Every shop I went into this weekend is decked out for Valentine’s Day: there are hearts and roses and teddy bears and chocolates and on and on… Can I tell you it feels a little silly to me? It really does — I haven’t wanted much of any of this stuff since I was about fourteen years old. …Ok, maybe the chocolate but not in that huge quantity, thank you very much.
For me, on Valentine’s Day, I don’t need anything big and showy. In truth, it’s just about what really matters: the strength of the emotion and the yarn.
The what? The Valentine’s Day yarn, of course. There’s always yarn on Valentine’s Day, right? There should be yarn on Valentine’s Day! I don’t see how anyone could possibly devise a holiday that’s about love and swooning and being swept off your feet and somehow not have yarn involved… That doesn’t make any kind of sense!
So to celebrate Valentine’s Day the way it ought to be celebrated, we’ve put together three absolutely gorgeous Valentine’s Day Mini-Skein Collections. They are sweet and bite-sized, the perfect way to a knitter or crocheter’s heart If you know someone who is might get muddled and give you a teddy bear with Mylar balloons, these Valentine’s Day Mini-Skein Collections are a super-easy way to put them on the right track!
(…Maybe just send the link to this page? Sometimes subtlety can be over-rated).
And if Valentine’s Day fills your heart with anything but love, we created colourways to that have got you covered no matter how you feel about the holiday:
Love Is Forever: a romantic collections of pink, red, purple, and chocolate brown
Envy: a selection of jealous greens, yellows, golds, and browns
Bite Me!: a moody palette of teals, blues, purples and earth-browns
All The Details
Available in limited quantities and only until Feb 14th, but our last ordering day to ship for (domestic) Valentine’s Day delivery is Wed Feb 8th (before 5pm est), so click here to order straight away!
Each Valentine’s Day Mini-Skein Collection is comprised of four 20g (approx) mini-skeins in an assortment of SpaceCadet® fingering yarns in coordinating semi-solid and variegated colourways. Each skein’s yardage depends on the type of yarn — click here for yarn and yardage details. Each set’s colourways are one-of-a-kind and will differ slightly from those pictured here.
Perfect for holiday gifts (or, let’s be honest, perfect for you too!), each kit is made up of skeins that we have hand-selected to go together — not for an exact match, but instead to create a fabulous progression of colours that will work together in a way that’s just stunning! Here, let me show you a small selection…
But hey wait — don’t sit here looking at these pretty pictures while other folks are snapping the kits up. Click here to come on over to the shop and grab your favourites before they disappear!
Autumn is such a wonderful time of year – not just in the colours, but also in the smell in the air, the crisp coolness, the promise of family gatherings and the upcoming holidays. And for a dyer, that’s a fantastic source of inspiration for warm and inviting colour-play. Here, let me share how we interpreted that in our latest Limited Editions Collection, chosen directly from October’s Mini-Skein Club bundles. But first, let me show you both colourway mixes….
Limited Editions
Wouldn’t those Gradient Minis make a perfect Sweater Kit? Oh yes they would!
As brightly coloured leaves fall and the air grows cooler, we Gather Together in the warmth of meals shared and autumn holidays, with family and friends and all the goodness the changing seasons bring.
This stunning set of colourways brings the amazing colours of fall to your next project, flowing from maple reds and golds through to warm rusts and russets, and highlighted with even a touch of purple. Watch the intriguing colour change play across your stitches. And then — because this is a SpaceCadet Start Anywhere™ Kit — the colours of the last skein flow back again into the first!
(Where’s the order button? This kit is exclusive to October Mini-Skein Club members. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
If you’re not in the Mini-Skein Club, don’t worry, we’ve got an amazing colourway for you from our Multicolour bundle.
Set against graphic gray and white, the zing of magenta is a bold addition that makes Twirl stand out.
Available on three bases, until November 21 only
The sweetest shade of bubblegum pink, Bless Your Heart! is offset by warming streaks of gold.
(Where’s the order button? This colourway is exclusive to October Mini-Skein Club members. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
Thankful’s warm and spicy yellows and russets conjure up abundant harvests and happy autumn gatherings.
Available on three bases, until November 21 only
Sometimes you just have to get away, and the maple reds, spiced yellows, and deep purples of this colourway will give you that Quick Escape you crave.
(Where’s the order button? This colourway is exclusive to October Mini-Skein Club members. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
Want Alllll These Colourways?
