A whole load of new yarn

Lucky me!
The postman has been a busy bee, delivering lots of new yarny goodness.

Watch the Youtube tutorial below (or click here )to see close-ups of the yarn and find the show notes with details below.

Have a great week,

Sarah x

Episode 5: The one with all the new yarn. 

Show notes

Yarn: 

Stylecraft Special Dk in Vintage Peach, Buttermilk and Mushroom - 100g / 100% Acrylic

Stylecraft Classique Cotton 4-ply 50g / 100% Cotton

Stylecraft Mystique 50g / 70% Polyester/ 30% Viscose

Stylecraft Head Over Heels Sock Yarn  in Sugarloaf and Etna 100g / 75% Superwash wool / 25% Nylon

Stylecraft Wondersoft Merry-go-round DK in Pastel Rainbow and Dark Rainbow 100g / 100% Acrylic 

Stylecraft Candy Swirl DK in Apple Sour 150g / 100% Acrylic

Bilum PukPuk yarn

Scheepjes Whirl in Slice 'O Cherry Pie 225g / 60% Cotton /40% Acrylic

Blog post with shawl started in Head Over Heels here

Ombre Shawl from Inside Crochet Issue 87

Sheep from Inside Crochet Issue 88

 

A trip to Stylecraft Yarns

Right back at the beginning of this month, I was invited back up to the Stylecraft Mill in Yorkshire with my fellow blogstars.

Hooray!!!

Here we all are, looking very happy indeed.

From left: Jane from Janie Crow, Phil from The Twisted Yarn, Me, Heather from The Patchwork Heart, Julia from Hand Knitted Things, Lucy from Attic 24, Helen from The Woolly Adventures of a Knitting Kitty, Emma from Emma Varnham, Sandra from Cherry Heart, Lucia from Lucia's Fig Tree and Kathryn from Crafternoon Treats

In fact, we are not all here - two of the gang joined us via Skype from the other side of the globe and so couldn't be in the pic.

Can you see them? They're right at the end of the table in laptop form, Skyping us from afar: Angela from Get Knotted Yarn Craft and Zelna from Zooty Owl

The trip involved an amazing visit to the Guild of Knitting and Crochet, where we were shown the most beautiful samples from the Guild's archives (a blog post for another day, methinks).

We were also shown the new ranges of Stylecraft yarns, and talked about all things knitting, crochet and blogging, too.

Check out my YouTube video for a closer look at some of the yarns:

We even had a Tunisian Crochet workshop - have you tried it before?

Here's my little attempt - it's a really intersting technique - something I'd like to try again. 

 

And beautiful blankets made by Lucia and Heather were shared and much admired.

Heather's Blanket - Pattern details here

Lucia's Blanket  - Pattern details here

The Stylecraft sheep looking very dapper

It was the most brilliant weekend - a great opportunity to chat and share ideas with like-minded souls.

I'm already looking forward to my next visit in July. 

Wishing you all a great week,

Sarah xx

Stylecraft Giveaway WINNERS!!

.

Yes, its time!

I've counted the votes and employed one of those random-number-generator-thingies to choose me some WINNERS!

Yay!

If you're a winner, then please leave a comment below (it won't be published) with full details of your postal address.

The UK winner is: Faerie - well done, lovely gal. You've won £25 in vouchers to spend in a yarn shop on squidgey balls of Stylecraft.

UK 2nd place is Ros Burrage. Well done, Ros - it's £15 for you. 

UK 3rd pace is Anna Ridley - hooray, Anna. £10 is all yours.

And not forgetting my wonderful overseas readers - a package of Stylecraft goodies will be flying across the seas to Zen in Australia!

A big THANKYOU to everyone who entered and 'hello' to any new followers!

Don't forget to subscribe via email to receive all my posts straight to your inbox. I've got lots of new patterns to launch and there'll be more giveaways, too.

Have a fab week,

Sarah xx 

Stylecraft Giveaway *NOW CLOSED*

**This Giveaway is now closed** See the winners Here

Know how to beat those January blues? - Win yourself some free stuff, of course!

  

So I thought it the perfect time to host a Stylecraft Yarns giveaway.
Hooray!

Let's cut straight to it - the winner will receive £25 to spend in a bricks and mortar, real-life yarn store on Stylecraft yarns. 2nd place will get £15 and 3rd place, £10. The vouchers cannot, alas be used online but 'tis a great way to support your local yarn store - and there's nothing like going into a shop and squidging some lovely balls of the fluffy stuff.

Now unfortunately, this is only open to UK residents, BUT I will not leave out my overseas friends, so I'll draw one non-UK winner and they'll receive a bundle of Stylecraft goodies.


Liking the sound of this?
Then all you need to do is leave me a comment below and state whether you're in the U.K. or overseas.

