Advent Calendar made from Art Yarn

I've seen many beautiful things made from art yarn, but I'd never seen art yarn made into an Advent calendar before one of our customers had the idea, ordered one of our Christmas art yarns and made the most beautiful calender from it :-) Let me show you!

Here is the art yarn Maria used:

Deck the Halls

The yarn was 129 m (141 yards) / 91 g (3,21 oz) / about 9-15 WPI, and Maria combined it with Louisa Harding Grace Silk&Wool #1 (Ecru) and #16 (Cranberry) to knit 24 wonderful little bags:

(it should be possible to click & enlarge - there's lots of detail :-)) 

 

Isn't this amazing? And now there's lots of time to plan and make one for next year ;-) (There is even one Christmas art yarn left in our shop, if you're interested)

I think the idea is genius, and Maria tells me her daughter really enjoyed opening the cute little bags each day - who wouldn't, though??

Maria, thank you so much for taking such wonderful pictures, and for allowing us to use them! :-)

Lametta, Soap, and Snickerdoodle Cookies

I've so wanted to post a few Lametta photos, but I was in bed with a bad cold nearly all week. I don't have many pictures, but I'd like to show them to you anyway :-)

 

Did I mention we brought the spinning wheel with us? Here you can see Twisted in spinning action.

We didn't spin the whole time, but quite a lot, and there were always lots of children around, watching, and many adults, too. People were very interested in our yarns and asked many questions, and I for one was a little hoarse after two days. It was a wonderful experience, though! :-) We also brought some knitted and crocheted pieces made from art yarn, just to show people, not to sell. This was a really good idea since art yarns seem not to be that well known in Germany and many people couldn't imagine how things would look in the end, or what you can do with art yarn. Which reminds me: I've been working on a post about knitting with art yarn, which is getting rather large, and I hope I'll find the time to complete it soon.

 

Here is the stitch marker display which I already blogged about, along with some wonderful earrings Twisted made recently. They all contain art yarn or silk fibre, and some of them also feature beads.

This is one of the yarns I spun there, I've already taken photos and hope to list it soon. I'm a little behind with things due to my cold, but I think I might be able to list a few yarns some time next week. I also have a grey one with ribbons, pearls and labradorites, a pink and black one wiht skulls (these were the ones I spun live at the fair), and of course lots which I spun during the weeks before the fair. I am really looking forward to show them and to list them :-)

Here you can imagine rather than see some of the necklaces and neck rings Twisted made for the fair. It also shows the warm light and nice atmosphere of the fair, if just a little.

There are two more things I'd like to share with you: When I was in bed, miserable and sniffing, my day was brightened by the arrival of a parcel: My friend and trade partner Goodgirl sent me two soaps! :-) One was part of a trade from last year, and one she sent because she knew I liked it so much. I was so happy, I still am, as a matter of fact :-) The smell SO good!

The Ice Princess (on the right side) features a piece of yarn I spun for Goodgirl. I promised her two small skeins of scrap yarn and ended up with three because I couldn't decide with one of the themes - and this way I kind of made her invent a new soap, fitting the yarn. I love it :-)

And the last thing I wanted to share is this recipe for Snickerdoodle cookies, which I found on a blog and traced back to where they came from originally. My husband made them yesterday (I helped a little, but since I don't enjoy baking that much and he loves it, it was his project) and they are heavenly!

Lametta Craft Fair - We're SO Excited!

We've been very busy spinning and labelling yarns these last days, Twisted has been experimenting with art yarn jewelry, and we also put up our booth yesterday. Here are some impressions, but I am afraid my mobile isn't good enough to take good photos in bad light conditions, so there will be some room for imagination ;-)

 Nearly all our yarns - labelled, and sorted into price groups. We have 75 skeins - how amazing, we've really been busy these last few weeks!

 After setting up our booth we felt there was something missing. Since Twisted is a genius, we now have a hand painted copy of our logo :-) I am glad we brought that paper table cover!

 Isn't it amazing? Twisted only had a business card, no auxiliary lines, no preparatory drawing, nothing! I love how it turned out :-)

 

 We only brought our red yarns yesterday since we didn't want to leave all our yarns there over night. We put up some beautiful branches of Chinese Willow so the table won't look so naked - I think it really does the trick.

 

 And here's our still quite empty booth which will be filled with all our wonderful creations later today. The fair starts at 4 pm and we're so excited. Please wish us luck and success! :-)

Craft Fair Preparations

The Lametta Craft Fair in Karlsruhe (Germany) is rapidly approaching - and we're up to our ears in preparations! We will be offering our handspun creations, of course, but also hand painted spindles (the making of which we scheduled for Thursday) and hand made stitch markers. I've been working on a good way of displaying them recently, and I finally finished the whole thing yesterday:

It was extremely frustrating to get the hooks into the display case. Some of the hooks were fairly easy to get in, but some others took ages and my hands ached all over afterwards. I still haven't figured out whether the wood was harder in some places than others or if some of the hooks were better than others (or if I was just clumsy sometimes), but it's done and that is what counts :-) Some of the hooks are askew, but all in all I am quite pleased with the whole thing.

I also spun lots of new yarns lately, and I still have quite a number to finish. The shop was going so well last month (THANK YOU, our wonderful customers! We love you! :-)) that we really have to restock. Here are my latest creations:

The photo is quite bad, but since I am in a hurry and there is not enough light outside for better photos, this will have to do for now. I am still in love with flower yarns and the ones with shells, as you can see :-)

Our shop will be closed on Friday and Saturday, by the way, since we're taking all our yarns with us to the fair. We don't know which ones will make it back into the shop, so if you happen to have your eyes on a particular yarn, now might be a good time to get it ;-)

What Became of...?

A few days ago, we received an email which made us very happy: Max, who bought Twisted's Hawaiian Summer Party art yarn, sent us some pictures of what she made from the yarn, and kindly allowed us to share them with you all :-)

Here's a picture of the yarn, a beautiful corespun with 102 m (112 yards) / 106 g (3,74 oz) / 6-8 WPI

Max knitted it into a stunning hat for her daughter, who was actually the one to pick the yarn when she and Max browsed our shop:

Such beauties, both the hat and the girl! :-) 

If you're interested, the pattern is the Rikke Hat by HappyKnits, and if you're on Ravelry, you can see more photos and details on the project here.

Max, thank you so much for sharing this, and for allowing us to share the photos with our readers! You made us very happy once again :-) And please do tell your daughter she looks fantastic and has great taste!