Ultraviolet Yarns!

The Ultraviolet Yarn shop is now open for business!! At the moment, I have supersock fingering weight yarns for sale - both semi-solids and variegateds, as well as some stitch markers:-) Each skein is individully painted so if you are looking for more than one of any colour, just let me know as I can paint up a 'batch' for you.

I also want to introduce a wider variety of yarns such as silk blends, 100%silk, and worsted weight 100% merino as well, once I get my new yarn order in. But for now, there is a selection of yarns in the shop and tomorrow I will be adding more.  Hopefully it will be brighter day for photographs because today was a bit of a washout and all my pics have had to be dumped:-(

So, hopefully tomorrow you will see all these yarns in the store. Please do pop in and have a browse around and tell me what you think. I'm just finding my way around Etsy right now and I'm sure I will tweek the shop appearance and blurb as I go but, to be honest, I needed to take the plunge or I'd be 'tweeking' till this time next year:-)

Til tomorrow.... yawn.... time for some shuteye........

Yarns for sale!!

Well, I didn't mean to be away so long! Between dyeing and knitting my cowl I've been a busy bee:-) But I've got some new yarns finished, lots more bright semi-solids planned, some designing going on and a finished knitted cowl to show you this week, so its all been happening lately!

But I've also got to the point where I'm running out of blank yarn stock so I'm going to have to use what I have left to sell so I can afford to buy more - and keep dyeing! So, from now on - including today - all yarns I post will be for sale. Each skein will be $28 and I will try and work out a paypal button to make life easier. ETA: yarns now available in my new Etsy shop - Ultraviolet Yarns

Please note there is only one skein of each colourway of today's yarns so it will be on a first come first served basis. 
ETA: All sold now-sorry!

But I'm happy to dye anything in the yarn gallery in as many skeins as you need - just contact me to let me know what you fancy.

'Sweetgrass'

First up, a lovely subtly variegated grassy green I've called 'sweetgrass'. This is a bit yellower than the emerald I knitted my Veyla mitts with but I really like it. I'm thinking nice subtle tonal stripes for socks or autumn mitts would work well.

'Rich Plums'

And my favourite of this bunch, the rich plums mix - definitely my kind of colour palette this one.  It's a more subtle blend of harmonious plummy tones giving quite a soft feel overall. This would go with most of my autumn/winter wardrobe!

'Cranberry and Plums'

And then, using the same colours as the plums, I painted this skein with definite bands of colour rather than blending the tones. Quite a contrast - much clearer and more definite colour sections. It will be interesting to see how this knits up in contrast to the other one.

I've also added a yarn gallery on Flickr which has all the colour schemes I've dyed so far to the sidebar on the right - near the top - due to a request to see them all together. I'll keep adding all my new yarns here so you can find them easier than trailing through blog posts:-)

Oh, its all exciting! I've actually taken that first step!! Wish me luck!

Grande Final giveaway!

Well, we have arrived at the last week of the giveaways and this week is going to be slightly different - a grande giveaway:-) ie, lots of prizes for you to win! So many of you have entered my competitions and have given such thoughtful answers, thank you, and I feel bad that only a few can win, so this week I am giving away 5 prizes so there is a much better chance of everyone winning something!!

But more on that in a minute. First, let's announce the winners from last weeks competition, picked totally at random by John from the textile blog:

The winner of the Aquamarine semi solid yarn is..... Kate!

And the winner of the Deep Orchid is..... Purple-power!

Well done to you both and if you could contact me at labellehelene@btinternet.com with your contact details, I will get the yarns off to you in the post as soon as possible.

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So, this weeks competition is going to run a bit differently. Instead of everything being listed today, the 5 prizes will be listed one a day from this monday to friday so you can leave a comment on all or just the ones you want to enter. If you want to enter all, please leave a comment on all. As this will mean a lot more comments, I have kept the question simple for this week. All you need to say is what you think each particular yarn would look nice knitted up as - or woven, crocheted, etc, - and maybe a link to a pattern? That's all.

'Peacock Blue'

And today's yarn is called 'Peacock Blue' - 100gms of fingering supersock yarn 75% merino, 25% nylon. This is a rich mix of deeper blues and greens that will knit up in a much softer variegated yarn. With the tones being so similar, there will be less tonal contrast of lights and darks with this yarn but the colours will blend nicely, drifting from blues to greens and back again.

This would be lovely as a rich wrap or shawl, like Ysolda's new Damson shawl or the Feather Duster shawl by Susan Lawrence - who designed the forest canopy shawl I'm still knitting:-) My personal favourite is the Peacock shawl designed by Jae Koscierzynski - just lovely but requires an awful lot of yarn to make and I imagine you would need a lot of free time too! Gorgeous though and well worth it! It's on my to-do list - sometime!!

