At the Creative Fibre Festival…

Tags

Knitting, New Zealand yarn, Little Wool Co., Knitsch, Spinning a Yarn, Anna Gratton, Creative Fibre Festival, Wonders of Wool, Travelling Threads

Well!!  I had a most exciting day at the Creative Fibre Festival yesterday.  What a treat of a day out!  I had not registered to go to any classes, but I had a wonderful time in the trade hall and attending the exhibition where some beautiful examples of weaving, crochet, knitting and other fibre crafts were on display (as well as being worn by attendees).

I know you might be wanting to know what I got, so let’s start with the purchases!

Starting from the bottom step, I discovered a new-to-me New Zealand indie dyer, Catherine of Travelling Threads.  Apparently, I am not new to her though:  she startled me when I walked into her stall by saying she read my blog! I must have a recognisable face…

Of course, I had to sample these lovely 100% merino sock beauties (the brick orange and deep blue).  I’m a total sucker for 100% New Zealand merino sock yarn.  The young man claimed the orange for a hat and mittens as soon as he saw it!

In addition to stocking a range of New Zealand yarns, Catherine has three of her own bases (100% high twist merino sock, a sport weight merino/silk/nylon and a DK 100% wool superwash (I think, but cannot recall for certain) which she hand-dyes.  She also has a limited stock of some white pearl yarn if you are interested!  She showed me a woven shawl made from it – so soft, so cool, and very beautiful.

Catherine also told me she will have a more complete online presence later in the year, and will also be launching a very-exciting sounding new yarn that I’m very curious to know more about.  I shall keep you posted.

Got another Knitsch fix, as you can see from the beautiful blue/purple Coyote Shivers, Hydro and green Eno Nemo shades next to the Travelling Threads yarn.  I think I have developed an addiction to Tash’s colourways.

If you have been drooling over Tash’s website and not seen the Knitsch that you want in stock, I am pleased to report that there was a full complement of colourways in her stall.  If you’re not going to the Creative Fibre Festival this weekend, there is always next week’s Wonders of Wool market (and of course the website and the yarn store during the week) in which to acquire some Knitsch loveliness.  Be quick before it all goes again!

Moving up to the next step, I found some very hard to resist Spinning a Yarn that said “buy meeeeeee!!”  The dusky rose of Velvet Curtain and soft purple Cornflower had to come home with me.  Jessicah has dyed a literal rainbow of breaktakingly lovely colours for the festival.  There were so many beauties to sigh over and pet.  Her stall was very hard to get at because of the crush surrounding it.

Jessicah was sporting a beautiful baby bump, and she told me she will be taking a break from dyeing when the baby is born to concentrate on motherhood.  So if you rather fancy some of her pretty merino/silk yarn and won’t be at the festival, I’d jump on to her etsy store rather quickly once she lists everything she didn’t sell this weekend.  She mentioned she might see if Tash (Holland Road Yarn Company) might sell the rest of her yarn at Wonders of Wool next week, but I’m not sure if that is a certainty yet.

The rest of what you see is more Anna Gratton Little Wool Co. lusciousness.  I got a plain cream hank to match a natural grey that I already have of that weight.  The two will be combined to knit a Lillia Hyrna.  Have a look through the projects to get an idea of what it looks like as the picture representing the pattern isn’t the most descriptive.

The two purple shaded hanks together are the Inca colourway Mohair/Wool 4 ply, and the top step holds one hank of Anna’s Wool/Alpaca/Mohair/Nylon boucle in Cocoa for a shawl, one humongous 400g hank (garment lot) weight of 50/50 mohair/wool in Jungle and more mohair/wool in Forest.  Forest will become a Bo for me to keep.

So that’s it for purchases!  However, I also had some very exciting people meet-ups:

I was wonderfully surprised to bump into, and catch up with Alice, whom many of you will fondly remember from her Crochet with Raymond blog days.  I am happy to report that she is very well, and enjoying life with KB in the far north.  It was such fun to make a turn around the trade hall with her and catch up on all the news, and collectively sigh over all the pretty yarn and fibre on display.  Some of the batts were so beautiful it made me (briefly) wish I was a spinner.

