Category: Yarn Love

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Customer Love: Silk Chiffon Ribbon Bag

Andrea found my stall at the recent Waltham Abbey Wool Show, and purchased a skein of Silk Chiffon ribbon.

It obviously inspired her to create with it immediately, and she kindly sent me a picture of her work:

Silk Chiffon & Patchwork Handbag

It’s a knitted body with a patchwork lining. I think it looks fabulous!

She said to me about the piece:

“It was just the one skein, green at one end and pink at the other. The bag is 8 inches across by 7 inches deep, and I used every last scrap of the skein!

It’s nice to knit with, it frays a little as you go, so you need to pull off the frayed bits as they build up under your hand, but no different from knitting with a mohair type yarn in that respect.”

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Customer Love: Silk Artwork

Lorraine is a textile artist working on the Isle of Man and wrote to me recently. She’s incorporated some of the silk fibres I sell with other silk products and produced a wonderful piece of artwork representing Coral Under the Sea:

Coral Under the Sea - Lorraine Cleasby

I think that this is just lovely and a totally innovative use of Silk fibres, cocoons & carrier rods.
It’s currently hanging in a IoM Gallery.

 

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Customer Love: Unbiased in Recycled Sari Silk

I do so love when I get what I call a “Customer love” e-mail. So, when I opened this one from Teresa, it was rather exciting!

She purchased 6 skeins of Recycled Sarisilk and has turned it into a very beautiful “Unbiased”

She said:

“I used the original pattern for the bag, but added an extra triangle to sew into the front, and a square to sew into the back to include a flap.

I had a gold tassel which I thought went well with the colours, and I made some flowers on my flower loom and sewed them on adding a button fixed on with some gold thread.

The bag is a tiny bit on the large side, so if I did another, I would probably make it a little smaller.  In the skeins I received, there was a great deal of the saffron colour (2 thirds in one skein) and as the spin was quite thin, I put 3 strands together and made a case for a mobile phone, with a small flower for decoration and a button to close.

I have to admit that I cheated a little on the last bit of the handle. I only had the bright saffron colour left, so I used a permanent marker pens to make the yarn a darker colour!”

Personally, I think it’s stunning.

Teresa made the same choice as I did when I made my Unbiased (Oh so long ago!) in adding extra panels at the mouth. Looking at her’s, the current stash of sarisilk I have makes superb knitting;  it makes me want to grab a few skeins from the shop stash and make up another one for myself!
Teresa's bag made from sari yarn

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Two shops become one

Fluffenstuff is now moved into Fibres Exotica. I’ve just got to take some (far) better pictures of the yarns (I’ve re-sized all the stitchmarker pictures already) and away it all goes!

Uniting the shops is good from the perspective of lowering admin overhead, but sad, simply because Fluffenstuff had its own creative personality and a slightly different mission statement to Fibres Exotica.

However, Exotic is what you make it… and given that I’ve been fooling around with random dyeing techniques on some of my cheap experimentation yarns again (to get myself back into remembering the techniques), and I’m eyeing up at the huge stash of undyed yarn (in all manner of fibres!) and thinking about what I want to do with it, and given the inspirational videos I’ve been watching until far-too-late o’clock at night making me want to be creative, and also given that I’ve got a finished kitchen and dyeing is again a possibility, I generally see uniting the shops as a good thing.

After all, no point dyeing yummy yarns just for me eh? Taking it just to shows is all well and good, but if it’s not in the shop, how is it going to make other people happy and become beautiful things?

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Now Stocking Soak!

You may have seen if you follow my Twitter or you “like” my Facebook page that I’ve  started to stock Soak

Using silk is luxurious, and although it is a strong and hardy fibre, it does need a little TLC when the time comes to wash and care for it.

Soak is therefore a natural partner to things made with silk and love. It’s a low-foam no-rinse eco friendly formulation made by fellow crafters that care about their fibres. Primarily made for hand washing with minimal effort to best effect, you can also use it in the machine.

I’m so excited about this product that I’ll be slipping a Minisoak  into the next 20 orders, so that people can try it and love it too!

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One of our designers is in the news!

I was chatting with Suzanne the other day, & she mentioned that she is going to have a design in Yarnwise next month!

Yarn Wise Magazine preview

It’s good to see her getting more acclaim, her patterns are inspirational and original. If you get a chance, do check it out.

& the pattern pages on Ravelry for you to see if you don’t get the magazine:

 Marrakesh published by Yarnwise

and also

Stormy Seas published by Amirisu
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Revamping my yarn names

Just a quick note for my past customer’s reference (As well as making sure I remember this too! 😉 )

One thing that I felt needed doing for a long time is giving the yarns I sell a more consistent set of pretty names.

A few are staying the same (After all, Recycled Sari Silk is known as that universally, regardless of who is selling it!), but most of the others I am renaming because the old name was either a bit clunky, was meaningless or it sounded too similar to another yarn’s name.

So, as my silks generally comes from India, I’ve picked (mostly) Sanskit words.

