These are the four new variegated and “gently” variegated colourways: Maple, Summer Dusk, Violet Hill, and Peashoot. As well, a couple very delicate and almost neutral semi-solids: Tumbled Stone and Summer Skin.

And, also debuting at Fibres West last month, the DK (4-ply) weight of our Merino Silk series. Merino Silk DK is 4-ply whereas the Merino Silk Lace is 2-ply and Merino Silk Aran is 8-ply. It’s been great for really quick or beginner lace knitting. I’m getting a gauge of 24 sts per 4″ for 3.75 mm needles, but I’m sure everyone knits at different tensions and everyone prefers a different hand. I’ve dyed a whole bunch of it to either knit the new Manu cardigan by Kate Davies or Coraline by Ysolda. I can’t decide. And I also have a little stash of it in a special blue shade to knit the Apres Surf Hoodie by Connie Chang Chinchio

Fibres West was a really wonderful experience and I’m so grateful for all the customers and friends, both new and old, who stopped by the booth to say hello. Since we were positioned next to the Ravelry booth, we were audience and participant in a few little reunions.

It’s the very first time I’ve ever participated in a show situation and I was so nervous about getting enough stuff ready to display, getting the booth together, driving a truck… but luckily my old high school friends, James and Teresa, do this kind of thing for a living. They are both industrial and interior designers with their own design company, Light Couture International, and they helped me design and build the booth. They came over to the studio throughout March to paint all my shelving and helped set it all up on Thursday evening before the show. Amazing and professional, they took a huge weight off my shoulders so that I could just focus on dyeing great colours and making lots of yarn.

I am completely in awe of shop owners who are able to get their whole kit together and go from show to show to show. It’s a ton of work, but so worth it to see people in person, excited about the yarn and fibre. Thank you to everyone who came to help and visit!

I’ll leave you with one of our photos from Fibres West… the rest are on Flickr.

Our newest yarn base has arrived and we finally had a chance to select a name for it!

Thank you to everyone who took time to email me name suggestions! It took sorting through nearly 300 suggestions from readers and customers for us to finally pick the name. A long-time SweetGeorgia friend and student, Dana, suggested “Secret Crush” and it was the closest thing to describing the slightly crystallized look and feel of our new silk and superwash merino blend yarn. Kind of like crushed velvet in yarn form. Charming, rustic and wonderfully soft.

Like all our yarns, I always recommend that people handwash and air dry their precious handknit pieces. But of course, the convenience factor plays a big part and for my own handknit socks, I’ll admit to throwing them in the washer… but the socks don’t do well in the dryer. That’s a big no-no for me, personally. So, if you want to knit socks out of this yarn, definitely, on 2.25 mm needles, I found it to make a beautiful, soft fabric. Delicate, yes. Not for hardwearing boot socks, no.

Better yet, I think this will make a wonderful baby gift yarn. It’s superwash so it’s easy-care, but then it’s got the 50% silk to make it so much more luxurious and gift-worthy. And if you love knitting small shawls or tiny cardigans, I think this new yarn will fit the mix very nicely.

It’s available now on our shop website as part of our dyed-to-order collection. You can also come visit us at FibresWest this coming weekend to see it in person! I’m knitting it up in the Traveling Woman’s Shawl, so you can definitely have a look and feel.

This pattern, the Vine Yoke Cardigan, is wonderfully written. It’s sort of a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet and so far, the lace pattern seems to be working out just as Ysolda says it will. I’m enjoying the knitting of it as it’s going pretty quickly. Although I won’t finish in the 10 days someone else on Ravelry took to knit this, hopefully it won’t be in my queue for a year… unlike other projects.

So, for Winter, I’m adding this new Slate grey colour to our palette of Dye To Order yarns as well as the Cypress green above. It’s a bit woodsy and murky, a darker and more desaturated teal green. Both these colours will be available in all our yarns, although it might take a bit of time to get it all entered into the online shop. If you don’t see it, just email/txt/twitter.

Another change we’ll be making to the offerings is that our Superwash Worsted and Superwash Sport yarns will be available as larger 4 oz skeins now… more than double the 50g skeins we were doing originally. Hopefully for you sweater knitters, this just means fewer joins and more continuous knitting time. I think we all need more of that. And the opposite is true for the Silk Lamb Lace — we’ve changed the put up to 60g of 625 yards of laceweight goodness. More affordable at this skein size and perfect for the smaller shawl designs that have been popping up!

One of the first challenges I had was trying to define or describe this space to people. Located on the fourth floor of a live/work building, it’s not a typical retail environment. It is an industrial-looking workspace, complete with concrete floors and walls, where we make hand-dyed yarns and spinning fibre. But I know that people came to the studio expecting to see every single yarn in every single colour and often I received (and still receive) phone calls asking if I carry Rowan yarns. No, it’s not that kind of yarn store. Maybe one day, but not today.

And so it was very important this past year for us to begin working with real, beautiful yarn stores again. I so much want for people to be able to touch and feel the yarns in person and to be able to experience that in their local yarn store. Nowadays, when you come to our studio, you will very often see (and smell!) yarn drying, yarn in the middle of being packaged or yarn being dyed. There actually is just a little bit of yarn on hand for retail sale. Most of what is in the studio now is being made to go out to shops. I love that the yarn shops can focus on beautiful displays, great customer service and keeping their shelves nicely stocked. And I love that by working in this way, I can focus on making beautiful yarn for those shops.

Absolutely, you can come visit our studio and see work in progress. And absolutely you can come see colours in person and make a custom order. And definitely, you can request dyed-to-order yarns and fibres from our studio online. But I encourage you to visit the fine local yarn stores that are now carrying SweetGeorgia Yarns… including L’Oisive Thé in Paris, France… our first time in France.

So this is kind of why we didn’t host a big party at the studio on this very rainy Vancouver Sunday. Well, because the studio floor is being taken up by yarn racks and bins of undyed yarn.

Instead, we are celebrating our Year One anniversary with a brand new website, a Free Shipping over $100 sale (for US & Canada), and a new pattern in Twist Collective featuring our Superwash Sport yarn. I’m sure that in the upcoming year we’ll have a few more falling-on-face-type experiences, but we are committed to focusing on developing more beautiful yarns and fibres, distributing our yarns and fibres through our website and fine retailers, and also designing more knitting patterns to inspire you. Happy anniversary.

Aisha Celia’s Handspun Mitts

As a spinner and a knitter, I am always on the lookout for publications that mix education about yarns with patterns. As soon as The Knitter’s Book of Yarn by Clara Parkes (Potter Craft, 2007) was published, I ran out to purchase it.

I have a small yarn business and am constantly looking for patterns that use a small amount of handspun to satisy my customers’ needs for little projects. Maine Morning Mitts is the perfect pattern for that little bit of handspun. I had spun up a small skein of hand-dyed Merino and had been keeping it for just the right project when I found this pattern.

I started with roving that I split from the top (I love how 2-ply turns out when you prepare your own fiber this way) and spun with an inch-worm technique.

– Aisha Celia Formanski

aishaceliadesigns.com