Tangled Yarn Giveaway

How do you fancy winning a shopping trip on us?

To celebrate our 1st birthday we are giving one lucky follower on Twitter the chance to spend £50 on anything in the Tangled Yarn online store.

To win all you have to do is visit the Tangled Yarn website and then tweet what you'd spend £50 on if you were to win. The winner will be selected at random from all those who have tweeted between now and June 30th GMT. Remember to include @TangledYarn in your tweet, a link to what you'd like to buy and #knitting or #crochet.

Qualifying rules:

• must be in stock on July 1st, if not the winner can chose an alternative prize upto the value of £50.
• must be following @TangledYarn to win.
• only one tweet per follower.
• no purchase is necessary.
• the winner will be announced on Twitter July 1st, so keep following it might be you.

It's Tangled Yarn's Birthday

Birthday Celebrations

June is a very exciting month for Tangled Yarn, it is our first birthday and to celebrate we are giving away a Tangled Yarn limited edition stitch marker made by Zephyr Style to the first 100 customers who place an order.

To carry on the celebrations all our customers throughout June will be entered into our prize draw to win a Tangled Yarn goodie bag worth over £40. The winner will be annouced here and on Twitter.

You can also join in the fun by following us on Twitter, where we will be giving one lucky follower the chance to spend £20 on anything in the Tangled Yarn shop.

Echo Flower Shawl

I was very apprehensive when one of the Tangled Yarn Ravelry group members suggested we knit the Echo Flower Shawl as our Spring KAL. I haven't really knitted any lace before, all those yarn overs filled me with dread and then nupps! I'd never even heard of a nupp!

But I have to say after a false start I really enjoyed every minute of this knit. I say a false start because I originally cast on in Malabrigo Lace and found that my tension was a little too tight, so switched to a 4ply instead.

Pattern - Echo Flower Shawl by Jenny Johnson

Yarn - Araucania Ranco in solid PT485

Needle - 4mm circular needle

Started - 1st April 2012

Finished - 30th April 2012

Comments/Mods - I made the smaller of the two sizes given, so only needed one skein of yarn. Coming back to the nupps, I found a very helpful video on YouTube from a lovely lady called Myra Wood, she had a bit of a catch phrase going on "nupps rhyme with soup" so every time I did a nupp that little rhyme would pop into my head and on occasion I would blurt it out to the annoyance of my kids! I used the crochet hook method for the nupps, so rather than doing them over two rows they were done all on one row. I'm not sure I can go into a great explanation as to how to do them, so it is worth checking out the video.

Shilasdair Yarn Giveaway

The Skye Yarn Company have changed their yarn base of their Shilasdair Luxury DK. It feels much softer than the previous yarn and this is due to the introduction of baby camel, combined with merino lambwool, angora and cashmere.

We have in stock 18 shades, all are dyed naturally by Eva Lambert on the Isle of Skye itself. Eva takes her inspirations from Scottish Highlands and this can be seen in each and every skein of yarn.

To celebrate the arrival of  this beautiful new yarn we are giving away two skeins of Shilasdair Luxury DK in Rowan Berry to one lucky reader. To win simply leave a comment (including your contact details) under this post. One comment per person please.

The winner will be announced here on Saturday 31st March, so be sure to check back and see if you have won!


Draw is now closed. 
The winner is Janine, congratulations!

Malabrigo Heaven

Look what arrived at Tangled Yarn yesterday, the 

lovely new sportweight yarn from Malabrigo, Arroyo. Arroyo means brook or stream in Spanish. Like its big brother, Rios, this yarn is spun from super soft Merino wool and it is superwash! 

Arroyo is already proving to be a popular yarn since its launch late last year amongst members on Ravelry, having been used over 400 times! I can understand why, it gives amazing stitch definition and cables simply pop right out! Being superwash Arroyo is a good choice when knitting for babies or small children.

Malabrigo Arroyo Jupiter

Tangled Yarn have in stock 14 colours at the moment and Jupiter shown here is a real favourite.

Cocoon

I have queued so many patterns on Ravelry, but never actually got around to casting on any! My New Years resolution though, is to start knitting through that queue and not add anything new unless I deleted something first or have knitted and finished a project.

Back in December I spotted a lovely cowl and boy do I love cowls, so much more interesting than knitting a never ending scarf!

Pattern - Cocoon Me Cowl & Shawlette by Rose Beck
Yarn - Malabrigo Worsted in Pagoda
Needle - 5mm circular needle
Started - 15th February 2012
Finished - 23rd February 2012
Comments/Mods - It's three patterns in one, with the option of knitting either a cowl, eternity scarf or a shawlette. I opted for the eternity scarf as I had two skeins of Malabrigo Worsted in Pagoda, although I only needed a little of the second skein, I have 65g left over of the second skein. I cast on an additional 16 stitches for this 8 stitch pattern repeat enough to enable me to wrap the scarf around my neck twice and I knit three and a half pattern repeats, which has given me a lovely width. I read the other comments on Ravelry regarding blocking, but decided to wet block using a little Soak and then pinned out without over stretching because I wanted the straighten the cast on and off edges, as they were a little wavy, but not to lose the textured effect of the stitch pattern. I might of had the wavy edge because I got carried away knitting and forgot to change up my needle size after the garter stitch, I'd been going a while before I realised and didn't have the heart to rip back, so carried on!

I loved this knit and would make again, but next time I'd listen to the advise of other Ravelers and block using a light spray, as I did lose some of the pop of the little puffs!

Socks

My Dad is a great present buyer! When I was 18 he bought me a book on cross-stitching, I remember opening it and thinking "How old does he think I am?". But I have to say it was the start of something quite amazing.That Christmas I started out doing very simple cross-stitches, it kept me occupied and my mind busy over a very difficult time in my life, my Mum had died in the October. 

I took to cross-stitching in a big way, taking on bigger projects some taking a year to complete. I only stopped when I picked up my knitting needles again when my son was born.

22 years on and he is still hitting the nail on the head where it comes to buying the perfect Christmas presents. I received a copy of Alice Yu's book "Sockopus", he knows me so well! It is a lovely book containing 17 amazing pairs of socks. I cast on Shur'tugal early January and finished them this week. They fit perfectly! I love the criss-cross affect without using a cable needle, a new technique for me. Alice shows how to do this in the book with lovely clear photographic instructions. I used Lornas Laces Shepherd Sock in the colour-way Envy, it's been looking at me from my stash for a while. I couldn't recommend this book enough, a must for any sock knitter.