giveaway!

***GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED***

It’s February, and what better way is there to share the spirit of Valentine’s Day than having a giveaway?  I couldn’t think of one.  I love you guys!

giveaway on NotYourAverageCrochet.com!

WHAT THE WINNER WILL RECEIVE:

  • 1 pack of 6 Susan Bates aluminum crochet hooks in the following sizes: F-5 (3.75mm), G-6 (4.0mm), H-8 (5.0mm), I-9 (5.5mm), J-10 (6.0mm), and K-10.5 (6.55mm)
  • 1 100g skein of sport weight yarn (100% Merino Wool) in the shade Burnt Terracotta, hand-dyed by the lovely ladies at DyeForYarn

The hooks are my favorite brand of the aluminum variety, hands down.  The yarn retails at $22.67 USD and is VERY soft.  Click here for my previous review of one of DyeForWool’s other yarns.

giveaway prize on notyouraveragecrochet

GIVEAWAY RULES:

The giveaway starts today and runs through the end of March 9, 2015 EST and the winner will be drawn randomly on March 10, 2015.  The winner will receive an email alerting them to their win, and they must respond with their full name and shipping address within 24 hours of the email being sent or else another winner will be drawn.  The giveaway is open to all countries.

To enter, you must do ALL of the following:

  1. Follow this blog (via WordPress, Bloglovin’, or email).
  2. Re-blog this post (or share on another social media platform if you don’t have a blog).  Multiple entries can be earned if you share on multiple platforms.
  3. Leave a comment on this post including the following information: a) how you follow this blog  b) the links to your re-blogged post and any of your shares on other social media platforms.

If all three of these have not been met, you will not be entered.

Please keep in mind that if you are a new commenter I will have to verify your comment before it will appear, but you are entered so please do not comment twice.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

-Hannah

***GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED***

black friday yarn

Some yarn buying happened yesterday, but not in a store. In fact, I don’t think there is a LYS at all in my city. KnitPicks, however, was having a sale (and still is), and it was impossible to resist.

I decided to try a new yarn, hoping for some motivation and inspiration, and the Hawthorne line caught my eye. The Hawthorne yarn is a fingering/sock weight yarn and is composed of 80% superwash fine highland wool and 20% nylon, and every colorway is gorgeous! I hope it’s soft, too, because I got 6 skeins.

Here are pictures of the colorways I purchased:

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Aren’t they lovely? I can’t wait to receive them and get to work on some projects!

Have you ever tried this line of KnitPicks yarn? If so, what did you think?

That’s all for today, I think. Thank you for stopping by!

new project at last

After months of inactivity, I am excited to say that I am finally about to start a new project.  My yarn order arrived today:

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It’s all KnitPicks yarn in their Brava Bulky line, which is their really soft and cheap acrylic.  There are 6 balls of Cobblestone Heather, 1 black, 1 white, 2 cream, and 1 Avocado.  Hopefully that will be enough for my project — I’m upsizing a crochet pattern I found on Ravelry and so had to guess on the amount of  yarn necessary.

I will be really impressed if you can guess what I’m making with this (because I’m not going to tell you yet!).  Hopefully it will go by relatively quickly and nyac can get back in the swing of things.

Thanks for stopping by!  See you again soon!

themed yarn & projects

A few other lovely bloggers have posted lately about getting color inspiration for their yarn colorways/combos from books and movies.  There have been a few projects of mine that have patterns based on books/movies (check out my Hermione hat from Harry Potter, my Harry Potter scarves, and my Luna Lovegood scarf, also from Harry Potter; can you tell I love Harry Potter?), but I don’t think I’ve ever bought yarn in a book/movie inspired colorway before.  Until now, that is.  Check out these beautiful Hunger Games themed yarns from Etsy:

District 12 2-Ply Sock Yarn from BrazenStitchery

District 12 2-Ply Sock Yarn from BrazenStitchery

Effie Trinket Nymph Sock Yarn from supernaturalyarns

Effie Trinket Nymph Sock Yarn from supernaturalyarns

I bought both of these very different colorways and am planning on making a reversible hat with them (probably with this knitting pattern from Purl Soho).  It will represent two very different characters in the Hunger Games trilogy (Katniss and Effie) that come from opposing worlds but who are both good people in the end.  To me it symbolizes cooperation, peace, and the triumph of good, etc., etc…

