Just enough ....

Blue cable jumper

There is some fabulous yarn out there and one of my favourites is Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo Double Knit. It is 80% Bamboo sourced viscose and 20% wool. It knits into a beautiful soft, sheeny stitch which is perfect for young skin. I had bought some balls of this yarn, knitted a baby jumper, sold it on eBay, but still had some yarn left.  I decided to make the same jumper again to sell but wasn't sure that I had enough yarn. I started to look around on the internet to find more in 'Sail boat' and nice, mid-blue colour only to discover that the yarn had been discontinued and I probably had the last few balls left in the world. The pressure was on to finish the yarn with what I had left, or I could undo what I had done and make something else. I decided to plough on and hope for the best. Making the jumper in 0-6 months, it should take the least amount of wool possible.

In the end, I did have enough, just. It is a shame that Sirdar have decided not to continue this colour. The trouble with many of the baby yarns is that the colours are a bit pastel. 

The finish article is now available on my ebay store via the following link:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Babys-blue-cable-jumper-for-age-0-6-months-in-Sirdar-Snuggly-Baby-Bamboo-dk-/231178971575?pt=Baby_Clothing&hash=item35d35729b7

The next big step

Scallop baby blanket pattern

I was reviewing the initial idea that was Layette Knitting recently which was held as a file on my computer. One of the things that I planned to do was to sell the patterns as a pdf download to save on the postage. This was something that I initially tried with eBay only to be instructed that eBay don't allow pdf downloads because of the risk of malicious content. So for the last couple of years, selling my patterns involved printing out the pattern on quality paper, printing out the buyers address and an invoice, putting them in an envelope, paying for postage and getting the board-backed envelope into a post box that could take it (not many of those around here).

So my options for selling downloadable pdfs seemed to lie with my own website. After a bit of research I attempted to create one on 1&1. This did not go well and was soon abandoned as a bad idea.

Cable baby blanket pattern

I have been a member on Ravelry for a short while and recall that it is possible to sell downloadable pdfs from that site but the problem that I have with Ravelry is that it would tend to be the hardy, more experienced knitter who would frequent the site and my patterns tend to be for the novice knitter. My patterns have had quite alot of success on eBay with buyers recognising that they are helpful and easy to follow. Within 12 hours of uploading my patterns to Ravelry, I am pleased to say I have made a sale and been paid. Hoorahh!

Ravelry.com is an excellent website with many downloadable patterns, some of which are free and I have used the patterns available to achieve some excellent results. It is a free log in website and then you can search for me under Designers to find my Easy to Knit patterns.

www.ravelry.com

These patterns are still available on my ebay shop as before but you can save on time and postage by downloading them from ravelry virtually instantly.

Sweet success!!

There is NOTHING more rewarding that starting a new hobby (spinning) and creating something new, then to put it available for sale, have someone buy it and give you good feedback on it. 

My very nice yarn

Last month, I spun some Dorset/Hampshire fleece to create two 100g skeins of hand spun yarn. I have advertised them both on my ebay shop, only to have someone buy one of them. Ebay does put pressure on its sellers to offer FREE postage. That's all well and good but Royal Mail won't deliver it for free so the costs have to be absorbed somewhere. I advertised the yarn at £6 each with free postage and packaging. So when I did managed to sell one skein, just how cheaply could I send it and be happy it would turn up at its destination?

The normal postage for first class small parcel signed for is £4.10. That is a BIG chunk of £6. If I could get it down to large letter size I could send it first class large letter signed for at £2.30. One of the new toys that I have is a vacuum packer. It takes out the air from the package and heat seals it to create a vacuum. Brilliant for home made bacon but how would my yarn fair? It was worth a try. I squished it down as much as I could while the air was being extracted until the yarn looked like it had melted in the pack. I recalled someone else sending me some yarn like this and my feeling of horror as I opened the package to see the contents. I parcelled it up and took it to the post office. Yes, it would go through the large letter slop on the counter top gadget, and it was sent. I hurriedly emailed the buyer to let her know what I had done and how she should pierce the package to let the yarn reinflate back to normal.

She has received the yarn, reinflated it and left feedback .... very nice yarn.

Wow!! That's something I created! Brilliant. 

The other skein is still available for sale in my ebay shop.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Handspun-Dorset-Hampshire-fleece-Natural-100g-chunky-yarn-/331113021654?pt=UK_Crafts_Knitting_Crochet_EH&hash=item4d17dfc0d6

Spinning in the grease

Spun Jacobs yarn

So for February I have been spinning Jacobs fleece. When it arrived it came in a big bag and was transferred into a hessian sack for storage. Jacobs fleece is interesting because it comes in a variety of colours all on the one fleece. The fleece would have been picked over for big bits of straw but other than that, it is pretty much as it came off the sheep. As it had not been washed, it is called in the grease. This can make it easier to spin as it 'glues' the spin and smooths down any wispy bits. As I planned to ply this yarn, I weighed out two lots of 50g of grey/brown fleece and spun each lot as evenly as possible. Once both lots have been spun to the right, it is spun (plied) together to the left. Hopefully if all goes well, the two lots should be the same length, which they were almost.