Our Mini-Skein Club Members get access to all these colourways so, if you’re not in the club, you’re missing out! And not just on the full-skeins here but on all the wonderful bundles of yarny goodness we deliver to your door every month. The Mini-Skein Club is where we really explore colour, letting our imaginations run wild to create ten new colourways each and every month — and our club members get to join in on all that fun, diving right into the colours and trying all of SpaceCadet’s fingering yarns along the way. Click here to join us!
I’ve said many times that I like to approach dyeing as an exploration of colour, and when I stand in front of the dyepots and start mixing colours, I sometimes have so many ideas that my hands can’t keep up. But when that yarn is all dyed and dried, that’s when my creativity seems to disappear on me, because I think that choosing a name for new colourways is the hardest part of all.
Seriously, so hard.
So sometimes, I turn to you guys and the response is always amazing. I ask on social media for help with names and the ideas come flooding in! I don’t always go with any one suggestion specifically, but they always push me onward and get my brain moving again. And that is exactly what happened with both of these colourways. I had an inkling of a name but couldn’t quite get there… and then I asked for help and your ideas were what got my mind into focus, and ultimately brought me to two colourway names that are particularly personal and meaningful to me. Want to see what I chose?
When I dyed this colourway — all muted greens and grays, highlighted with dusky golds — my mind kept turning to Salisbury Plain, the high chalk plateau that is home to countless prehistoric monuments, and which was only a stone’s throw from my home in Dorset. I used to go across it every week, slowing to look at Stonehenge in the morning light, in the setting sun, on cold winter’s days, or warm summer evenings. In the winter and that far north, the sun rises late and sets early, and I often drove past Stonehenge in the dark of night, searching for the silhouette of the stones in the moonlight.
And Salisbury Plain is the ever present backdrop, a quiet tapestry of gray skies and weathered grasses buffeted in the constant wind, of pale golds and wilted greens — the ancient home of stargazers for thousands of years. And now also, a place for time-travellers, those who wander across the Plain in search of those same views, and those same stars, four thousand years on.
For this colourway, I knew I wanted to capture the magical multi-tonal quality of old stone — layers of soft gray, weathered brown, and a hint of palest blue that seem to have come together organically over many long years. And it’s named for one of my favourite stone circles, not far from where I lived in England and tucked down a country road with hardly any fanfare to alert a passer-by that the stones are there.
They may have once stood proud in the sun, but now the Nine Stones circle is tucked away amongst trees, moss-covered and eroded by rains across millennia, too shaded now to ever track the stars. But standing amongst the stones, in the dappled sunlight and the heady smell of wildflowers, I find the circle feels quiet and intimate and… almost gentle in a way that Stonehenge never will. But the heathered colours of the weathered surfaces of the stones tell a history just as ancient. New Variegated Colourways
We’ve got eleven stunning new variegated colourways — including Time Traveller and Nine Stones — to share with you! Want to see the others? Just click here to go the colourways page and scroll down to the very bottom.
You know how it feels when you hit something right out of the park? A little over a year ago, we discovered Knerd and fell in love with the distressed, industrial style of Renee Magee’s super-cool project bags… and when she agreed to create a custom bag for our SpaceMonster Club, complete with the SpaceMonster himself in — wait for it — glow-in-the-dark ink, we were over the moon!
The bags were huge hit with our club members and when I started getting emails and tweets about how everyone loved them… well, that’s when I knew we’d hit it out of the park. And that’s also when I decided I wanted to work with Renee again some time in the future. So a couple of months ago, I asked Renee if she’d adapt the original design to do a SpaceCadet bag for us and, to my delight, she said yes immediately!
Announcing the Exclusive SpaceCadet Knerd Bag
The perfect way to show your SpaceCadet savvy, this bag is fantastic for knitting and crochet projects — large or small — but I think you’ll find a million other uses for it too. It makes a super-cool book bag, a pretty awesome gym bag, even a fabulously roomy handbag (in fact, I’ve been using mine as a handbag all summer long, along with my assistant Jade and even my mum — great minds think alike, eh?). And even though it’s hotter than blue blazes at the moment, dare I say it’d make a fabulous Christmas present?
Ok, here are all the details:
Offered in three colours: purple with dark purple ink, pink with black ink, and the original black with that awesome glow-in-the-dark ink.
