New Color: Peas & Carrots

Here is another new color I've been working on:


This yarn is named Peas & Carrots. One of my favorite fair isle techniques is called peas & carrots, which is usually made with 2 x 2 squares of contrasting colors. Combine that with a new baby in the house and I knew I had to make this yarn!


I'm also knitting with this yarn right now for a pattern idea I have. If it turns into anything I'll make sure to share it. So far I really love how it is knitting up and I am sure you will too!

This color is currently available in my Tencel Sock Yarn!

New Color: Alpine

Life has certainly been much busier with a new little guy around here! Not much knitting going on to share. However, I have been saving up some things to post while I get back on my feet. I have some brand new colorways to share! So, I'll be sharing them over the next week or so. I'm so excited about them and I hope you will be too.


This yarn is named Alpine. While watching the 2010 Olympic Winter Games I became totally entranced with the combination of colors. I love the bright blues and greens, which would be perfect for a pair of toasty socks in winter or a light weight pair in summer.

I can totally see these colors as really cool snowboarder or skier colors in winter and then really awesome windsurfer or skateboarder colors in summer. I just love them. I think I'll have to knit something up for the baby out of them in the near future.

Currently this colorway is available in my Tencel Sock Yarn.

Welcome, Baby X!

I would like to introduce you all to the latest edition to the LavenderSheep team!


Our sweet Baby X! We are all home now, healthy, happy, and exhausted!

Question

I had a comment posted to the website from a Daniela, but no return email address, so I will answer it here. She was asking about feltable roving for a fundraiser art project for her kids school.

My answer is the Merino Roving would probably work best for the project. Everything I have is available on the website here. It is feltable and would work well for needle felting as well as wet felting.

Hopefully that is the right answer. I really hope I can get the message back to her!

Kitty Pants!

I finally got some pictures of the finished Pusekatt Pants! Also known as the Kitty Pants, as the mood strikes me.


I really love these pants. They actually went really fast because I just couldn't wait to see what would happen next. Even knitting the second leg wasn't a problem. They are just too much fun! We'll start with modifications. The pattern is so well written there isn't much of anything I changed. The two minor changes I made were I didn't fold and sew the cuff to the pants. As you can see there is a ribbed cuff. I figure for my baby I'll just fold it up and as he grows I'll fold it down to get extra use out of the pants. The only other change I made was the original used light and dark purple and I decided to use light and dark brown to make them a bit more boyish. I also changed a couple of the other colors to ones I had on hand, which doesn't make a huge difference. I really love how they turned out!

Here is a closer look at one of my favorite parts of the pants. I really love the olive green kitties. They are so fun! Then my favorite colorwork combination is peas and carrots, or those little blocks of colors that change as you go upwards. It's so fun to see the little blocks change every couple of rows.


Here are the other kitties, the dark blue ones with 2-tone background. The pattern is Nr 5 Pusekatt from the Dalegarn Baby Kolleksjon NR 114. I knit all of it from Dale of Norway Baby Ull, which I totally recommend. If you want a list of all of the colors I used check out my Ravelry project page.

Happy March!

March is baby month!


My due date is fast approaching! So there are a couple of things I need to mention about my maternity leave, as it were. The shop is going to remain open the whole time! I have been carefully training my husband to send out orders, so even if I can't do it, he most certainly will be able to. So, orders should go out just as quickly as they always have. The exception being the week of March 14th - 20th, when our little baby X should arrive. I'll also make sure to post here when he does, so you guys will know all about it.

The other thing is I'm not going to do any custom orders from now through the month of June. Hopefully I will get back to the dye studio before then, but I just want to make sure I have plenty of time with our new addition. I have been dyeing up some new colorways and I'm hoping to get a couple more days in the studio before the big arrival. So hopefully that means I'll have some new yarn to show off in the next few weeks. I'm also hoping it means that I'll have lots of yarn to take to Black Sheep Gathering in June! It'll be our first show with our new baby, so I'm sure it will be an adventure!

Returning Knitting

One of the really cool things about knitting for other people and their babies is that occasionally the knitting comes back home for a visit. Here is what I mean:


I first knit this gorgeous ladybug sweater for my friend Destiny (rav link) when she had her little boy. Well as soon as she found out that I was going to have a little boy she told me that I could borrow the sweater back! I am sure my little guy will just love this sweater as much as her little boy did! It is 0-3 month, so I am sure he will only get to wear it a couple of times before it will be too small. Still I will try to get as much use out of it as I can and keep it in the awesome condition it already is in. That's what makes a good family heirloom!


The 2nd sweater to return home is this Debbie Bliss Baby Hoody in Blue (rav link). I knit this up several years ago for Knot Another Hat as a shop sample. I think it was the first time I knit this pattern and one of the first shop samples I knit for the shop. Sarah was doing some cleaning out of old samples and thought I would like to see this one back. I love it, especially since I just finished the same pattern in red. It's such an easy throw over the top baby hoody, I am sure I will get lots of use out of it!

I am getting pretty excited! I am down to less than 3 weeks! I think we have pretty much everything, just need to assemble things like the crib and get everything washed and ready!