Now that we’ve purchased our subscription, I can let you all know that the sKNITches Cinema Club is open for enrollments for the period Jan-Apr.
You won’t be disappointed, here is my haul from the last club.
I first came across sKNITches at The Loopy Ewe and immediately bought up four skeins of their self-striping Syncopation.
Then, a few months ago, a friend tipped me off that the sKNITches Cinema Club was open for subscriptions and I jumped.
September: I am the Arm
The Theme:
It’s a Cinema club, so each month’s yarn and goodies is based on a different film. Each month comes with a popcorn box (very cute touch), a little movie poster and a row of ‘admit one’ tokens.
September’s film was Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, October was ET, November was Cast Away and December was Little Shop of Horrors.
The theme was really cohesive and you could tell that sKNITches worked really hard at making everything that was in the package was related to the theme and it really made the club a lot of fun.
The Yarns:
September contained a GORGEOUS colourway called ‘I am the Arm’, made up of a range of reds and black on a 70% superwash, 30% silk base. Just fantastic.
October was a self-striping colourway called ‘Phone Home’ made up of brown, pink, white and blue on a superwash merino base.
November’s base was 50% superwash merino, 50% tencel, in a great beachy colourway called ‘Wilson’ made up of browns, sand and blues.
December’s was a self-striping colourway called ‘Feed Me Seymour!’ on a superwash merino base.
November: Phone Home
The Goodies:
Four months meant four gorgeous skeins of yarn and associated booty. The first month contained a stitch marker and some popcorn shaped mini soaps. The second month contained a glow stick, reeces pieces, and a wee halloween candy bowl/container. The third month contained a set of seaside tea light candles. The fourth, my favourite month, contained a pair of walking, chattering teeth, a wee venus fly trap (no one tell Aussie Customs, though), a candy cane and a little flower stitch marker
The Price:
The club cost $165, plus an extra $7 for postage to Australia. It’s one of the more expensive clubs that I’m currently a member of, but I do think it was good value.
As I mentioned, you could tell that a lot of thought and effort went into the packages each month, plus they were posted with delivery confirmation.
Two of the four yarns were what I would consider premium yarns. Actually, the silk content of ‘I am the Arm’ bumps it up into the luxury yarn category for me. As someone who dyes self-striping yarns, I think that the superwash merino being self-stripers makes them premium yarns, too.
The extras were nice. I really love the popcorn boxes and they’re being recycled into our fathers’ Christmas hampers this year (along with movie tickets and treats) but the rest? I LOVED the final month but I wasn’t that keen on the candles and the rest of it was kind of disposable, to me, but they really came together into a fun package that has been the highlight of my mail box each month.
November: Wilson
The Conclusion:
For my money, the club was great value.
Any communication I had with sKNITches was prompt and polite and very professional. The range of yarns was a delight to experience, the colourways were appropriate to the films they were supposed to represent (although Pants thought the Wilson colourway should have been more… volleyball coloured - I’m glad it wasn’t!) and the extras were thoughtful and interesting.
The fact that one of the colourways was self-striping and it’s more or less the perfect club for the Spiraling crew.
When do signups for the next one open?
I just learned that I had won a prize in the Loopy Ewe DIC Baby KAL. Does that mean I can add ‘award winning knitter’ to my resume?
I’ve had a few skeins of Baby pass through the doors of the Spiraling workroom, two of Happy Forest and one of Blue Lagoon. The Happy Forest became an (award winning!) Woodland Shawl and a wee stocking and the Blue Lagoon is on it’s way to becoming a Red Emperor.
I wore the shawl to a family dinner in Glasgow and pants’ cousin (who we were staying with) raved over it. She loved the colours and the size (it blocked out to 6 x 2 feet) and showed me her favourite skirt that matched it, so I left it with her as a thanks when we left. She’s told us that she’s worn it to effusive complements since.
The Swatch:
Using 2.5 mm / US 1.5 needles, I achieved a gauge of 9.5 stitches, 15 rows per inch.
The Knitting:
I’ll be honest, I HATED knitting with this yarn. It was like knitting twine and I kept pulling out weird fibrous bits that felt (and passed the burn test) like plastic. It was really just the great pattern (and, admittedly, the fabulous colours) that kept me knitting.
The First Wash:
The first wash turned this yarn into the miracle yarn. It bloomed beautifully, the yarn fluffed up and became soft, so soft. It blocked in an insane way, too, going from about 5 x 1.5 feet to over 6 x 2.
The Wearing:
The shawl has found a new home and I only managed to wear it a handful of times, without washing. I wore it on a long-haul flight (Singapore to London) and it kept me toasty warm, despite the laciness of the pattern.
The Price:
At $22.50 a skein, it’s not cheap, but it’s not prohibitive, either. Each skein is 4oz and 700 yards, which is enough for a decent shawl. For my woodland, I used about 1 1/3 skeins and it was enormous. When you consider that my beautiful, huge shawl that’s made someone so happy cost me around $30, you can’t really go wrong.
