Needlefood!!

I'm so excited! My new yarn has arrived from Needlefood and it is GORGEOUS! I always look forward to actually holding the yarns and seeing all the subtleties in the colour for myself. And these are stunning. I bought Scotty's sunflower (the ochers and umbers) and Kitchen's on fire (the reds and fushias - of course:-).

They arrived beautifully wrapped with little stitch markers on a ribbon binding the top - what a beautiful idea! My own stitch markers:-)

Here's a close-up of the top of the bag and the stitch markers. The whole package is so well presented down to the last detail, it really makes you feel special and valued to get such a super pressie through the post!

Out of the wrapping, the yarn feels so soft to the touch - 80% merino, 20% Nylon. Both these skeins are 4ply/fingering weight and have approx. 352 metres per 100gms. So that should be enough for a lovely pair of socks or a small shawl. I'm beginning to see how lovely sock yarn can be in wraps and lace shawls and I think I will be torn whether to knit the fushia skein into socks, which I would love, or a wrap, which I would also love. Sigh! Choices, choices!

The colour blending close up has so many more colours to it - ochres, green/bluey/greys, red ochres, umbers, siennas - all rolled into one. I just can't wait to see this one knitted up. I will have to choose very carefully as I want all these colours to stand out in their full glory and some patterns can be too busy and kill a variegated yarn.

The Scotty's sunflower was a pleasure to photograph and I managed to get some lovely colour perfect close-ups but the fushia! I always have trouble photographing strong pinks and magentas and you would think with how often I use the colour I would have cracked photographing it! I used a polarizing filter which used to work well on my old non-digital camera but I think it was just a bad combination of poor light and - well, me! I'll have to crack this. Any suggestions welcome:-)

So this is as close to the true intensity of the colour as I could get even though the depth of colour and clarity isn't as good as I would like. But it is really bright:-) Well, it is called 'Kitchen's on fire'!! If you like to look closely at the colours before buying yarn, then it would be worth popping over to Needlefood's site to have a look at her excellent photos - and she has close-ups of all her semi solids and variegated yarns. Here's her better picture of this fushia yarn! (told you it was a lot better!)

What was also a lovely surprise was a free goodie bag with my order as it is their first month of trading. Look! Soak! I haven't tried that yet - another major excitement:-) I know, it doesn't take much, but Soak! Yay!

I also got a little lavendar bag as a moth repellant for my yarn:-) Nice touch and smells gorgeous too. I must also admit the sweeties in the background were pretty much gone by the first day - yum!

These lovely yarns came all the way from New Zealand and were only a few days in the post. And the postage was comparable to UK prices if not cheaper. The yarn prices themselves are very reasonable for a hand painted skein too. It's always easy to forget to look outside your own area for yarns as it's natural to presume it is too costly but international buying is now very competitive and very good value for money.

With all the care and attention to detail and, of course the quality of the lovely hand painted yarns themselves, I will definitely be returning when I need some more Needlefood!