Beads Archives - The Loopy Ewe Blog

Fibernymph, Into the Whirled, Beads, Buttons and More!

by Sheri BergerMarch 18, 2013March 19, 20136 Comments

Happy Monday to you! I’ve been playing with beads all day. (Ok, not playing. Working. It’s all work ….) We have some beautiful new colors of beads that went up tonight, in both the 6/0 and 8/0 sizes. Adding beads to projects just seems a little magical to me. Not much work to it, but it adds so much to the project. I’ll talk more about beads in a future post. For now, I know you popped over here to see What’s New in the Monday Update.

Miyuki Beads from Caravan – Miyuki Japanese Seed Beads are renowned for being some of the best on the market. They are extremely uniform and consistent in both size and color, and they also have slightly larger holes than Czech beads, making them easier to use. We re-stocked the colors we were low on and added in 8 more colors of the 8/0 beads (typically used on laceweight yarn) and 20 more colors of the 6/0 beads (typically used on fingering weight yarn).

Into the Whirled – We have our first batch of Roving from Into the Whirled, and it’s just as gorgeous as the yarn colors were! (But this time you get to spin it the way you’d like the colors to work together.) This Polwarth Combed Top takes the dye beautifully and the slight coarseness of the fiber makes it easy to spin. (Shown here in Walla Walla.)

Buttons – Lots more buttons and re-stocks from JHB and Buttons, Etc. You’ll find silver, gold, wooden, pewter, and coconut in all colors and sizes.

Fibernymph Dye Works – Hand-dyed by Lisa in her Bounce yarn base, which is 80% Superwash Merino and 20% Nylon (perfect for socks, although these colors are also beautiful as shawls and scarves, too.) Shown here in Primordial Sea.

The Loopy Ewe Totes – more of our clear plastic totes in the Accessories size (for your scissors, stitchmarkers, point protectors, tape measures and darning needles), the Project Keeper size (big enough for yarn plus pattern – a great way to store future projects so you can remember what pattern you had in mind when you bought that yarn), and Red Project Totes (great for one-skein projects like socks, mitts, hats and small shawls).

Have fun checking out the new things, and we’ll be on the webcam tomorrow, packing your orders up!

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Learning Something New?

by Sheri BergerMarch 8, 2013March 20, 201319 Comments

Sometimes knitting seems pretty simple. After all, there are just two stitches (with many variations) and it’s all about making loops with string and sticks. But it amazes me how many different looks you can come up with using those ingredients. Endless possibilities. One of the in-store classes we had this semester was Double Knitting, taught by Cricket (whose awesome felted bag pattern was published in Interweave Knits last fall.) Here are some of the scarves in-progress from the class participants. Aren’t they beautiful? Sometime I’m going to need to try double knitting. The scarves have the pattern on both sides and are thick and warm.

When is the last time you tried something new with your knitting? I have a lot still to learn. Right now, I’m working on my first true beaded shawl. It is easier than I thought it would be, but it does slow down my knitting a bit. This is Storm Warning, done in Hand Maiden Casbah with Miyuki Beads. The skein of Casbah has a little less yardage than the pattern calls for, but there are directions on weighing your yarn and knitting to the middle with the first half. I like patterns like that that let you make good use of all yardage. These kinds of patterns are also great for handspun, where you’re not sure exactly how many yards you have, but you sure want to use every inch of it. Speaking of beading, have you seen the Celestarium pattern? The beads are positioned to replicate the view of the night sky from the North Pole. Amazing.