As I’m also going to be revising the patterns (both free and paid-for) to match, as well as updating Ravelry, I thought handy table for translation would be required for people with existing patterns & yarn labels!

Previous Yarn/Thread Name Yarn Weight & NM Approx Yardage/100g New Yarn/Thread Name
2/20’s Weaving Thread (Spun Silk) Lace (2/20’s NM) 915 Saliga
2/60’s Weaving Thread (Spun Silk) Cobweb (2/60’s NM) 2750 Jalika
Aleena – “Silk of Heaven” (Spun Silk) 4-Ply (8/20’s) 200 Manjula
Duke Double (Spun Silk) Aran (2/3’s NM) 137 Samraj
Duke (Spun Silk) Double Knit (3’s NM) 255 Rajgan
Duke – Beads/Sequins (Spun Silk) Double Knit (3’s NM) 150 Embellished
Duke Fine (Spun Silk) 4-ply (4’s NM) 320 Rani
Dupion (Reeled Silk) Sport (8 plies of 20-22Denier) 400 Dupioni
Filature (Reeled Silk) Lace (4 plies of 20-22 denier 800 Filature
Kohinoor (Unused Sari Weft) Aran (1’s NM) 80 Kohinoor
Maharaja (Spun Silk) Lace (3/15’s NM) 730 Kiran
Pulled Recycled Sari Silk (Reclaimed Sari Fibre) Double Knit (3’s NM) 150 Tweeded Sari Silk
Recycled Sari Silk – Single & Multicolour (Reclaimed Sari Fibre) Aran (1’s NM) 90 Recycled Sari Silk
Roving Silk (Spun Silk) Double Knit (2.5’s NM) 183 Avani
Sari Silk Ribbon Yarn (Fabric Strip) Super Chunky (~1″ fabric strip) ~25 Sari Ribbon Yarn
Swan (Spun Silk) Sport (2/7’s NM) 366 Hamsa
Throwster’s Waste Yarn (Spun Silk) Double Knit (2.5’s NM) 250 Throwser’s
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Customer Love: Laceweight shawl knitted in Kiran

I do so love it when I get what I call a “Customer love” e-mail.

Helen picked up some of our laceweight silk yarn “Kiran” in Red and used some of it to create this stunning shawl!

'Scarf with French trellis border from Weldon's 1890 and bramble leaf centre'

How Beautiful! She’s looking thorough her pattern books for a couple more lace patterns to finish off the skein, but this one is from Victorian Lace Today called ‘Scarf with French trellis border from Weldon’s 1890 and bramble leaf centre’

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Yarn wrangling and other tangential thoughts…

Just thought that I’d drop a quick ‘blog in, as I’ve been busy yarn wrangling all day.

I started Fibres Exotica because I love silk. Don’t get me wrong, I love working with and using merino, wensleydale, alpaca & cashmere for knitting and dyeing, but there is just something about working silk that is luscious.

It’s not soft like cashmere, buttery like alpaca, or smooth like wensleydale fibres – the reason I love silk so much is because of the the way it takes  colour. Dyed silk is vibrant, it looks almost alive! Undyed silk is even better, it has a lustre and shine that is virtually unbeatable.

This is because of the way silk reflects light. Because the fibre is extruded by the Bombyx mori silkworm as a triangular fibre with rounded corners,  it is effectively a crystal prism.

So, you can just imagine the anticipation I’m having right now, and the joy I will get when I open the 40Kg parcel that’s due to arrive on Wednesday!

Hopefully, as it will mostly be yarns and colours I’ve already had, I can get the majority of it up on the site rather quickly, as it will just be working the numbers.

I’ve got a few new treats coming through as well… decorative silk “strings”, sari ribbon yarn,  sari ribbons and (next month) 4 types of silk fabric.

Why have I been able to order 40Kg of yarn with the utmost confidence that I can and will sell it, and almost certainly need to order more in the summer? Well, apart from my having put myself up for doing 3 yarn shows this year (and hopefully 4 if Knit Nation reply to me as well!) it is all to do with getting the word out there.

After Knitting and Stitching, I worked to take on board the feedback I was given. In amongst some small advertising I took out with a couple of magazines, I did some community outreach work & I got my mailing list in order and so started the conversation rolling again. It all seemed a little quiet, and then suddenly, lots of lovely people started ordering via the website and also eBay. (Thank you!)

I also started a conversation via Stitch London – A call out to Designers and Sample piece workers.

One thing that the Fibres Exotica Stand lacked at Knitting and Stitching was sample knits from freely available patterns that I could display. We also had no patterns of our own either, so there was no “spark of inspiration” available for people.

So, I did a call-out piece with Stitch London 10 days ago and I’m now happily inundated with people like me; people that love silk, that are inspired by its properties and are either wanting to work with silk and knit a free pattern that will help inspire others for me to display, or just dying to get started with designing patterns that work for Fibres Exotica yarn.

All these people want to share their passion for silk with you via me. And I love that because it means that not only do I get to meet a whole new bunch of inspiring people myself, I then get show and inspire even more people with our shared love of silk.

It’s a whole silky little circle of life!