Baltic souvenirs

I am back from my short trip and am back to spinning and listing new yarns. But before I forget, here are some of the things I brought home.

First up some gorgeous latvian yarn bought in a small souvenir shop in Riga. I absolutely fell in love with those mittens and have since purchased this amazing book and am planning on knitting at least a few of them. Before I got to the cities I researched the shops online and for Riga I owe my thanks to this blog post. In Tallinn I seem to have missed a good few of them, but found some and bought some lovely wooden hand crafted buttons as well as some thin pencil roving (third picture).
In Helsinki I stumbled into Marimekko! Of course I knew the name, but only from really cool patterns in the 60s, so I was genuinely surprised to see that they are still going and thriving with lots of gorgous shops! They now sell pretty much everything from clothes to bags, to napkins, umbrellas or mugs. However, they also sell fabric by the meter! Most of it was thin cotton fabric at a really high price. As nice as the patterns were, I really wasn't convinced by the quality (think IKEA) and didn't buy any of these. On the other end they did sell some of the heavy weight (bark cloth) fabrics which they also use in their own bags. The patterns weren't quite as exciting, but I still carried home a few meters, including this bright polka dot fabric!







Next up is a shot with a linen fabric as well as cotton and linen lace, the thin pencil roving and the wooden buttons.





In Vilnius (probably my favourite of the cities) I found a linen shop chain, where they sold all types of linen fabrics as well as absolutely stunning linen lace, so I had to get a little collection. :)

New yarn of the month club!

Finally and after much thought I have decided to offer my own yarn of the month club. In case you are unfamiliar with the term: as a member you will receive a monthly parcel of a surprise yarn for a certain period. I decided to start offering 3 month memberships and see how it goes.

These are brand new for 2009 and I will probably keep them in the shop at least for the whole year.

Some info from the listing:

-- What's inside? --

January: One skein of a natural, undyed handspun yarn. This could be soy silk, Organic falkland wool, Merino wool, Wool/silk, Alpaca or another fun mixture. Yardage will depend, but it will always be a full sized skein as seen in my shop.

February: Two skeins (total about 100g) of a hand dyed 50% Merino wool/50% silk mix, bulky weight single yarn with about 150m/160 yards.

March: The big surprise... all I am saying is that it will be some kind of art yarn, it could have beads or be plied in an extravagant way, have mohair locks in it or sequins, perhaps even some crazy trinkets... these yarns will usually be quite chunky and therefore rarely have over 50m (55 yards) yardage.
----------------------------------

Sooooo..... I hope this will be a great gift idea for some people!

Myself I am off to see some fireworks (don't ask me why my town has them on the 1.1. instead of the last night of 2008) and looking at the amount it snowed last night it will be coooold. A good time to wear my massively chunky scarf I have rediscovered this season. :D

Take care!
Veronika

'Sticheleien' craft fair

Recently my little local art yarn spinning group went to sell our yarns in the middle of the Odenwald, a big forest region nearby at a textile craft fair. The fair was amazing and I am so glad to have gone, although I would have usually said it's a little far, but since we went there with our own stall that was a good excuse. :P It was great fun to be there with the girls, it almost felt like one of our usual meet-ups. :)
Above are just some of the things I got, look here for all the details. My favourite buys are of course yarns - the green yarn to the left has been hand dyed with birch leaves to several gorgeous shades of green and the two romantic skeins of a very soft Mohair yarn to the right have been bought directly from the owner of a small herd. I will try to get some roving from him as well so I can spin my own high quality, 'locally grown' Mohair.

I have also been working on another art yarn and will post pictures in my next post.

Have a great Sunday!

Look who just moved in with me!

Frog prince watering can
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

I just had to share this beautiful find....
For quite some time now I was looking for a nice watering can, and trust me it's not that easy unless you like plastik or stainless steel with 90s style wooden handles. Anyway, yesterday I walked past one of the cute local boutiques and found this darling froggy watering can! Isn't he just the cutest? Well, I for one couldn't resist his sweet little eyes.

Plus, he works so well with my new and improved frog prince yarn I just finished, he might even be willing to model it for me. :D

Beads and sequins

Beads and sequins
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Well, well, well.....
I went for some shopping and a ravelry knitting meet-up to Heidelberg and we went to this lovely shop which is sadly closing down. I managed to get some really great beads and sequins which I am sure to find a good use in a yarn for.
In the front are some absolutely stunning real mother of pearl thick but tiny beads.

Yesterday I also got lots of tweed and other wool fabrics, we'll see if they end up being bags or yarns. :P

Glamourous stitch markers from Julridesigns!

Well, I know I shouldn't be browsing online shops anymore as I am moving country soon. Everything I buy from now on is strictly limited and needs to be essential. :P

But still, I think it's time for the next 'shopping' entry!














These gorgeous stitch markers from Julridesigns come in different colours. I especially liked the set on the left, with purple Swarovski crystals... >>Get it here












Or you can even get your very own custom set of stitch markers, that means you'll get 12 stitch markers on a pin, as you can see on the left.
>> Get it here

Other than stitch markers she also sells beautiful jewellery with a difference, so go check her out!

Beautiful stitchmarkers from ballee

This is the first 'shopping' post! In this category I would like to show some great shops online, most of which are directly related to either knitting or spinning. Sometimes I might show a little collection with beautiful things which go together and would nicely match one of my own items :)

Today I would like to introduce some beautiful stitchmarkers to you!

Ballee creates extravagant stitchmarkers, the ones I particularly liked feature little pendants of Saints and are combined with pretty beads.

I've done a little trade and got myself this set amongst others. I quite happily call this the most beautiful set of stitchmarkers I have ever seen! The friendly woman behind ballee was more than happy to adjust the rings to fit exactly the needle sizes I have. They also arrived in some of the most original packaging I've seen in a while, ready for gift giving. :)

Everybody I have shown these to fell in love immediately, so go off and get yourself a cutom made set of absolutely stunning stitchmarkers at http://ballee.etsy.com