The next job to do is to wind the yarn onto a niddy noddy to create a skein. This is tied in several places to prevent tangling and it can now be washed to remove the lanolin and grime. It is then hung to drip dry in the garage and after a day or two, it is dry enough to weigh. Amazingly it had lost 23g of grease and grime and now weighs in at 77g. 

I have listed it in auction on my ebay shop starting at £3 for this skein which I can wind into a ball on my ball winder if required.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hand-spun-Jacob-wool-77g-plied-chunky-natural-browns-and-greys-skein-/331129481628?pt=UK_Crafts_Knitting_Crochet_EH&hash=item4d18dae99c

And now its February!!

Jacobs Sheep

January seemed to fly past, again. Now we are into February and so I need to choose another sackful of fleece from my garage. For this month I have decided to spin a fleece from a Jacobs Sheep. This breed has special fond memories for me as I recall first spotting them in a distance field and boldly stating that they were cows, Fresians probably. The people who were with me were far more knowledgeable than me and corrected me staying that they were, in fact, sheep. Now prior to that moment, I didn't know that sheep came in multicolours. I had previously thought that they came in either cream or black (we've all heard about black sheep!)

Hmmm. Jacobs Sheep. I was therefore delighted to purchase a fleece of these mythical creatures last year and it duly became the last addition to my stock pile. 

Wiki has this to say about Jacobs Sheep .... 

The Jacob sheep is a rare breed of small, piebald (coloured with white spots), polycerate (multi-horned) sheep. Jacobs may have from two to six horns, but most commonly have four. The most common color is black and white. Jacobs are usually raised for their wool, meat, and hides. They are also kept as pets and ornamental animals, and have been used as guard animals to protect farm property from theft or vandalism and defend other livestock against predators. Cool!!

It's looking like Shetlands

Shetland Sheep

This weekend we had one of those learning moments when everything came clear. We have already decided that we would like to keep a British breed of sheep as they are easier to look after, generally smaller and much more tolerant of our fickle British weather. Then I heard that the group of British sheep which come under the heading of Primitives actually shed their coat. If you pick just the right moment, you can help the process and actually pluck the fleece off the sheep's back. This is called 'rooing'. Shetlands look like the best sheep for where we plan to live. They come in a variety of colours, are good mothers, have a very usable fleece and produce good meat. 

Desperate to know to more, I searched the internet and found this website.  http://www.shetlandsheepinfo.com/HUSBANDRY/rooing.htm

Unbelievable! You can actually peel or pluck a sheep. I needed to know more and found this video on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsmPBfWFVf4

The fleece won't come away nicely until the under fleece is ready to release it. You only pull away the old fleece using the hands, and unlike shearing, you won't nick the sheep's skin. Brilliant!! 

Where can I get some Shetlands?

So, here we go!

So January is the month for working on the Dorset/Hampshire fleece that I purchased last year. It was already combed, which was nice because it is hard work on the elbows and mine is still grumbling because of the cold, damp weather.

I decided to spin the first lot. My thoughts on this is that if I spin two lots of 50g and my spinning is fairly consistent, they should be the same length. Well, they almost were. This is important when you ply yarn to make it thicker. Next came the measuring, mentioned in the last blog and at 106m that confirmed that the yarn was coming out chunky. Armed with all this information and after a light wash, the yarn was listed onto ebay. 

Blues and purples

I also purchased some Jacquard Acid dyes last year to tackle some hand dyeing. This involves boiling up the fleece or yarn in a big saucepan with vinegar (acid) and adding powdered dyes which merge together well to create the final effect. The problem is boiling real wool can make it felt and fuse together. A lot of care is needed. So I split the roving into 3 and plaited it to give it some strength. 

Yellow and greens

I have managed to create two 50g batches of blue/purple roving (unspun but carded fleece) and two 50g batches of yellow/green roving. Then they have been washed and drip dried so that they can be packaged up. They have all been listed on ebay and I shall see how (if) it sells with the idea of how the future fleeces will be processed. 

Follow their progress in my ebay shop:  http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Layette-Knitting

An exciting idea!

Last year I set off on a journey of discovery to teach myself how to spin a sheep's fleece into yarn. This is partly because I was inspired by someone else who was trying the same thing and also because I knit, so it seemed a natural progression. I could also conduct a survey of the different British native breeds to determine which one would be preferable to keep for spinning. 

