Yarn + Saturday Morning Cartoons

When I was a kid Saturday morning were the time to watch cartoons. There was no Cartoon channel, no Netflix and no VCRs (never mind DVRs!). If you didn't tune in in time, you missed your show.

Well, now I have a chance to combine childhood memories with my current favorite way to relax on the weekend. I'm so excited to have been asked to participate in the Tripping Yarn Balls Yarn Club which is featuring a Retro Cartoons theme for this year!

The Tripping Yarn Balls yarn club is a collaboration between Play at Life, Please Stand By Yarns, and Shameless Twist. Each of these dyers create gorgeous yarns. Play at Life creates the stunning Maki yarns which are dyed in gradients. Her club yarns will be dyed to complement her Maki gradients. Please Stand By Yarns, who is a fellow Canadian, specializes in self-striping yarns which, when knit from both ends of the skein, result in matching socks. And Shameless Twist is a color genius who will be working with a new luscious super wash merino/cashmere/nylon base for the club yarns. Sign up are open on the TYB site.

So where do I come in? I'll be designing two exclusive sock patterns for club members. Club membership come in 6 or 12 month signups, so during each 6 month time frame members will receive one free sock pattern designed to complement the club yarn.

I'm completely psyched up to revisit the cartoons of my childhoood and see them represented in yarn.  I loved the Pink Panther, the Wonder Twins, Aquaman, Pinky and the Brain (Snarf!). What were your favorites to watch as a kid?

Road Trips: Now with more yarn shops!

I confess: I rarely check out the main Ravelry page. I have my book marks set to the Forum pages. So I only found this feature by reading a post on the For Love of Ravelry forum.

Casey & team have added an awesome new feature called the Road Trip Planner to Ravelry's Yarns tab.

Enter your starting location, your destination and how far out of your way you're willing to go. Then presto: a list of local yarn shops on your route.

This is perfect timing. I'm going on a road trip with my Mom soon. We'll be driving from Calgary, Alberta to Vancouver, BC. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Rocky Mountains. And the yarn shops.

Contest - Sharing the Lola-Doodles Love

I like browsing through some of the main Ravelry forums and checking out the chat threads dedicated to sales, self-promotion and contests. It's a great way to discover new design and designers, accessories and best of all, new (to me) indie yarn dyers.

I'm always on the lookout for new sock yarn to love. A while back I placed an order for some absolutely scrumptious looking sock yarn from Lola-Doodles Etsy shop. I was attracted by the vividly bright colours and delightful names.

Annabel Lee - 100% superwash merino sock yarn

I purchased Annabel Lee, a superwash merino sock yarn for two reasons: the lovely shade of blue and the wonderful reference to the Edgar Allan Poe poem. (Yes, I majored in English.) And just to break away from my love of blue, I added some Dowager's Prize Rose to my basket. (Why yes, I quite enjoy British Victorian-era literature.)

When the yarn arrived, it was squishy soft and just begging to be made into socks. I quickly cast on Annabel Lee for a special project I'm hoping to submit for publication. It's quite full of cables and the traces of black in the lovely aquamarine add some very nice depth and dimension to the cables.

Juniper Wisp: 80% Merino wool
and 20% silk lace yarn

The yarn is absolutely delightful to work with: soft, squishy and with a nice high twist that gives great stitch definition. Pretty much everything I look for in a sock yarn.

Lola-Doodles is run by Temple Trueblood, a true fiber enthusiast, down in the heart of Dixie. In her Etsy shop you'll find lace, fingering and DK yarn that are all hand dyed in very small batches (2-3 skeins each). She also welcomes custom orders, with some of her favorite colorways being the results of customers asking for a particular shade or combination of colors. 

Temple offers a range of different sock weight yarns:

• Classic Sock - a 75/25 wool/nylon blend 
• Buff Sock - a 75/25 BFL/nylon blend
• Posh Socks - an MCN blend
• Twinkle Toes - 100% super wash merino

Lace and DK lovers aren't left out either. Temple has you covered with a merino/silk lace weight blend and her DK super wash merino wool.

Daddy Likes a Little Scandal - Classic Sock

To make a great deal even better, Lola-Doodles offers loyal fans a fantastic discount: After buying 5 skeins, you receive a secret code so that your 6th skein is a whopping 75% off!

The name of her shop comes, in part from Lola the Wonder Corgi  who, along with Amos Lee, her sweet pit bull terrier supervise each batch of dyeing.  

As usual, I do not accept or solicit sponsorships or do paid/in kind product endorsements. I write about stuff that I've discovered and that I enjoy. All pictures are used with permission by Temple Trueblood of Lola-Doodles, but that's the only involvement. She doesn't even know I'm going to do this:

Killer Tomato: Classic Sock,
75% merino, 25% nylon

Giveaway!

Leave a comment telling me your favorite Lola-Doodles colorway name between now and Wednesday, June 26th and you could win that skein! On June 27th I will run a random number generator to select a winner from the comments and have Lola-Doodles ship your skein to you.