If you haven’t read the Hunger Games books, I highly recommend them.  They get a little bit teenage-girl-y occasionally but definitely NOT in a Twilight saga kind of way.  The story in the Hunger Games books is about a young girl who is strong in the face of overwhelming danger and misery, and about the horrors of war and fighting for what’s right.  It’s dark and horrifying and moving and inspiring all at the same time.  I also really like the movies based on the first two books (the third one comes out next year, I believe), although they seem to downplay the horror/violence and over-stress the romance parts a bit, sort of diluting the general message a bit in my opinion; if you really want the full message, go for the books!  These would probably be good books/movies to allow your teenage kids to read and then discuss with them afterwards.  I say teenage kids because the third book is super-extra twisted (as if the first two aren’t twisted enough), and I’m not sure I’d want my young kids to read that one, if I had any kids.

So anyway, what do you think of the yarn combo above?  Have you ever made projects inspired by books/movies or bought/dyed yarn that has been inspired by them?  If so, what?  I think it’s a really cool concept and makes projects just a little more meaningful when they are attached to stories you enjoy.

I also bought these beautiful stitch markers on Etsy from the writer of the blog ruth plus two:

Glass/bead stitch markers

Glass/bead stitch markers

Well, that’s all for now, I guess.  I’m making some fingerless mitts for a coworker but I’ll share them when I’m finished — it shouldn’t be long.  Thank you so much for stopping by, and happy holidays to you all!  If you are traveling, please stay safe!

Dye For Yarn Merino/Baby Camel yarn review

The lovely ladies at DyeForYarn/DyeForWool very kindly sent me a hank of yarn to review here on my blog.  They did not pay me for my review, so everything written here is my honest opinion about this yarn.  The yarn is their Merino/BabyCamel fingering weight yarn in the colorway Dyeing Rose (click here to be taken to their Etsy page for this specific yarn, in all the lovely colorways!).

first impressions

The yarn shipped very quickly all the way from Germany!  It arrived in a beautiful hank.

reviewhankIsn’t it gorgeous?  Here’s a close-up of the tags:

reviewtagsYou can see that this single-ply fingering weight yarn is made of 55% Merino superwash and 45% baby camel.  The hank is 100g and 480m (525yd).  These hanks are currently selling for $25.13 USD, which is a very reasonable price for the yardage you get and the fact that this yarn is hand dyed and everything.

Here it is after I used my new ball winder to wind it into a handy cake (and I should mention that there was not a single knot to be found in the whole hank):

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working with this yarn

I knitted a hat with this yarn (more details on the specifics in a bit), and I very much enjoyed the experience.  The yarn is soft (a pleasant but not necessarily common attribute in wool yarns), and it has a beautiful, ethereal halo.  There was a little shedding of fibers during the knitting process, but it was not bad at all — it didn’t even make me sneeze and it didn’t get fuzz all over my clothes like some yarns do.  Since I used the magic loop method, I pulled the first/last stitches of each half of the hat tightly to try to avoid ladders up the sides of my hat, and the yarn turns out to be very strong.  This makes it a higher quality yarn in my estimation, since other single-ply yarns I’ve used have been pretty easy to pull apart.

the knitted product

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The hat pattern is called Plume Beanie and it is free to download on Ravelry.  It has a very long ribbed edge which is meant to be casually folded/pushed on top of itself, and a lace pattern that is not too complicated.

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I went up a couple of needle sizes to obtain the correct gauge, although I think I still slightly undershot it and would use one more size up if I made it again (details here on my project page).  Even so, the finished hat is amazing and the pattern was the perfect choice for this yarn.  There’s even over half of the ball left, so I’ll be able to make something else too!

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the verdict

This is definitely one of the best fingering weight yarns I’ve ever used, if not THE best.  The next time I need some more fingering weight yarn, this Merino/BabyCamel yarn by DyeForYarn will probably be what I go for (perhaps in another beautiful colorway, or maybe I’ll try their other yarns, too)!  The owners Nicole and Cordula are so nice and prompt, which only adds to my desire to shop with them again.  To you dear readers I say give it a go — it’s worth every penny!

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I hope you enjoyed my first official yarn review, thank you so much for stopping by!