I've also been meaning to try the lovely glove patterns by Julia Mueller such as Gordian, Entangled stitches, and Glows. Somehow a deeper, richer colour for Autumn seems more appropriate as the weather changes.

'Gordian' by Julia Mueller

Although I just love the red, I can imagine these in a lovely petrol or peacock blue too - all that complexity of the cables - mmm! Yes, another one for my to-do list! You can see the subtle tones in the reds so a semi-solid or subtle variegated would work well for this. Maybe the peacock would be a little too strong in variation but maybe not. It all comes down to personal taste:-)

All this weeks competitions finish on sunday night - 6th September - and I will draw all the final winners first thing monday morning. You can enter all or as many as you like, remember, so good luck to everyone!

Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball!

Oh. My. God! How yummy is this? It's by Schoppel-Wolle and these graded colour balls are the new Zauberball sock yarn. Look at the richness, the intensity of the colours! Heaven would be a Schoppel-Wolle shop with a nice, comfy knitting chair and an endless supply of free yarn:-)

This one is called tropical fish. I love the way the colours are so bright - they really are that bright - and it is so soft to the touch. It makes me realise that the noro I'm working with right now doesn't feel quite so nice. I feel like I've slipped back into the 80's with a rainbow colour palette and I'm loving it! Nothing subtle about this yarn!

This one is called Fuchsia. As you know a lot of my projects have fushia, or fuchsia if I spell it correctly, in the title so this will be quite at home. I'm thinking stripey socks, or stripey cardi? It may be a bit luminous to wear as a top - even for me! I think I will just live with them for a while till I can think of the best use for them. No rush except my impatience to see how they knit up!

But the range isn't all bright and in-your-face colourways. I also love the more subtle Almond pictured here. The more subtle tones are just heavenly. So rich and close in tone, you know they will just drift into each other as you knit and it will be gorgeous without trying. Can you tell I'm smitten?! And there are 9 colourways in all with more subtle tones like cranberry, denim and blackberries. There's a green one I like too - very jade - but I haven't found it in a UK shop yet.

At £9 a ball, it's an expensive 'smitten' so I will have to save up my pennies or learn to dye my own! I got my zauberball at modern knitting - it's a very user friendly site and so easy to navigate around. And talk about quick delivery! I only ordered them yesterday at lunchtime and they were here this morning!! Well impressive!

I also decided to try out some Addi circulars. I've been using my knitpicks 40cm circulars for my socks but they seem a little small in length so I thought I would try the 60cm length, and also see what the fuss is about Addi's. But silly me will have to wait as I forgot to order two! So lets hope that modern knitting will be as quick on the postage tomorrow;-)

Talking about socks.......

I've got this far with my noro sock. I was following a knee high pattern for the increases but today when I tried it on, it doesn't seem to be the best fit. The problem with changing the increases is that they start about 4-5" above the heel. That's a lot of ripping back. Will this sock ever be knitted?!!! Do I care any more? ;-))) Well, yes, but it's turning into more of a fiasco tester for new techniques!

If I rip back that far, then I should really test out that new heel so I don't have quite so obvious a ridge on the short row wrap and turns. And if I'm going to rip back to the heel, I really should do something about the line that is forming down the side where the colours switch. It's creating an obvious bump and I now realise from looking at a few knee-high patterns that it should be down the back of the leg - like a seamed stocking - rather than where it is naturally forming at the side. And possibly using a slip stitch.....

But I could be here forever on this sock so I'm thinking change the increases and fix all the rest on another pair. But will I be happy giving these as a present or wearing them myself, knowing I could have fixed them to make them a much better sock? Oh, perfectionist gene you are a pain!

Thank goodness, I have more sock needles on the way:-) The Zauberball is waiting to be knitted and I don't think I'll be waiting for the noro socks to be finished!

Noro kureyon sock yarn

Today my lovely yarn arrived in the post - not the Adriafil baba for my Urchin however. That is still somewhere on its way. But this lovely sock yarn for some stripey socks. I was smitten by some mad greeny/blue stripey socks I saw knitted up and although I tried to get the same colourway, it was all sold out. But to be honest, all Noro is lovely! I don't normally treat myself to the very expensive yarns but I really wanted to try this sock yarn out.

From the front, these yarns look muted, as if they are all subtle colours and tones but look inside the end and it holds a full spectrum of yummy colours. Much more rainbow like. I bought these two colourways seeing a knitted swatch at Pavi yarns but I also saw some knitted socks in these colourways too so it gave me a good idea of how these are going to turn out. The top one is colourway 92 and the second, colourway 95.

I also discovered to get the lovely stripes I want I will have to knit one stripey band using the outside end of yarn and the other from the inside end. That way the stripes will always contrast. How I will then match the socks to each other will remain to be seen. I imagine I won't have enough yarn to be totally accurate so maybe I should just go for deliberate inaccuracy! Or use the yarn for a shawl - there are some lovely stripey kureyon sock yarn shawls. Too many choices! You'll have to wait and see what I decide.

