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.
There are some designers whom I admire hugely, and some whom I just want to sit and absorb knitting knowledge from, and some whose stars have shot so high into the knitsphere that I’d be awed just to meet them. But there is only one designer that I genuinely like so much that I want to sit down and a pour a nice cup of tea, and spend half an hour knitting with her each week. And… I do!
Brenda Dayne produces Cast-On, my absolute favourite knitting podcast and the most relaxing half-hour in my week. She is (as I was until a couple of years ago) an American expat living in Britain and, in between her interesting and entertaining pieces about knitting and spinning and dyeing, she also paints pictures of her home in west Wales that take me straight there. Cast-On is an absolute delight.
And even if I weren’t a fan of Brenda’s, I’d want to show you this design for the name alone, but her Brother Amos Hellfire Lace Socks are worth knitting not just because of Brenda, and not just because of the name (Hellfire..? Lace..? How did those two words end up side-by-side?!?) but because it is a gorgeous design. I love the way the lace flickers up the leg (what better to keep your feet warm as winter sets in?), and I know the stitch pattern would be interesting to knit without being too daunting.
And they’re beautiful, aren’t they? Just beautiful!
These socks call for a yarn that lives up to their fiery name, and I think they’d would really… (ahem!)… glow in the warm colours of Ball of Fire or Sunset Over a Stormy Sea. Don’t you?
Celeste yarn in Ball of FireCeleste yarn in Sunset Over a Stormy Sea
Now, let me just stop here and give you fair warning that I am about to tell you that the holidays are around the corner.
I know, I know. That last post — the one right there below this one — has jack-o-lanterns in it and I know it feels waaaay too early to be even thinking about breaking out the holiday decorations and baking cookies and wrapping presents and… But we are a special breed, you and I. We are fiberistas. We don’t just rush out to the stores and buy our gifts at the last minute. We make gifts — each gift unique, each stitch fashioned with love for those people we care about most in the world, and who understand just what a hand-made gift means.
And that kind of gift-giving takes time… which is why, for the likes of you and me, the holidays really are right around the corner! So to get your gift-giving ideas flowing over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to share some great patterns for quick holiday gifts.
And let’s start with something from Kate Gilbert, who designed the incredibly popular Clapotis scarf (with 16,395 projects listed on Ravelry!). But my eye was caught instead by her beautiful Marina Piccola socks. I just love the way the simple pattern so perfectly evokes ripples across a water’s surface. And I think it looks like a quick but really interesting knit for holiday gift-giving.
You know this pattern would really shine in a rich colourway such as Desert Wine, but I’d love to see these how these socks came out in a more variegated yarn such as DayLilies or Plumberry. I think the combination could be quite stunning.
Stella Yarn in Desert WineCeleste Yarn in DayLiliesCeleste Yarn in Plumberry
Wait…! You’re confused? Nobody likes green? Well, that comes from a story that a friend of mine tells, of a time when she popped into her local yarn shop to buy some green yarn to knit a gift for a friend. But she couldn’t find any green yarn — not any — so she asked where it was. And the reply came without a moment’s pause, “We don’t sell green because nobody likes green.”
Every time I dye green, I feel like such a rebel. Or… wait! Does dyeing green make me a nobody? It’s so confusing!
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And, just in case it’s true and, really, nobody likes green, I dyed some blues too. Because everybody loves blue… don’t they?
Clockwise from top left: Celeste fingering weight yarn in Faded,
