In every home across the country this week, the scene will be exactly the same… There will be mixing bowls filled with the most amazing treasures, and pots gently bubbling on the stove. There will be the old favourites and new recipes, last minute changes and quick saves when things go wrong. A pinch of this and a dash of that…
And it’s been no different here. Well… ok, then, maybe a wee bit different here in the SpaceCadet house. Here’s what I’ve been busily cooking up this week…
I know two little girls who are mad-crazy-keen about ballet. They begin dancing the moment they wake up, and they dance all through their day, and they don’t stop dancing until they go to bed. Actually, they probably don’t stop dancing until they fall asleep — I am quite certain they lie in the dark and practice their tondues under the bedsheets until sleep finally steals them away.
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And they would wear their ballet shoes every single day if they could. But they’re not allowed, because the ballet shoes get lost — absent-mindedly set down on the wrong shelf or accidentally kicked under the sofa or sinking slowly to the bottom of the toybox — and are nowhere to be found on ballet day. And so those most-beloved shoes get secreted safely away after each class and the disappointed girls must instead practice their dancing in their socks. It’s not at all ballerina-like!
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I’m always on the lookout to bring you great patterns that would make the most of single skeins of SpaceCadet yarn, and when I came across the Open House Socks by Kate Atherley, technical editor of Knitty and knitting editor of A Needle Pulling Thread, I fell in love them! They’re sweet, romantic, and cheeky all at once — and, as a bonus, each pair takes only about half a skein of yarn. They’d make a great quick-knit holiday gift — perfect for padding around the house on cold winter days. I looked at them and thought, they make me want to… dance!
Wait… Make me want to dance?!? I thought immediately about those two little dancers… I could knit them ballet shoes! I could knit them lovely ballet shoes so they could dance all week whilst their real ballet shoes were safely tucked away. There could be no better Christmas present for them on Earth!
In the dyeing studio, I sat and thought for a while about the perfect colour. I could do them in the standard ballet-shoe pink-beige but… well, while these two are budding ballerinas, they are also little girls who love all the stuff that little girls everywhere love: sparkly and bright and fancy and pink. Plain ballet shoes would never do — if they were going to have custom knit ballet slippers, then they would have them in a pink to thrill their hearts. And I began mixing the dyes…
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I emailed Kate and told her my plan, and she wrote straight back and very kindly offered to help me adjust the pattern to suit these much smaller feet. What a lovely thing to do!
So once I’ve done my gauge swatch and worked out some calculations, I will cast on with this wonderful, crazy pink. And then I can’t wait to share with you my new works in progress!
A dear friend of mine is about to have her baby boy — a little miracle after a lot of broken hopes and heartache — and I am overjoyed for her. So I want to send something special to welcome him into the world. The first thing I thought about, of course, was the colour…
I didn’t want to go with the typical baby pastels or box him into blueblueblue. So I went down to the studio and mixed up a few colours that I thought would be just right — that would be interesting, exciting, but still perfect for a baby boy.
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And when I pulled it out of the dyepot, it was exactly what I had in mind. I’m seeing a little cardigan and a pair of matching booties. And I can’t wait to cast on!
The sea rolls in, and softly out again… leisurely, relaxed, as if it has nothing better in the world to do. Softly in, softly out, and making that wonderful, rich sound — the gently fizz of blue-green SeaFoam melting into the sand.
Each skein is over 100g of Stella, a beautiful and distinctive 2-ply fingering weight yarn in 80% Superwash Merino and 20% Nylon. There are two skeins available, sold separately.
Fiber Content: 80% Superwash Merino, 20% Nylon
Weight: Approximately 3.7oz / 105g (approximately 400 yards per 100g)
Colourway: SeaFoam, 101113-003
Care Instructions for the final item: Hand or Machine wash, Lay flat to dry.
Each item is individually hand-dyed by the SpaceCadet, using professional grade acid dyes which are mixed by hand from primaries. Please be sure to buy enough for your project as the colours may not be able to be reproduced exactly.
SpaceCadet Creations is a smoke-free, pet-free environment.
Please remember that the colours in pictures may vary depending on your computer monitor. The colours in the photos are as accurate as possible.
