

My faithful blog reader, ~tonia~, has just started dyeing and selling her own line of fingering-weight yarn, in very generous yardage, too. Click on her name to go to her blog so you can see her gorgeous yarns! That woman can really keep a secret!

Most sock yarns are sold in balls of about 440 yards, or, in singles, at least 200 yards per ball (She-For-Whom-I-Work sells hers in hanks of only 175 yards, which at $12 a pop, or $24 for a pair of socks, is kind of chintzy, in my opinion). But ~tonia~ is selling hers with 500 yards per skein, and at only $1 more than the less-than-generous yardage supplied by S-F-W-I-W, it's a good deal for such beautiful hand-dyed yarn. I'm hoping that ~tonia~ will tell me just how on earth she's able to make her yarn reliably self-striping. Sometimes, often, that's the look that I want. Real stripes.

S-F-W-I-W calls her yarn "handpainted", which generally means it's not supposed to stripe when it's knit. It may pool a bit (which I like, but isn't always desirable, although I think it's really pretty), but it doesn't make real stripes. If one wanted her yarn to stripe, one would have to carefully chose a pattern that would make wider stripes than those that show up in the socks I knit waaaaaay below and posted in June, I think. It's sort of a spiral type of stripe, and while it's okay, it's not what I'm going for in striped yarns.

Well for heaven's sake, I thought I'd posted a photo of the socks I'm knitting for Joan for her birthday (which was Sept. 2, but who's counting, other than Joan?). Now those are self-striping. I think it's an incredible striping effect. Someday maybe the lady who dyed this yarn will tell me the secret of how she got this effect.

So here's that photo:

Okay, so I didn't rotate the photo before I uploaded it and now I can't figure out how to do it. Turn your monitor sideways.

This yarn came from The Painted Tiger at etsy.com. I found several great yarns there this summer, right before I started working for S-F-W-I-W. This one was $25, 460 yards, and very soft; it's 75% Superwash Kona wool. The photo at etsy really caught my eye:

So, anyway, my friend now has her own line of handpainted, self-striping yarns. Go buy some! (And send it to me.)