The Conclusion:
Even though it was a bit painful to knit with, the end result made it all worthwhile. So worthwhile, in fact, that I’ve just cast on another project in another colourway and I’m considering using my winnings (a voucher for The Loopy Ewe to buy more of the gorgeous green Happy Forest colourway to recreate my woodland shawl.
I won this gorgeous yarn last year in a competition on MaiaSpins (the blog of one of the owners of Tactile Fibre Arts), and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
At the time, I was a non-knitter with an aesthetic interest in sock knitting I was offered fingering or sport, took the thickest, easiest to knit option, and when she said that it would be naturally dyed, I expected blah, washed out colours that would end up in the back of a drawer somewhere, never to see the sight of knitting needles.
I realised my mistake when this gorgeous skein landed on my doorstep.
The Swatch:
Using 2.5mm / US 1.5, I achieved 7.5 stitches and 10 rows to the inch.
The Knitting:
Fantastic! Sport weight makes whipping up a pair of socks a comparitive breeze and watching the colours spiral around as I knit was more than enough to keep me interested. The yarn is soft and sproingy and a pleasure to knit.
The First Wash:
No real noticable change, I washed and ironed them before I gave them away.
The Wearing:
Still gorgeous, I gave these socks to my mother for Christmas last year and they’re still looking as new. The yarn is showing no signs of wear, the colour is as vibrant as the leftovers that have never been washed and they still fit like, well, a sock.
The Price:
This pair was the magic price of $0, but other sock yarns from the Tactile website are around the $30 mark. I have some of their gorgeous merino tencel (the superwash merino sport isn’t available on the website) and it’s beautiful. I recognise that $30 is a LOT of money to pay for a skein of yarn, but for beautiful yarn, naturally dyed in such gorgeous colours, it’s absolutely worth treating yourself. That said, I’m looking for the perfect pattern for this skein, probably not socks, so that I can get the best use out of it.
I wouldn’t buy enough of this yarn to make a sweater or skirt, but a single skein is an affordable indulgence and the Tactile crew are expert posters.
The Conclusion:
This yarn is a solid performer, a great base yarn combined with the good feeling of natural dyes, all enhanced by the superior dye job of the brand’s owners. I love it and would happily knit and wear their fibres more or less all of the time, if only it were in the budget.
I recently bought some really gorgeous Perchance to Knit sock yarn that I can’t wait to knit up.
The first skein is called Columbia:
and the second is Peony:
I bought mine at the Loopy Ewe and each skein came with a matching crystal stitch marker, which I’ve cleaverly managed to obscure in my photos.
I’m taking the skein of Peony along on our travels and hopefully one of us will manage to get it knit up into something gorgeous.
The Yarn Yard.
Another wonderful Scottish dyer, this time based outside of Edinburgh, The Yarn Yard dyes all manner of beautiful yarns and fibres and also stocks nifty gifts and tools.
At this point, I feel I have to admit to already making a purchase of some yarn and fibre, which is winging it’s way to me as I type, but if I had an unlimited fibre budget, I’d be adding to my cart the 008 sock yarn, probably in Beautiful (100% BFL) or Caber (75% wool, 25% bamboo). I’m not really an understated, grey tones kind of girl, but something about this one really calls to me:
And some more gorgeous merino/tencel fibre in this yummy pink and black. Truth told, I can’t be 100% that I didn’t already buy this one, it’s right up my alley:
Old Maiden Aunt.
We’re off to Scotland tomorrow, which naturally means plenty of research into indie fibre artists we may encounter along the way.
One of the first I discovered was Old Maiden Aunt, based in Glasgow.
In an ideal world, I’d be buying up her Superwash Merino / Bamboo Sock in Neptune (drool):
While I was there, to save on shipping, I’d also throw in a skein of Superwash Merino Sock in Bumbleberry:
And one in Icarus, which strangely makes me think of Nick Cave:
If I weren’t about to embark on a delightful overseas jaunt, I’d be shelling out big time at the brand new Tactile Fiber Arts Store. I will confess to buying a skein of their gorgeous Merino-Tencel Fingering last week, I’m hoping it arrives before we leave next week so I can cast it on during one of our flights.
That said, if I had that mythical million dollars, I’d buy myself some Merino Tencel Roving in Thunderstorm:
And then some beautiful BFL roving in Kelp:
Shockingly, in all my years of spinning and fibre arts, I’ve never spun BFL. I think it’s about time I remedied that situation.
All images property of Tactile Fibre Arts, used with permission.
If I had endless reserves of cash, I’d buy up big at sKNITches.
I recently indulged in a few of skeins of Syncopation when they arrived at TLE. Three skeins, in fact, and I’m glad I did.
I bought Loopy’s Red Socks, a TLE exclusive:
Planetary:
Wildest Strawberry:
The best news, though? The sKNITches Cinema Sock Club has reopened for membership. I signed up quick sticks.