Now one of these balls is for a present and one is for me. Can you guess which one? To be honest, knowing that I love all colour and especially all bright and contrasty together, you may be tempted to go for the first one - but no! I am actually preferring this more subtle limey green with hints of fuchia. I do appreciate tonals and complementaries too. In fact I just love colour.

When it first arrived though, I thought I'd made a bad choice for my first noro purchase. It looked so bland and I had to check that yes, these were the colour numbers I ordered. No pink anywhere and today being a dull day here, not much oomph in the colour department either. Until I looked inside. Aaah. Now that can keep a girl happy:-)

Oh happy day! Tomorrow I can be knitting some stripey socks:-) I might even have to put a hold on Urchin and I was loving knitting that. Watch this space...... If I don't return in the next few days, I've been sucked into noro sock world. Will I ever escape?! Do I want to? :-)

Self-striping sunflower

It's really interesting how this yarn is knitting up. It was difficult to tell in the previous small sample but now I've knitted up a bit more, you can see how the colours are meandering around creating lovely stripes in the fabric. It's a lovely subtle contrast with the greens complimenting the yellow ochres and browns. Yum. Very subtle for me ;-)

That's what's so fascinating about hand dyed yarns. How will they knit up if the colour is painted just so. And if the length of skein is different you just add new variables. And do you weave, knit or crochet it? Crochet tends to eat yarn so I try not to use it with variegated's and if you can get the right pattern knit is lovely, but weave I think shows these complex coloured yarns off the best. Again you mustn't kill it with over complex patterning but I think this is something I would love to explore more sometime soon. Playing with colour could keep me occupied forever!

As for the sunflower scarf, I think I have quite a bit to do yet! It has grown, a little, since the photo but I just knit away on it as I can, a few inches at a time and we're getting there. But the pattern now seems so easy! What was I making all that fuss about before? No idea. Maybe a solid year of knitting is actually improving my skills and it takes something like this for me to notice. Isn't that the way, going back to old stuff. You see just how far you have come but only when you really look!

Anyway, the scarf has been suffering these last few days as I have impulsively started a new project. A much bigger knitting project than normal and I've been furiously knitting away to feel like I'm making any progress. But more on that tomorrow when I'll take some pics for a sneek peek! - if I knit enough tonight, that is:-)

Black Opal

At last the hand dyed yarn has arrived! Under a week from the US - not bad! All excited, I opened the package to find this lovely wrapped parcel inside. What a really lovely way to present your yarns and it makes you feel a bit special.

Now to the close-ups! My photos look pretty similar to the ones on the etsy shop from yesterday - maybe a bit darker? Anyway, it is lovely and soft to the touch and the blending very subtle - which I like a lot.


I may have to rethink what to knit with this yarn though. I am now thinking Pecan Pie may be too busy for the subtlty of the yarn blending, hohum. I've been looking on Ravelry but nothing seems to fit as yet. Any beret pattern suggestions for a subtle variegated yarn?


I originally intended to buy merino but I liked the colours of this one more. Being superwash wool, at least it will be harder wearing and still have a soft-to-the-touch feel. Also as this is a fine DK/Sport thickness, the verity beret, even at the large size would, I feel, be a bit too small.


Until I make up my mind, at least I can enjoy the beauty of 'Black Opal'. Sometimes the hanks of yarn are lovelier than the knitted outcomes! It is weird how some dyed yarns just work knitted and some so don't! That's probably why I like subtle blends more - they can make a statement without having the shocking clashs of randomness. I know you can use two balls alternately to soften the effect but at £12-15 a pop, that can get expensive!

So, off I go to be selective with my lovely yarn......

Variegated yarns and Pecan Pie

Just wanted to show you my newest purchase from Craftywoman's Etsy shop - isn't this lovely yarn? I found her site through Ravelry and spent a happy lunchtime browsing her lovely hand dyed yarns. I'm thinking this could be a fortuitous substitute for my sister's new hat. As it is a variegated yarn, I'm going to have to consider the hat pattern very carefully as I want it to show up the randomness of the dye in the hat - so maybe not as complex a pattern as the rose red, with YO's and cables! Is it to be another final, final verity? I'm not sure.


I bought this on the 1st of May and am impatiently waiting for its arrival from the US! I think once I see the yarn in reality it will be easier to see how to best use it. I have saved a beret pattern by Nancy Merchant listed on Knitty.com's Fall 2007 called Pecan Pie which is free if you want a challenge and a lovely hat!

Pecan Pie beret by Nancy Merchant.

Look a the lovely use of the variegated yarn contrasting against the plain. Looks quite a firm hat though! After the last few warm days we've had here, maybe I should be thinking lighter weight knits!

Come on yarn! Again, I must find patience......and my sister will have a little bit longer to wait!