I also met up with Bev of Morecraft Gifts, a very gutsy knitter and spinner from Christchurch, who showed me this:

Handspun merino scarf (OMG such bounce!) from the wool of Horrietta, the hermit cross-bred Merino who had evaded muster for seven years, growing a stunning 13kg (28lb) fleece in the process.  I talked about her capture here at which time they thought she was a ‘he’ until they sheared her and found out otherwise.  The staple was of great unbroken quality, and at least 6″ in length!  I will tell you more about this lady’s work and Horrietta separately, as the story deserves its own post (but if you’re itching for a hint, have a look at Bev’s Ravelry group here).

Bev also kindly introduced me to one of my knitting heroes:  Margaret Stove.  She is every bit as erudite and charming a lady as I had imagined she would be.  What a buzz to meet her!  If she ever teaches a lace class and I can attend it, I’d be first in line to register! Margaret was wearing a deep purple lace shawl that I admired greatly, even before I knew who she was.  I hope I can knit lace like that one day.

In all, the festival was a great day out.  I was slightly disappointed that most of the New Zealand products for sale in the hall were batts and fibre.  However, there is always next week’s Wonders of Wool market, where yarn is more of the emphasis and Happy-go-knitty, as well as, I am hoping, Verandah Yarns and many others will be there.

I came home and fell asleep in my knitting chair, exhausted by all the excitement!

Play day

Tags

Knitting, New Zealand yarn, WIP, FO, Knitsch, fair isle, socks, Happy go Knitty

Today, for the first time in ages, I woke up without the weight of a deadline hanging over my head.  It felt so good.

I decided that with some free time on a rainy day, this would be a good opportunity to make further investigations into some projects that I’ve been eyeing recently.

But first, let me show you this!

They are done!  I love them so much.  They’re at once very “Alice in Wonderland” and “Wicked Witch of the West” don’t you think? I’m looking forward to refreshing my stocks of Happy-go-knitty next Saturday at the Wellington Underground annual “Wonders of Wool” market.  More, pretty stripy socks coming my way!  Funny how we knitters talk about yarn in terms of a finished project.

Also, another happiness-making thing happened yesterday:

Seven glorious hanks of Knitsch Milky Way, for the knitting of the Southern Companion were ready for my pick-up!

At Holland Road Yarn Company, Tash was busy making final preparations for her stall at this weekend’s Creative Fibre Festival.  Oh my.  Such hanks of gloriousness I saw, to set the heart aflutter!  I hope there’s still some left when I turn up…

Now to what I did today.  This is what one’s living room ends up looking like in the middle of a creative frenzy:

What was this all about you ask?  I’ve been eyeing the below interesting cardigan all week:

It’s called Conifer  (designed by Rosee Woodland), and it’s in Issue 54 of The Knitter.

Several features attracted me to it:  the knitted-on fingerless gloves (very handy to keep those winds out of one’s sleeves) and the fact that it’s knitted in reverse stocking stitch.  The certain someone I’m knitting it for likes to wear her sweaters inside out because she prefers the smooth feeling of the stocking stitch instead of the purl bumps.  This would be perfect!  The final feature I liked was the unusual reverse fair isle.  I’ve been thinking about using reverse fair isle in a pattern, and this looked like a good opportunity to try it out.

I also had in mind a certain person’s comment about knits in the English town she lives in “Oh, fair isle is so common, everyone wears it, it’s not special to me any more.”  Perhaps an unusual take on fair isle might be good?

I thought that Knitsch would make a perfect medium for it, given it’s meant to be for a certain girl who dislikes itch.  So, diving into my precious hoard of Knitsch, I did a bit of a stocktake of possibilities:

Something colourful for the yoke perhaps?

However, as I was winding the balls, it occurred to me that while all those colours looked oh-so-pretty together, they might seem cartoonish all in one garment.

I pared it down to pretty purple shades with a touch of gold:

I’m not sure about that gold, but the purples looked good.  The only downside was that when I measured the swatch, the gauge was far too small.  Bother and horrors.  That swatch was a real brain-teaser to knit too!  Reverse fair isle is tricky until you figure out that you can’t knit it like normal fair isle!!

I sat there feeling annoyed.  Knitsch was very much what I wanted to use.  I didn’t really fancy knitting more swatches until I found a yarn that matched.  Besides, I don’t have any other yarn in my stash with that colour range.  Why didn’t it match?  They were both 4 ply after all!?  They felt the same thickness in the hand.  I decided that I would see how many wraps per inch the J&S was… 15 per inch.  Then I wrapped the Knitsch, I found that it’s more like 20 wraps per inch!  Ah.  It made sense now.  I should probably have done that first.  Doh.

