{"id":9397,"date":"2018-03-22T10:52:04","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T17:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/?p=9397"},"modified":"2020-07-07T13:36:05","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T20:36:05","slug":"all-the-mini-skeins-yarn-tasting-at-edinburgh-yarn-festival-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/2018\/03\/22\/all-the-mini-skeins-yarn-tasting-at-edinburgh-yarn-festival-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"All The Mini Skeins – yarn tasting at Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Mini Skeins at The Little Grey Sheep<\/a> stall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Alexa has the fabulous Knit City in Vancouver, for a home knit show I am lucky to have the top-notch Edinburgh Yarn Festival<\/a> on my doorstep! Since the beginning, I have always brought a Tin Can Knits stall to the show, but this year I decided to do something different and teach classes rather than being a vendor in the marketplace. This was VERY exciting, because it left me oodles of time to shop the show! I was able to chat with many of the yarn producers and dyers, make connections with other designers and industry people and enjoy the Ceilidh too.<\/p>\n

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One of the purchases I was very excited about was a range of colours in Woollenflower’s natural-dyed fingering weight. Jules has dyed on a really lovely base, a woollen-spun yarn made by Polo & Co from French fibre milled in France.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I acquired A LOT OF YARN this year (it really needs to be in all-caps folks, seriously). And what I discovered was that in previous years I had really been missing out on a critical research trip, because I\u2019d been too busy chatting about my own work to look around and focus on the exciting new yarns and products that were available! So this year I basked in the excitement and shopped till I very nearly dropped!<\/p>\n

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Another bundle that made me swoon was this delicious yarn from Germany. Rauwerk<\/a> is a woollen-spun DK\/worsted weight, and I went crazy over those blue shades… And the grey… And the ochre which is dyed by Hey Mama Wolf<\/a>… These were the very first skeins I wound up for swatching!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But my own current interest in woolly and natural dye tones aside, I feel like Mini Skeins were the theme of Edinburgh Yarn Festival this year. Most hand-dyers booths included a great selection of single minis or gradient kits. And many of the producers of mill-dyed yarns offered \u2018little\u2019 options too. Being currently obsessed with colourwork, I felt literally like a kid in a candy store, I wanted to try one of each!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Max was VERY excited about these mini skeins from EasyKnits<\/a> – especially the hot pink, which is his favourite colour!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A small selection of the mini skeins that drew my eye!<\/p>\n

\"Walk
Walk Collection <\/div> <\/div>
\"Little
Little Grey Sheep <\/div> <\/div>
\"John
John Arbon <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Skein
Skein Queen <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Little
Little Grey Sheep <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"20180315-IMG_3734-e\" <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

What patterns work well with mini-skeins?<\/h2>\n

Well… we’ve got a colourful suggestion or three!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Undertone<\/a>, from our book Mad Colour, is a lovely cowl for using up odds and ends and mini-skeins! If you have fingering-weight yarn, you could hold it double in place of the DK weight called for in this pattern.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Twisp<\/a> hat was designed in sport \/ sock weight, so would be perfect for playing with sock-weight minis!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wenlock<\/a> has a colourful yoke that would work using DK weight mini-skeins, or you could hold 2 strands of a sock-weight together while working the colourful yoke section.<\/p>\n

Scrumptious Shetland<\/h2>\n

Another thing that particularly caught my eye this year were Shetland yarns. Because of our current colourwork focus I\u2019ve been collecting colours in J&S, Jamieson\u2019s of Shetland, JC Rennies, and a few other These companies have, for decades, been selling the original mini-skein put-up; 25 gram balls that allow you to collect the wide range of colours that are the required palette for Fair Isle style blending in stranded colourwork.<\/p>\n

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I’ve added to my palette of Shetland ‘jumper weight’ colours. The blanket shown is the Vivid Blanket, which was designed in Jamieson & Smith jumper weight, because of the colour possibilities! I was able to eke 2 squares out of a single 25 gram skein!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lastly, I think that PINK was probably a pretty major theme to my EYF too\u2026 And I\u2019m falling in love with it a little more every day!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I picked out several pinks that I plan to use in the yoke of a brilliant green sweater (next year\u2019s Christmas outfit plan). I plan to make the body and sleeves of this sweater on my knitting machine, and then work a delicate yoke in some of these greens and pinks.<\/p>\n

Do you get a chance to visit a wool show and shop the wide range of delicious offerings? If you haven\u2019t had a chance to try it, I\u2019d recommend you head to a show near you, there\u2019s such an excitement and energy when so many creative businesses and shoppers converge!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Alexa has the fabulous Knit City in Vancouver, for a home knit show I am lucky to have the top-notch Edinburgh Yarn Festival on my doorstep! This year I got to do a little shopping and minis were on the menu!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2970212,"featured_media":9403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[698906785],"tags":[137009608],"class_list":["post-9397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events-and-kals","tag-edinburgh-yarn-festival","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1z4ty-2rz","builder_content":"","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/20180315-img_3747-e.jpg?fit=2400%2C1600&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2970212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9397"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13144,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397\/revisions\/13144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tincanknits.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}