The winners will be drawn at random and announced on Saturday 14th January- I'll post the winner here and tell you how to get in contact.

Wishing you all loads of luck ...🤞🤞🤞🤞
Have a great week,

Sarah xx

Head over Heels - Stylecraft Sock Yarn

Some of you may have seen a few sneak peaks of the new Stylecraft Sock yarn, Head Over Heels via social media recently.

The Stylecraft Blogstars have been lucky enough to have had a preview of it to play with and we haven't been able to resist sharing a few snippets...

...And it's lovely stuff.

I've been very busy with loads of other projects, but I've made a start with a pattern I'm working on for a shawl- this seems the perfect stuff to try it out.

The shade I've been working with is called Eiger (they're all named after famous mountains) and it has long runs of colour. I'm really enjoying the way the colours wander in and out of each other. 

Other colour versions, like Everest below have shorter colour changes:

Ok. So here's the details:

• Stylecraft Head over Heels
• Sock yarn / 4 ply
• 75% Superwash wool, 25% Nylon
• Machine washable and tumble dryer-able
• 100g (good sized ball)
• 400m / 437y (a lot of yarn here)
• 2.25 - 3.25 size needles 
• 28 sts and 36 rows over 10 x 10cm / 4 x 4 ins

I have to say, I'm impressed with it so far: the yarn is soft and smooth to crochet with, and the colours work really well and are varied throughout the range. Superwash wool and nylon also means that this will keep you warm, but be able to be washed and tumble dried, too. It really seems perfect - great for socks (obviously) and fab for shawls and scarves, too. And retailing at around £6 - £7 per ball, is really good value for money.

So, to kick you off straight away, here's a fantastic free knitting pattern (released today!) for some gorgeous (beginner-friendly) socks by the awesome Helen from The Woolly Adventures of a Knitting Kitty:

 

AND another Blogstar, Heather from The Patchwork Heart has written all about the pattern for this beautiful crochet blanket, with a wonderful giveaway, where you could win £25 to spend on Stylecraft Yarn!

Why are you still here?

Go! Go!

Enjoy the yarn,

Sarah X

The Stylecraft Blogstars

Imagine all your favourite knit and crochet bloggers getting together for a weekend with a rather well-known yarn manufacturer and you've got a pretty awesome combination.

Let me introduce you to the Sylecraft Blogstars:

From left to right, back row:

Sandra Paul (Cherry Heart), Julia Marsh (Hand Knitted Things), Helen Kurtz (The Knitting Exploits of Josie Kitten), and me.

Front Row: Kathryn Senior (Crafternoon Treats), Heather Leal (The Patchwork Heart), Phil Saul (The Twisted Yarn), Lucy (Attic24), and Sue Pinner (Shropshire Scrapper Suz).

And not forgetting the three who couldn't be with us: Jane Crowfoot (Janie Crow), Emma Varnam (Emma Varnam) and Angela Armstrong (Get Knotted Yarncraft).

And so what did we get up to, I bet you're wondering?

Well, first I had to make my way to the Mill in Yorkshire, where we were treated to a tour by Richard Brown, owner of Stylecraft and its subsidaries.

Gorgeous views in every direction

Ever wondered how yarn is spun?

It starts off like this in huge squishy bundles:

ENORMOUS vats of yarn

And is spun through a series of the most enormous, noisy machines:

I thought these were sweets at first...

Richard, showing us how the yarn is twisted during manufacturing.

It's steamed to remove the twist, until it resembles something fine and beautiful like this:

This is one of the test rooms. I want a wall like that in my craft room.

It was so interesting to see manufacturing on such a large scale.

As if that wasn't enough, we were then invited to see the new collections of yarn. Here's one of the mood boards for the new collections. It's called 'World Marauder'. I love the colours.

And this is one of the new ranges, inspired by the colours:

It's called Batik and is wonderfully soft, with 80% Acrylic, 20% wool content. I can't wait to try it (I have lots of ideas already!). And check out Sue's blog, where she has links to lots of patterns using this yarn.

And this lovely stuff is called Yarn Stories. A beautiful, premium 100% wool, available in Merino or Merino and Alpaca and made in good old Blighty. The colours are amazing and it is sooooo squishy.

We were also told about some new exciting yarns and projects to come, but my lips are sealed. It's top-secret stuff.

You'll have to stay tuned.

So what's to come from the Blogstars?

Well, we'll be working on new projects for you, and there will be a blog tour in October, where we will reveal our patterns (in plenty of time for you to be planning those Christmas* projects). There will also be giveaways a-plenty.

*yes, I did mention the c-word. Yes, I know it's only July. Sorry about that.

The gorgeous and sparkly ' Cabaret' DK

So do pop along and check out the other bloggers. Lots of them are far more organised than me and have already blogged about their Mill visit. And they've got so many gorgeous projects to inspire you.

Enjoy your week,

Sarah X