A cold week this week, perfect for snuggling the handknits!  The Rico delivery man braved the arctic temperatures  to bring us some summer cotton goodness!

This pile of loveliness is the new colours in Rico's Cotton Soft DK.  The colours go so well together, I can see them all used in a gorgeous pastel baby blanket!

Rico Cotton Soft is a 50g Ball of cotton mix yarn, 50% cotton and 50% acrylic.  125m in a ball, with a tension of 22stitches and 28 rows on 3.5-4mm needles.

These are the new colours of creative cotton dk (left) and aran (right).  This very popular yarn is brilliant for crocheting home wares - in fact its what I use when I crochet things for the shop.  The crochet mandalas in Crochet Corner, as well as numerous bits that have been in the window are made from this good quality affordable yarn.

A 50g ball has 115m, is 100% cotton and a gauge of 22 stitches and 28 rows on 4mm needles.

Lastly, there is one bag of this brilliant super chunky yarn, with a reflective thread running through.  The picture below is taken with the camera flash so you can see the difference!  It's a lovely grey tonal yarn that would make a lovely hat. A 100g ball has 110m, and a gauge of 11 stitches and 14 rows on 7-8mm needles.  It even has wool content, with 30% wool, 54% acrylic and 16% glass fibre for the reflective properties.  It is very soft  and you can't feel the reflective thread at all, which really does make it  good for warm hats and scarves.

 There are some new patterns in this delivery too, which I'm about to put away in the pattern books ready for the weekend!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Jen
~x~

Happy new year!  Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a good start to the new year.  We had a lovely time here, and are now ready to embrace the new year with as much knitting and yarn as we can cram in!

We've spent the week de-Christmassing the shop, always a big undertaking whether at home or in the shop!  It never all goes back into the boxes it came out of, and at least one item is always forgotten until the boxes are back in the attic (I'm looking at you, felt mistletoe at home!).  In the shop things have been moved around to make way for the new Adriafil delivery which came a few days before Christmas.  There's new shades of a few old favourites, like these new colours in Knitcol, a Dk 100% merino superwash colour changing yarn.

This yarn has 125m per 50g ball, and a gauge of 20 stitches and 29 rows on 4.5mm needles. 

There are also new shades in the chunky weight colour changing yarn Mistero

This yarn has 90m per 50g ball, and is a blend of 53% wool and 47% acrylic.  Its gauge is 14 stitches and 20 rows on 7mm needles.

Two new yarns have also made their way to us, the first of which, WoCa is a DK yarn with an unusual blend of 70% wool and 30% hemp!  It is soft and has a lovely heathered appearance.  

It comes in these 3 lovely shades, blue, grey and a gorgeous mid brown.  There are 110m per 50g ball, and the gauge is 21 stitches and 26 rows on 3.5-4mm needles.

The last yarn is my personal favourite!  Zebrino is a worsted/aran weight yarn which alternates a colour changing stripe with a grey stripe! There is, of course, a rainbow option!

They are beautifully soft and I can imagine making everything with them!  I think it would look equally nice as a jumper or cardigan as it would in a crochet blanket - quite rare I think!

Happy knitting!

Jen
~x~