Vintage Knits Update

Two new yarns from Araucania arrived. What is exciting about these yarns is that they are both hand painted in color coordinated colors. Araucania Pehuen is a worsted weight, 100% cotton, hand dyed boucle yarn. This yarn has lots of texture and color variance. It has 131 yards and is knit at 4 stitches to the inch on size 6 needles. We have this yarn on sale for $14.40 (regular price $16.00). Pehuen is hand painted in Chile, in a number of lovely color-ways. Pehuen is a good choice for sweaters, cardigans, ponchos, scarves and children’s garments.

Here is what was included in our first shipment of Pehuen, click on any photo to see a larger picture:

Araucania Quellon is a very soft heavy worsted chenille type yarn. It is a viscose cotton blend that is hand dyed to match its sister yarn, Pehuen. Use Quellon for sweaters, cardigans, ponchos, afghans, shawls, stoles and scarves. You can also use this yarn for the ever popular Clapotis pattern. The link to this pattern is on our main site under the free patterns section. Quellon can also be substituted for any pattern calling for Touch Me by Muench Yarns. Quellon has 161 yards, and knits at 3.5 stitches to the inch on size 6-8 needles. We have this yarn on sale for $14.40 (regular price $16.00)

Here is what was included in our first shipment of Quellon, click on any photo to see a larger picture:

We also unpacked three boxes of books. All are on the website except a few titles. If you dye your own yarn, check out our new books on hand dyeing. We have in stock A Dyers Garden, Hands on Dyeing, Indigo Madder and Marigold, and The Ashford book of Dyeing. All four books are good, but I am partial for A Dyers Garden. It is summer, and I love to plant, so this book really got my attention. It tells you about what plants to grow that can be used for dying, and has a small section on laying out your garden. It also shows you pictures of how a color/dye will look on several different fibers. It is hard to believe that some of the photo’s are the same color. But, after reading this book, you will understand why the same color on cotton looks very different on wool.

We have 9 more boxes that arrived, and are yet to be opened, they are shipments from Mountain Colors, Louet, KFI and Bryson Distributing. We will get these inventoried and on the website as quickly as possible. Expect to see lots of new yarns, and yarns dyes this week. Of course, if you would like to purchase any of our products, visit our online catalogue.

As you may have figured out by now, we love sock yarn. Our first shipment of Claudia Hand Painted Sock Yarns arrived, and we were blown away. Not only are these yarns really soft, but the colors are beautiful, and much nicer than even we anticipated. We are starting with six color-ways, and intend on adding more sock yarns, and other yarns from this vendor.

Take a look at Claudia Hand Painted Sock Yarns, pictured from left to right in:

Passion Fruit, Caribbean Blue,and Leopard,

and Sunrise, Butter Pecan and Freesia.

On the sock front, several new arrivals are in. First, we now have in stock Regia Reinforcement Threads in nearly every color imaginable. We will try to get these on the website next week. The Sock It To Me shoe Conversion Guide arrived this week and is on the website. It is a really useful tool. It is a laminated card that has all of the necessary measurements to allow you to easily knit the correct finished sock length, from heel to toe, based on an individual’s shoe size. Measurements are included for women’s, men’s, infant’s and children’s sizes. This guide retails for $7.00, and we are selling it for $6.30, 10% off the normal retail price. Last on the sock front, the Fiber Trends Sock Blockers are in stock, look for them on the website soon.

After 10 days without rain, the streets are wet in Western Washington. Along with the rain, came a nice surprise, a large box from Lorna’s Laces. In addition to restocking some sold out colors, we’ve added several new colors, including some nearly solid colors.

Aslan is a new color-way for Vintage Knits. We like the subtle shading of this color-way so much that we added it in four yarns, Shepherd Bulky, Lion & Lamb, Shepherd Sock, and Helen’s Lace. Here are photos of Aslan, click on the photo for a larger view of this yarn.

Here is Lion & Lamb in Red Rover and Bittersweet:

The final yarns in this shipment were Shepherd Sock in Navy, Tickled Pink, Red Rover, Turquoise, and Flamingo Stripe. At first glance Tickled Pink and Flamingo Stripe look the same, but they are very different. Flamingo Stripe has two colors, light and dark pink. Tickled Pink has shades of pinks and purples. Flamingo Stripe is not a typical variegated yarn, it will knit into stripes, and Lorna’s Laces will donate 20% of all proceeds from the sales of this color in Shepherd Sock yarn to breast cancer research.

From left to right the colors are: Turquoise Tickled Pink, Red Rover, Turquoise, and Flamingo Stripe.

We have a new clearance section at our online catalogue. Look for discontinued yarn colors, special purchases, odd balls, and items we are no longer carrying. Right now, you can find Filatura Di Crosa Brilla. This is a great yarn for summer. It is a shiny plied yarn, made of 58% viscose, and 42% cotton. Brilla normally sells for $7.00 per skein, and has been reduced to $5.25, which is a 25% discount off the regular retail price. Remember that our discount coupons can be applied to sale and clearance items for additional savings!

We are really excited about new products coming to Vintage Knits soon. We will be carrying a new hand dyed yarn line, Claudia Hand Painted Yarns. The order has been placed, look to see it on our website within two months. We are starting with the sock yarns, and will be adding more of Claudia’s yarns soon.

Check out our book section. We have lots of new books, including the very popular Favorite Socks book from Interweave Press. This is a great resource for the sock knitter. It has twenty-five sock patterns that were originally printed in Interweave Magazine, along with a few new patterns. Most of the patterns are from out of print issues of Interweave Magazine. Even for people like me, who have the magazines going back several years, it is really a pain going through years of stacked up magazines to find sock patterns. This is a handy reference, with their best sock patterns in one place. Favorite Socks is on sale for $20.70, which is 10% off the normal retail price.