Available for two weeks only, we’ll close orders on Aug 31 (at 12.01am EST if you’re into cutting things close). We will be putting these in the new swag shop when it eventually opens but, if you want to be sure to get one, it’s best to order now.
Each bag will be made to order and Renee will get to work on them as soon as the order period has closed, so please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to offer you these fabulous SpaceCadet Knerd bags and I hope you’re squeeing along with me! And, hey, if you love these bags as much as we do, please tweet it out for us, share it on Facebook, or post it on Ravelry? I’d be so grateful!
You would think summer would be a slow time for a yarn business but ours has been incredibly busy, and I realised the other day that I’ve fallen behind on posting our Limited Edition full-skein sizes of our Mini-Skein colourways so this morning — as is appropriate for a hot summer day — you get a bumper crop to choose from! But like all our Limited Editions, you have to be quick — these gorgeous colourways are custom dyed and available until August 5 only.
These are the colourways from May and June’s Mini-Skein Club parcels (if you’re in the club and wondering where the gorgeous colours from July are, they’ll be coming soon, once all the parcels have had a chance to be delivered). As the weather warmed up, we found ourselves in a mood for seaside and nautical colours, and you’ll see that reflected in the colourways we’ve chosen here. So, c’mon, jump on in — the water’s fine!
Full Skeins and Sweater Kits of SpaceCadet® ‘s May and June Mini-Skein Colourways!
Let’s start with the Sweater Kit from May’s Ombre & Gradient bundle. I am so in love with this colour combination!
Shoreline explores all the wonderful colours of that special part of the world where the land meets the sea, and takes us on a journey through seagrass and salt air, right down to the water’s edge.
Watch as the colours change in your hands, flowing from soft seaweed greens through to bright grass green and then morphs into the blue of turquoise waters. And then — because this is a SpaceCadet Start Anywhere Kit — the colours of the last skein flow back again into the first!
(Where’s the order button?This kit is exclusive to May and June Mini-Skein Clubmembers. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
And if you’re in love with that Sweater Kit but you aren’t part of the club, fear not — we’ve pulled one colour out and made it available to you. And it’s gorgeous!
Sea Grass is soft, muted yellow-greens combined with stunning ocean turquoise, offset perfectly by touches of earthy browns.
Available until August 5 only
Ready to see June’s Ombre & Gradient colourway? It’s just as cool and summery as May’s…
The sea’s waves roll gently toward the shore, lifting and rocking the boats along its way, like a soft summer lullaby as the lazy days slip away in endless blues and greens and summer sun.
Sail Away explores all the colours of a summer’s day spent on the water, moving from deep sea greens into stunning bright blues, and then fading out into pale turquoises that disappear into touches of crisp nautical white. And then — because this is a SpaceCadet Start Anywhere Kit — the colours of the last skein flow back again into the first!
(Where’s the order button? This kit is exclusive to May and June Mini-Skein Club members. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
Trade Winds is everything that’s warm and cool at the same time — an overall warm purple that’s rich and intense, shot through with stunning hints of coppery-browns.
Available until August 5 only
Sand Pebble explores the colours of the shoreline — from gray rocks to tawny sand, with streaks of rich copper, pine greens, and deep purples. When knit or crocheted, the colours will flow and blend together to create a stunning, almost-pointillist effect.
(Where’s the order button? This kit is exclusive to May and June Mini-Skein Club members. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
And from the Sail Away Sweater Kit, we pulled our favourite colourway for a full-skein option. Wouldn’t it make a stunning summer cardi?
Tidal Pool‘s blues and greens start out intense and fade away, to capture all the variety and interest found in each of these fascinating micro-worlds.
Available until August 5 only
Clean, clear blue-turquoise that fades away into crisp white, and brings all the joy of wandering barefoot down the beach, stopping to collect little treasures of water-worn Beach Glass along the way.
(Where’s the order button? This kit is exclusive to May and June Mini-Skein Club members. If that’s you, look for an email arriving shortly with your members-only link!)
Our Mini-Skein Club Members get access to all these colourways so, if you’re not in the club, you’re missing out! And not just on the full-skeins here but on all the wonderful bundles of yarny goodness we deliver to your door every month. The Mini-Skein Club is where we really explore colour, letting our imaginations run wild to create ten new colourways each and every month — and our club members get to join in on all that fun, diving right into the colours and trying all of SpaceCadet’s fingering yarns along the way. Click here to join us!
