Written by Sally Barret of Knit Sally Knit

FEATURED SUPPLIER! – Sugar Hippo Luxury Handpainted Yarn

I love the name of this shop, it just filled me with excited anticipation before I had even looked at it and when I did have a look around the shop I was not disappointed. Sugar Hippo has a fabulous collection of sock weight yarns which is its predominant stock. There are some stunning and unusual colourways, the Precious Merino Silk Sock Yarn ‘Firebolt’ for example with its vibrant oranges and reds is so bright and vivid I almost felt the need to wear sunglasses to look at it! Another of my favourites is ‘Red Steel’ from the aptly named ‘Lush’ line of yarn which is Merino/Silk/Cashmere blend which is painted with crimson, silver and a hint of gold. Sugar hippo also stock lace weight, DK and aran hand painted yarns and it’s all British wool. The shop is run by Allison a 40 something mother of two with a passion for all things yarn related, by day she is an Office Manager in a primary school and by night she hand paints her beautiful yarns. I love the fact that Allison also confesses to having a huge stash of yarn, a woman after my own heart (but don’t tell my husband!) ;-)

FOLKSY FINDS! – Spring is in the air

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Knitting and Crochet Tips – Ravelry.com

Today I wanted to tell you about Ravelry which is a free online resource for knitters and crocheters. It is like Facebook but for yarnies. Once you join (it is completley free) you have your own little area called ‘My Notebook’ in which you can save details about projects you are working on and include photos. You can store detailed records of your yarn stash, including such info as where you bought it and how much you paid.

You can add other Ravelry users as ‘Your friends’ and you can join groups, I for example joined a group called ‘The Staines Knitting Group’ and as a result we now meet up every week on a Tuesday in the local pub and knit and crochet (come and join us if you are near by) .

Ravelry has an extensive pattern and yarn library that you can search through. If for example you fancied knitting or crocheting a particular pattern you could search on Ravelry and see all the other people that had made that item and it would also show you any yarn substitutions that people had used instead of the intended yarn which is highly useful if say the original pattern is in Debbie Bliss and you wanted to see what it would look like in stylecraft! If you see a pattern you like you can save it in your ‘Queue’ to make at a later date. With over a million members you can imagine the wealth of information that is available to you. Recently I knitted a scarf called ‘Lady Eleanor Stole’ when I looked up this scarf on Ravelry it told me that 2385 other people had knitted it! It also told me that 840 people knitted it in Noro Silk Garden and 11 people knitted it in James C Brett Marble Chunky.

You can even keep details of what knitting needles and crochet hooks that you own and what knitting or crochet books or magazines that you have or would like to own in the library section!

It really is a wonderful, wonderful place for any knitter or crocheter and is my second favourite place on the web after Folksy :-)

Happy knitting and crocheting :-)

This article was kindly written for the Folksy blog by Sally Barret of Knit Sally Knit