Vintage Knits Wool Shoppe is having a huge end of the month clearance sale. We need to make room for new inventory. We are offering a 20% discount off orders of more than $75.00 (excluding tax and shipping charges). Use this coupon code during checkout: 4ee2ccfb96
This sale ends on March 31, 2012 at 9:00 p.m. pacific time. The coupon is good on your entire order, including our already reduced prices. Visit our online Store to make your purchase.
Continuing our obsession with sock yarns, we have restocked some of our Claudia Hand Painted fingering weight yarn, and added a few new colors. If you haven’t tried this yarn, you are missing out on a really nice yarn. This is the same base yarn used by Louet “Gems.” It has a very even twist, and makes sturdy, but very soft socks. We have also used this for scarves, capelets, and baby sweaters. We tried to pick variegated colors that are a bit different from colors that we stock in other sock yarn brands. Here are the new colors:
Holiday Greetings! …
from the staff at 
We send out this reminder every year about holiday shipping. Right now we are current with all of our orders, and do not have any backlogs. Orders are usually shipped within two business days of our receiving them. Many orders are shipped the next day, and some the same day, it just depends on how busy we are. We ship orders Monday through Friday, and are closed on the weekends. The delivery estimates on our website start from the shipping date, not the order date.
Christmas is just a few weeks away, and to insure that you receive your Christmas gifts in time, you need to choose priority mail (or first class if that option appears) during checkout. The shipping estimates on our website come directly from the USPS website, but, we have found that their estimates for parcel post delivery are wishful thinking at best. We have found that during this time of year, parcel post shipments can take two weeks. Paying a little more for priority mail insures that no one is without a present on Christmas morning.
We notified our customers about the sale later than we intended, so we have extended the sale for one more day. Take 10% off all orders placed through November 29, 2011. The sale ends at 11:59 p.m. eastern time tonight. Use this code to receive your discount: 141af826a6
One day only! 10% off all orders on November 28, 2011. Use this code to receive your discount: 141af826a6
The discount applies to all merchandise, even clearance and our already reduced items. Only one coupon can be used per order. This coupon applies to new orders only. Visit our online store to see what’s new and to place an order.
As many of you know, there has been much “volatility” in the yarn industry for the past year or two. Many tried and true favorites have been discontinued, such as Mission Falls 1824 wool and cotton yarns, in addition to higher prices for the remaining wool and cotton yarns. Several factors have lead to the higher wool and cotton prices, including an increasing worldwide demand for natural fibers, and flooding and drought in India, which is one of the largest regions for cotton production. These price increases are now being passed onto us at the retail level, and as a result, you can expect to see the prices of cotton and wool yarns increasing a bit.
Another yarn that has “bit the dust” is one of our favorites, Manos Cotton Stria. This is what we nicknamed our “bumpy” yarn. We still have a good supply of this yarn in stock, but, if you want it, you should buy it before it’s all gone. While we cannot find an exact replacement for Cotton Stria, we have found a good alternative. We will be replacing Cotton Stria, with Classic Elite’s Seedling. Seedling is a machine washable organic cotton yarn, and is part of Classic Elite’s Verde Collection of eco-friendly yarns. This yarn has the same wonderful texture and softness as Classic Elite Sprout but in a lighter weight. We have pictures of Sprout on our website, and this blog. This will give you a good idea of what Seedling looks like. We expect to place our order for Seedling this week and if it’s in stock, we should have it online by mid-November.
Okay, we have had this box of yarn sitting here for more than three months, and have finally opened it, so it is still new to us. How did we let the season go by, and let this yarn sit? Well, one reason was that I unexpectedly had a foster child placed with me at the end of June. This was my first and last experience at being a foster mother. It is a lot of hard work that I was commandeered to do to help out a really good friend of mine. So, trying to run two businesses, take care of several dogs, and now the addition of a three and a half year old child meant that something wasn’t going to get done. You guessed it, all of the new yarn just sat, boxed and unopened. The “little one” is no longer in my care, so we are going through the boxes of unopened yarn one by one.
The first box had several colors of Sprout, a 100% organic cotton yarn. Sprout is from Classic Elite, and is part of their earth-friendly Verde Collection. If you are concerned about the environment, and are implementing organics into your life as I am, you will love Sprout. Here are two pictures of Sprout:
As you will see, Sprout has a nubbly texture. Sprout is a heavy worsted to bulky weight cotton yarn. It is made of one strand of cotton, with a thread twisted around the cotton, which gives it the nubbly look. Sprout knits on size 10 needles, making it the perfect yarn for chunky, quick knit, really soft garments. To see all of the colors of Sprout that we stock and to purchase the yarn, visit our online store.
Okay, I frogged the Kureyon Socks. I really tried to like this yarn for socks, but after ripping it out and starting over several times, I decided that this yarn is better suited for something else, as it is spun too unevenly for my taste for socks. When knitting with size one needles, I certainly need something spun more uniformly. I’ve knitted for more than 30 years, and trying to make socks out of this yarn was not worth the aggravation! I know that all of the people who love to make socks with this yarn are fuming right now. But, I can only tell you of my honest observations (and frustrations) while trying to knit a pair of socks with this uneven, and easily tangled yarn was. For socks, stick with the known reliable sock yarns such as Regia, Shepherd Sock, Claudia Handpainted, Bearfoot, or Louet Gems. For a lovely colorful shawl or scarf, Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn works just fine.
So, what do I do with this skein of yarn? I went to Ravelry, and did a search on Kureyon Sock yarn, and found that many people were making shawls and scarves out of it. They seemed to like working with this yarn on larger needles. I found a lovely free shawl pattern, called Multnomah. Here is a picture of Multnomah:
It is knit from the top down in garter stitch, with increases at the beginning and center of the shawl. There is a feather and fan border that you begin once the width of the shawl is complete. It’s called a shawl, but is more of a short capelet, as it only drapes 19″ at its deepest point. I’m knitting mine on size five needles, and I am increasing the pattern to be a full shawl. It’s going to take a while to finish this. If I were making the original size, I would have already started the feather and fan border, but for the larger size, I still need to increase another 50 or so stitches before beginning the border. The total stitches are in excess of 300, so it takes some time to see any progress. This is not the best picture of the shawl, as it’s unblocked, is still on my needles, and the corners are folded over to fit the picture, but here is what I have so far:
I’m going to put this aside for a few weeks to work on two Christmas presents/projects that are quicker knit items.
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