I wondered how Zealana Kiwi Fingering would work out.  She likes that yarn too.  I wrapped it, and found that it is exactly 15 wraps per inch!  I was surprised, because Kiwi feels a lot thicker.  (J&S is springier and lighter, but the width of the strand is the same).  So… although I don’t have a large colour range in that yarn, I decided to do one more swatch to see if really was the right match:

I am pleased to say that it gives the exact gauge that I need for this pattern.

My concentration petered out in the final row and I messed up the swatch.  The young boy got bored and started to watch a video.  And with the invasion of irritating noise into the ears came the advent of a headache and the loss of all ability to concentrate.  I need a nice, quiet, cosy little cabin at the end of the garden in which to knit, far from loud, concentration-shattering noises…

So now I need to go shopping for colours. But I guess I should consult with a certain girl first to see what she’d like?  :-)

When the going gets tough…

Tags

Knitsch, Knitting, New Zealand wool, New Zealand yarn, silk, Spinning a Yarn, yarn

the tough go shopping.  Well, that’s what I did this month.

These yarnie beauties were my consolation presents to me for a month of very stressful work.

From the top -

Spinning a Yarn, Silk Merino Luxury (fingering) inAutumn Hydrangea

Spinning Yarn, Silk Merino Indulgence (laceweight) in Lichen

Knitsch, 100% merino wool sock yarn in Pencarrow

Knitsch, 100% merino wool sock yarn in Charlemange.

It’s a slightly dangerous thing to go looking at yarn online when you’re feeling in need of cheering and there’s money jangling in your pocket… there’s nothing like a bit of yarn shopping to make a girl feel better though, huh?

The Interview Series: Tash Barneveld, Knitsch Yarns and Holland Road Yarn Company

Tags

Holland Road Yarn Company, Interview, Knitsch, Knitting, New Zealand yarn, sock yarn, Tash Barneveld, Wellington

Today, I have the greatest pleasure in bringing you an interview with Tash Barneveld, the talent behind Knitsch Yarns and founder and owner of the yarn store, Holland Road Yarn Company in Wellington.

Tash is a native Wellingtonian with an artistic heritage who began a hand-dyed sock yarn line a little over three years ago. The seed formed on her overseas adventure (a rite of passage for many New Zealanders). Working and living in London in 2009, Tash was fortunate to work with the lovely Alice Yu of Socktopus fame. At the time, Alice had a yarn store in London, and working there, Tash was exposed to the beauty and wonder of hand-dyed yarn. Nothing like this existed in New Zealand at the time.

London was a place of enormous creative inspiration for Tash. Her flat became a meeting place of creative types. A dream began to form: “A dream to open a yarn store full of beautiful hand-dyed yarn and fibre, comfortable couches and copious cups of tea,” as she says on her blog.

On her return to New Zealand in October 2009, Tash asked her aunt, Kristine, to teach her to dye. Kristine is a very experienced dyer – she was looking after the Artisan Lace brand for her mother, the world-renowned Margaret Stove.

Tash started small with the Knitsch Yarns brand, selling mostly online and at crafty market events. (Knitsch is her knitting graffiti pseudonym). Success was fast coming: her colours were beautiful and very unique, the yarn very well dyed. The sock base, a tightly-spun 100% New Zealand merino yarn, was different to the typical 25% nylon, 75% wool bases of the time.

In 2011, Tash left her job and opened Holland Road Yarn Company, to the great excitement of the knitting community! The yarn store is just as she imagined: In addition to her Knitsch line, she also stocks a range of hand-selected yarns from New Zealand and around the world that match her strict personal requirements for quality and beauty, including Malabrigo, Cascade, Fyberspates and Blue Sky Alpacas (all very hard to find brands in New Zealand). There are workshops on offer, and a regular meet-up of crocheters and knitters to which Tash brings delicious home-baked cakes (see Tash’s blog for further details).

The store is a magnet for all lovers of fine yarn, knitting and crocheting. A customer almost since she first started dyeing, I have amassed a rather (ahem) large selection of her colourways.  In fact, Knitsch Yarns will be the canvas for my version of Audry Nicklin’s Southern skies companion to the Celestarium shawl pattern when she releases it. In a very appropriately-named “Milky Way”:

Let’s hear from Tash in her own words now:

What got you into dyeing?

