The new shop is working, so I figured I’d use it for today’s update. You can go create an account right now or wait until after you’ve shopped. Either way is good! You won’t lose your order while you’re creating an account. I still accept PayPal, Mastercard and Visa, but no longer accept Discover. There’s a small difference in how the yarn sections will be organized. Each skein of handspun has its own page, even skeins of the same dyelot. I haven’t figured out how to get around this yet, but may in the future.

Check it out!

I’ll try and have the update ready by 2pm EST as usual, but I can’t promise anything, as this cart is all new to me.

There aren’t any worries about buying the same skein as someone else anymore as this cart has inventory control and removes each item once it’s purchased.

This one’s for me. It’s going to have my initials at the bottom edge, you know, in case I wash up dead. I’m altering the pattern slightly from the pattern that came with the kit because I prefer the bottom band of shingle stitch from this sweater which mirros the top half of the sweater. (The yellow gansey was found at Flamborough Marine Limited. ) Mine will be shorter and tighter like the second sweater, also.

266 stitches per row on size 1 needles = boring knitting blog for a while! I’ll try to keep things perky with yarn.

* The initials chart was made with this online generator. A lot of the letters are too Irish-y for my gansey, but mine luckily happened to look pretty normal.

*looks like skulls to me*

I fussed over this pattern quite a bit over the last two nights. I think I’ve finally got it. I was a good 8″ into it last night before I realized if I put the center of the three lines of skulls facing in the other direction, it would make a fabric that looked good from both directions. And it does!

This Henry’s Attic Prime Alpaca yarn is lovely stuff. I haven’t had any splitting and it glides wonderfully on the Addi Turbos without being a slippery mess. The skein I dyed took the dye very well and is now a lovely glossy black. I just hope I split the yarn into proper proportions. 5 oz. is left silver for the center panel and 3 oz. is dyed for the border. ??? I’ve never knit anything like this before so I guess I’ll be finding out soon enough.

Shop stuff:

I am upgrading to a new shopping cart and real time credit card processing. This will mean that no two people will be able to buy the same skein of yarn and the processing of orders will be streamlined for me, which means more time to spin. I’ll let everyone know here and on the site’s home page when the switch has been made, since customers will need to create an account to shop. Once the account is created, you won’t have to enter your shipping info anymore, which will hopefully speed up the shopping process for you. I don’t think the switch will be before the next shop update, because the new shop needs to be beautified and filled with product and I have a lot of spinning to do in the next week. I’ll give plenty of warning about the switch.