I had a varying results and then stopped towards the end of the year. I had purchased around 10 complete fleeces over the summer along with various devices for carding the fleece. Some of the fleeces are beautiful and some are seriously gnarly. The fleeces have been stored suspended from the garage rafters in hessian sacks and pillow cases, and resemble a collection of body bags. I have tried to spin various fleeces as they have arrived and probably narrowed my choice down the Shetland sheep or perhaps Suffolks. Hmmm. What to do with all these fleeces?

Dorset sheep

Last week I had an idea which has become a kind of New Year's Resolution! I will spend a month on each type of fleece. I will process them as they allow, spinning and possibly dyeing them to create yarn and roving to use or sell on ebay. 

Niddy-noddy

A week later and I have spun 100g of Dorset/Hamsphire fleece (it came like that), and dyed two lots of 50g carded fleece to sell in bags. I had to calculate the length of the spun yarn which was achieved by measuring the niddy-noddy using string (so that it doesn't stretch). One round was 1.8m, then counting how many rounds the spun yarn achieved (59),
1.8 x 59 = 106m. This also confirmed my suspicions that the yarn that I had spun and plied was coming in as chunky. I'm happy with that. Both the spun yarn and dyed roving have been washed and now comes the real problem of getting them dry again. I can't put them in the drier so they are drip-drying ... in January. From the Spring, they could go outside.  

In the meantime, the knitting has been progressing slowly. The stock in the ebay shop has been dwindling but I have nearly completed another cricket jumper and started on a new blue cable jumper. I have also been making big blankets, probably by instinct for the forthcoming severe winter. 

Check out what is still available at:  http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Layette-Knitting?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

Pure indulgence Sirdar 3883

My favourite pattern Sirdar 3883

I have knitted many different patterns over my years as a knitter but there is one pattern that I find a pleasure every time I knit it and it would be right up there in my favourite Layette Knitting patterns.  Created by Sirdar (3883), it is for a baby girl's cardigan and I tend to knit it for 0-3 months. It could be adapted for  a baby boy but I think the stylising on it suggests it should be for a girl. It has an unusual button band which compliments the cables to the front of the cardigan. 

Fabulously different

This latest edition of the cardigan has been created in Cream Sirdar Snuggly Pearls DK. The yarn is super soft for babies but the pearlescent part gives it a shimmer. Finished with pretty cream buttons, this cardigan is perfect for anyone's little angel at Christmas.

Check it out on my ebay store via this link: www.http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Layette-Knitting

It's all about the knitting

Cable blanket

So Layette Knitting has just celebrated its second birthday and has come along way from the first few items on eBay back in October 2011, now selling knitted items, yarn and patterns all over the world.

It all started during a literacy lesson on abbreviations in my year 4 class when it occurred to me that such things don't really help the nervous knitter as you have to translate a pattern as well as master the physical construction of the stitches. But abbreviations are used to stop patterns being twelve pages long. Hmmm. 

Scallop Blanket

I do most of my knitting whilst watching the tv. The guys like to watch endless football and in the evening I have found knitting helps me to stay awake, but I really can't be doing with patterns that have 50 rows to make a pattern and if you miss one stitch, that's a lot to undo. So the Easy to Knit patterns were born. Based around 4 or 6 rows of pattern, they are simplicity itself. I really hate sewing things up and so the border for the blanket would have to be knitted as you go. The stitch patterns originally came from an encyclopaedia of knitting stitches but later came from my knitting if I found a simple stitch pattern that I could adapt. 

Textured Lacy Blanket

I wouldn't say that they will make me a millionaire, but I have had some great feedback about how easy they are to knit and follow. With a choice of seven on the shop I would say, mission accomplished!

View what's available at my ebay shop via the following link: www.stores.ebay.co.uk/layetteknitting

Another seamless coat

Seamless coat in aran

This seamless coat idea seems to be nothing new. Rummaging around on the web and I found another pattern for a seamless coat, this time on Ravelry.com by Linden Down and entitled Baby Sophisticate. I have knitted a seamless coat before, complete with a hood and a double-breasted reversible button back, but this one was much similar to make with a shawl collar and just a basic button band.

Seamless is wonderful

Last year I knitted an adult's aran cardigan and had some wool left over. It was only one ball but the ball was 400g so that should be plenty to knit a cardigan for a 0-3 month baby.

The principal of seamless is wonderful because I hate sewing these things up. These 'seams' are created with shapings and dividing the stitches for the sleeves and fronts and back, leaving the sleeves to one side and rejoining the yarn to create the body. The sleeves are then knitted in the round on double-pointed needles like tubes. Genius!!