On the notions front, take a look at these cute tape measures:

Something really nice just arrived from Mountain Colors Yarns, it is Mountain Goat. This yarn is very soft, and made of 55% mohair and 45% wool. It has 230 yards per skein, knits at 5 stitches per inch on size 6-8 needles, and we sell it for $18.90 per skein (normal price $21.00). Mountain goat will make a really nice sweater. It has a firm twist, so there should be no splitting issues, and of course, it comes in all of the beautiful Mountain Colors color-ways.

We have 5 color-ways in stock, and will be adding more color-ways in the future. Here are two of the color-ways that are new to our shoppe, Crazy Woman and Indian Corn:

Also in stock is Evergreen, Ruby River and Winter Sky. We will try to get this yarn on our website within a few days. In the meantime, if you are looking for this yarn, contact us.

The WEBS Bamboo Interchangeable Needle Sets are no longer available. We have been informed that the manufacturer who makes the bamboo needles will no longer supply WEBS with the needles. WEBS posted the details about this situation on knittersreveiw.com. The post is located in the “needles” section. It appears that this is a situation of a larger competitor forcing out the little guy. In any event, WEBS is trying to find another supplier for their needles. Until then, the needle sets are no longer available. Our last few sets sold out immediately. These are really nice sets, I hope they find another supplier.

What a name! This is our great new sock yarn from South West Trading Company (SWTC). SWTC is know for being innovative, and TOFUtsies lives up to that reputation. This yarn is comprised of 50% superwash wool, 25% soysilk, 22.5% cotton, and 2.5% chitin. Chitin is a fibre made from shrimp and crab shell, that has antibacterial properties.

TOFUtsies is variegated and comes in 15 wonderful color combinations. We just received our sampler packet, 2 skeins of each color. This yarn is so soft, we immediately thought we should order more. We will have more stock as soon as we receive our next shipment. Here are pictures of the colors, click on the pictures for a larger look.

one skein is needed for a pair of socks. It normally retails for $16.00, and we sell if for $14.00 per skein. To purchase TOFUtsies visit our online catalogue.

We restocked our WEBS bamboo interchangeable needles, and they sold out within two weeks. When we went to reorder, they only had two fabrics in stock, one of which is not particularly pleasing. So, we placed a very small order with the fabric that we like (flower kit). This shipment should arrive in about a week. They are having issues with fabrics. We were told that it will be at least a month before they get new fabrics. At this point we do not know when WEBS will actually have the new fabrics/kits ready for shipment. Also, the fabrics may be completely different. As soon as they have the sets available for sale we will order more.

For you lace knitters out there, our shipment of Brown Sheep Cotton Fine arrived. We ordered 26 shades of this yarn. If you like fine knitting, this yarn is lovely. It is 80% cotton and 20% merino wool. It has 222 yards and knits at 6.5 stitches to the inch on size two needles. Not all of the colors are on the website. We will get to this as soon as possible. Right now, we have a long list of pictures that need to go on our website.

Also, our shipment of Poetry in Stitches Kits arrived. About half sold out quickly, but there are still kits left for you to buy. It is really funny, how we can order a product from Norway, and it arrives faster than many of our U.S. orders.

Someone emailed me to ask if the yarn in the Poetry in Stitches Kits are the same as specified in the book. For anyone else who is interested, the answer is yes. These kits are imported from the manufacturer, and arrive prepackaged, with the exact yarn used in the book.

We have a few new notions, including a cute needle gauge, and ball winders. Here is a picture of the needle gauge:

It is solid brass, and sells for $15.00.

Other new arrivals:

A nice shipment of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Bulky arrived. Although I prefer knitting with fine yarn, we are beginning to stock some heavier weights. Like all of their yarns, Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Bulky is very soft. We ordered seven color-ways of variegated yarns in this weight. We may later add some solid colors in this weight.

Last, but not least, for all of you sock knitters, a large order of Lana Grossa Meilenweit sock yarn arrived. All colors are on the website. There are some nice bright colors, and more subtle colors suitable for men’s socks. One skein is needed for a pair of socks.

It’s been awhile since I last posted. There’s a lot of work to do, and stocking the shelves takes priority over the blog. I recently went to the Northwest Needle Arts Market, and saw some familiar faces that I have not seen for some time. I ordered lots of goodies. Ten color ways of Noro Kureyon and five color ways of Silk Garden should be here any day, along with new pattern books for these yarns.

For felting fanatics, I ordered 17 different colors of the new Ella Rae wool yarn. It is 100% wool, 220 yards, and is perfect for felting. This yarn is soft, and less expensive than other popular felting yarns. We also have the Noni felted bag patterns in stock. They will be up on the website as soon as possible. Here are pictures of three Noni bags:

In September, expect to see Bryspun, Brittany and Hiya Hiya knitting needles. For lace knitters, there is a shipment of 27 colors of Brown Sheep cotton fine yarn scheduled for September delivery. At the very end of the market, I ran into the sales representative for Joseph Galler yarns. There was one yarn, the Peruvian Tweed, that was so soft, I kept squeezing it. It is a dk weight yarn, made of very soft wool, in natural tweed shades. As soon as this yarn comes in I will put a picture of it up on the website.

On to other news . . . we finally put our Jamieson’s Shetland yarns on the website. At least we thought all of the Jamieson yarns were on the website, until we found another box of these yarns sitting under a table (where the box had no business being). Not all of the pictures are on the website yet, but for many of the yarns we now include the full color cards. So, until all of the individual yarns are photographed, click on any yarn with a photo, and there should be a link to the full color card for that yarn.

We are still working on getting the rest of our patterns, books, and kits online, but we are making progress.