Sitting in Alice’s store, surrounded by beautiful yarn, I had an epiphany: yarn was what I wanted to ‘do’. Dyeing seemed the sensible option to start – I could start small, work part time and as it transpired, take on responsibility for dyeing Artisan Lace. So I came home from the awful job market that was London in late 2009, and my aunt, Kristine, taught me how to dye Artisan Lace.

How much of an influence were your family in deciding to begin a career in yarn?

I couldn’t have started without them! It was very much a solo decision to go into the business, but it would have been almost impossible to get started without their support and encouragement. It worked out really well that as I decided to get into dyeing, Kristine was looking to get out of looking after Artisan Lace for Grandma.

One of the things I love about your yarn base is that it is 100% New Zealand merino. I love the absence of nylon, and I love that the tight spin makes it a very durable yarn. My socks in your yarn have performed very well. Can you tell us why you chose this base and not the traditional wool/nylon for sock bases?

Doing a bit research before I got started, there was a noticeable gap in the New Zealand sock yarn ranges of 100% merino fingering weight. Playing around with it at the very beginning, I fell in love with the way it took dye. When I found out that it’s the same base as Koigu use, I was sold: the very first pair of socks I’d ever knit were in Koigu. A year after wearing them, washing them and abusing them they were still going strong and were delightful to put on. Four years later, they are still beautiful.

What inspires your colour choices?

Everything! Colour makes my world go round. Sometimes a colour will just pop into my head, other times I’ll see two or three skeins dyed up sitting next to each other and be inspired. I also get really great suggestions from customers and then there are those happy mistakes…

Do you see many orders from overseas?

More and more! In the past few weeks I’ve sent yarn away to Sweden, Germany and a lot to the States. I have some fantastic customers who share the Knitsch love far and wide – they are the best advertising a person can have!

With a successful online business selling your hand-dyed Knitsch yarns, what was your motivation for starting Holland Road Yarn Company? Or was it all part of the master plan!?

Yes. It was part of a master plan that felt like a pipe dream. And yet everything fell into place and I was able to make it happen. Part of working for Alice Yu and travelling with a knitter’s eye through Europe made me realise how badly served New Zealand knitters were. A yarn store should be inspiring and full of joy, a comfortable, welcoming place. Holland Road Yarn Co. is a place I would like to shop – and hopefully others feel the same.

I notice that you have started designing.  Is this all part of the grand plan – is more designing part of the future?

Jackson blanket, design and image by Tash Barneveld

Dream mitts, design and image by Tash Barneveld

Design is a compulsion – try as I might to avoid it, I can’t help but come up with ideas.

Lace or cables?

Lace! I love how cables look but I will always prefer the process of knitting lace. It feels to me like a dance, with steps and rhythm and symmetry.

What’s on your needles at the moment?

Ha, it’s funny you ask that. I’m obsessively crocheting the blanket I started as part of our Crochet Blanket Addicts (anonymous) group. Only because I can’t seem to settle on what to knit next. There’s a pair of Garden Gate socks in Knitsch Sock & Wollmeise, and a Trellis Stitch Scarf pattern by Grandma in Malabrigo Silkpaca on the needles. But the enthusiasm isn’t there – I need a substantial project and I’m waiting to order yarn from the States before I can get started. My biggest problem right now is knitting guilt – I feel awful choosing to knit things in yarn that the shop doesn’t carry. Which is all a very long answer to a very short question!

Do you have any teasers to tell us about what’s coming up in 2013?  Which markets and craft events will you be at so that non-Wellingtonians can get a chance to experience the gorgeous real deal before buying?

Right now I can confirm that I will be at the Creative Fibre Festival in Porirua 25 – 28 April; Wonders of Wool at Frank Kitts Market (Wellington Underground) in May; I’ll be running the Knit Lounge at Handmade in Wellington during Queen’s Birthday weekend; Knit August Nights in Napier 23 – 25 August; and a couple others up my sleeve that I can’t talk about yet.

Here are a few new colourways I dyed in time for Unwind and that are available in my shop:

There will also be new colourways in time for KAN in August, and I’m mulling over a rather absurd plan for another yarn club. Time will tell on that one.

If course there’s always online shopping – I ship absolutely everywhere!

And finally, outside of the yarn world, what are your interests?

I love to sew, and bake. Both things that complement the day job rather nicely. I have a degree in Art History so I love to wander around art galleries as a way to clear my head and find new inspiration.

Thank you so much Tash, for this view into your life and motivation behind Knitsch Yarns and the Holland Road Yarn Company. I for one, hope to continue to be a customer for many years to come.