This version is available for sale now in my ebay shop via the following link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Light-blue-aran-baby-cardigan-0-3-months-/331052176113?pt=UK_Baby_Jumpers&hash=item4d143f52f1

From small beginnings ...

Logo designed by kuching-sama.com

For this to truly be the Story of Layette Knitting, it has to start two years ago. I found myself without a permanent job, working as a supply teacher. By October 2011, the work was not exactly pouring in so I decided to have a go at making a business out of something had been a life long hobby - knitting. 

Each year in the village there is a flower show which has a horticultural section and a handicraft section, the latter of these is judged by ladies from the Women's Institute and they expect a very high standard. This was my training ground to achieve a standard of knitting and finishing that I felt would be acceptable by others.  I first entered the competition in 1999 and won the handicraft trophy. Flushed with success, I continued to enter for many years afterwards and won the trophy again several times during that period.

Marble wrap neck jumper

Knitting had been a passion for me for many years, especially while my children were small as I was able to make them unique items of clothing for a fraction of the store price. I enjoy knitting small items of clothing because they can be completed within a few days or a week at most. Obviously this is very much time dependent, something I had plenty of in October 2011. The business plan was starting to take form with the idea of clothes for babies and so Layette Knitting seemed to be the most appropriate name. Starting with just a few items to sell, eBay was definitely the right place to open my online shop. It gave the opportunity to sell all over the world and with Paypal accept payments in other currencies. Fantastic!! 

It wasn't long before the idea of designing and producing patterns popped into my head. I needed easy to follow patterns which I could knit up whilst watching the tv of an evening and my Easy to Knit blanket patterns were born. These have enjoyed greater success than my knitted items with buyers coming back for more. The secret to these success has been the simplicity of the pattern, usually containing only four rows of pattern repeated for as long as required. Brilliant!! 

Whilst my shop hasn't made me into a millionaire yet, it has given me a sense of self worth which was rapidly diminishing during that time in 2011. Two years on and still going strong. I have sold items all over the world.  I have ventured out into spinning and dyeing my own yarn. Whilst these two ideas are very creative and exciting, they are still a long way off being good enough to be included in my shop. 

For anyone thinking about going into business for yourself and sharing your passion for a hobby, if you can do it online, go for it! The world is waiting for you!!

To view my ebay shop you can use the following link: www.stores.ebay.co.uk/layetteknitting

A big seller

Cricket jumper

I have found that there is a market for these on my Layette Knitting ebay store. Knitted without any buttons (hoorah) and with a v-neck jumper, this 'cricket' jumper design is my BIG seller for the summer. Literally as fast as I can make them, they are snapped up. I have toyed with the idea of using different colours to represent various teams but this green goes very well with the cream of the jumper and so is popular enough.

Green contrast

Knitted in double knit, this jumper is not too thick for small babies, making this jumper a brilliant addition to a new baby's layette. I have found that I can knit the entire jumper from one 100g ball of wool, plus some green for the contrast. This is great as it helps to keep the costs down. I have sold these in my ebay store for around £9 for 0-6 months.

To see what is currently available from my ebay store, check out www.stores.ebay.co.uk/layetteknitting

The seamless coat! Ta da!!

Knitted coat in Cygnet chunky

In my continuing quest for unusual patterns, this one has crossed my path. It is a virtually seamless knitted coat designed by Lisa Chemery, worked in chunky yarn. I chose Cygnet Chunky in shade 365 turquoise. The pattern starts at the top of the hood and works downwards. OK. I’ve done that before. Then you increase to create two sleeves, two fronts and a back. The sleeves are then worked on double pointed needles, something which I learnt to do on a workshop. Marvellous!! Once the body and sleeves are complete, you then pick up and create a woven basket collar and front band. I am really pleased with the final result which I have finished with 4 wooden tree buttons.

Seamless increasing

All the increasing from the hood down creates the seamless coat. Brilliant! Have I told you how much I hate sewing these things together. As long as you are consistent with the increasing, you are assured a perfect seam. I am already feeling the urge to make another one.

Front band

The real challenge turned out to be the front band which is a main feature of this coat. Knitted in woven basket stitch, something I thought I knew how to do, I did find myself having to undo 4 rows after watching an instructional video on youtube on how to do this properly. Finished with 4 wooden tree buttons, I think the final result is well worth the challenge.

It is now available for sale in my ebay shop via the following link:  http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Knitted-baby-hooded-coat-12-18-months-in-Cygnet-Chunky-/331020980580?hash=item4d12635164

Its funny how when you knit something for the second time, it goes even better than the first time.And then following showing this on facebook, I have received a commission to create another coat in red in size 3-4 years. It took a week to make and was well received by the customer this morning.

Back to knitting layette sizes though.

To view more items available through my ebay shop, follow this link: www.stores.ebay.co.uk/layetteknitting