Yarnomat

If you like to watch the cycling Tour de France and also like to knit socks, check out the Tour de Sox 2008.

It’s a knit-along contest sponsored by Crystal Palace Yarns, with fun categories and nifty prizes. You can enter socks knit with any yarn you like, but there are extra prizes for socks knit with yarns from Crystal Palace.

I especially love the idea of a White with Pink Dots category. Just perfect for Crystal Palace Bamboo Cotton in the Lollipops colourway. It’s a spotted print yarn, so the yarn makes the pink dots as you knit. Cute or what?

A new box of Crystal Palace Bamboo Silk has just arrived, and we have several colours back in stock that had previously sold out: Buttercup Tones, Cherry, Plum Tones, Raspberry Tones and my favourite, the fiery Persimmon Tones.

I’m planning to restock most brands and colours in the next four to six weeks, as well as adding a handful of new ones. Updates will, as always, be posted here on the Yarnomat blog.

I’ve substantially revised and updated the pattern for Joan’s Simple Socks after completing the test knit. They are basic top-down socks with a 2×2 ribbed leg and a stocking stitch foot. I’m pretty happy with the way the pattern has turned out, and have made a few more refinements to the detailed pattern format.

My completed Joan’s Simple Socks are so soft and comfortable! I’ve used Crystal Palace Bamboo Cotton in the Picnic colourway. This may be the most comfortable pair of socks I’ve ever knitted. The knitted fabric feels quite cool to the touch and I suspect it will make an excellent sock for warmer weather. But right now we’re in the depths of Melbourne winter so it’s hard to be sure.

Patterns for both the Alika Phone Sock and Joan’s Simple Socks are now available as downloadable PDFs from the Free Patterns page on Yarnomat.

Several people have suggested that they’d prefer a condensed version of the pattern, with smaller font sizes, less white space, and less of the optional content such as hints and tips. I’m going to have a go at producing condensed versions of each pattern later this week. If it proves relatively straightforward to do, I’ll probably continue to produce both a detailed version and a condensed version for each pattern.

There is a new free pattern up on Yarnomat: the Alika Phone Sock. It’s a stretchy ribbed phone cosy, knitted in the round, with a flap to tuck your phone in snugly. Perfect for leftover scraps of sock yarn.

Even if you have no need or desire to knit a phone sock, I’d still love your comments on the pattern format, especially if you sometimes have a hard time interpreting standard knitting patterns.

I’m experimenting with a new way of writing knitting patterns, combining Information Mapping methodology with standard knitting conventions. Before devoting myself full-time to this sock yarn obsession a couple of months ago, I was an expert technical writer specialising in Information Mapping.

The new format is almost certainly overkill for knitters who are comfortable with conventional knitting patterns, but maybe it will be useful for knitters who find conventional patterns difficult to follow.

If it works for anyone other than me, I’ll probably use this same format when revising the pattern for Joan’s Simple Socks (photos and additional sizes coming soon), and also when writing up a handful of new patterns currently under development.

On the other hand, if the Information Mapping format is overkill for pretty much everyone, I’ll scale it back a bit and use a simplified version instead.

If you have an account on Ravelry or Facebook, you can now see the Yarnomat pages on those sites.

If you’re a happy Yarnomat customer, you could make my day by leaving a comment on Yarnomat’s Facebook page, or adding yourself to the list of patrons on Yarnomat’s Ravelry page.

I especially love Ravelry and am mildly addicted to it. It’s a wonderful community site for knitters and crocheters. You can find me there as verylisa.

I’m going to be away from home for the next couple of days. (My Mum had heart surgery last week. She’s doing really well, but is coming home from hospital today and will need constant company for a bit.)

So last week’s special of 10% off all Crystal Palace sock yarns is now extended until Tuesday night, when I’ll be home for the night and will be able to do a little work on the store, thereby putting the prices back to normal. Have a look and see if any of them speak to you.

Yarnomat is now one month old, and it’s been an exciting month.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us to get off to such a great start. Sometimes I feel a little bit naughty because this is so much fun. Isn’t work supposed to be difficult and painful?

That’s not to say that the month has been without its challenges. An unexpected challenge happened just last week.

In Australia, we have a long-established and very well known yarn company called Panda Yarns.

In the US, Crystal Palace Yarns is also long-established and very well known. Yarnomat has just started selling some of Crystal Palace’s sock yarns here in Australia, including their “Panda Cotton”, “Panda Silk”, and “Panda Wool”.

Crystal Palace Yarns is a US company with no connection to Panda Yarns in Australia. However, the use of the word “Panda” in Crystal Palace’s bamboo-blend sock yarn names was leading some knitters to expect that those were actually from Australia’s Panda Yarns.

So we’ve decided to rename the Crystal Palace bamboo-blend sock yarns for distribution here in Australia. They’re exactly the same as the Crystal Palace yarns available in the US, just renamed to reduce confusion.

From today at Yarnomat, you can now buy Crystal Palace Bamboo Cotton (previously Panda Cotton), Crystal Palace Bamboo Silk (previously Panda Silk), and Crystal Palace Bamboo Wool (previously Panda Wool).

Why not give them a try? To encourage you to try them out, for this week only we’re taking 10% off the price of all Crystal Palace sock yarns sold through Yarnomat. Offer ends at 9.00 am next Monday morning, 9 June 2008. So have a look through the Crystal Palace range and see what captures your fancy.

For Australian sock yarn shoppers, you only have a few days left to take advantage of Yarnomat’s free shipping offer. All orders placed before midnight this Saturday, 31 May, will be shipped for free to any destination in Australia.

From Sunday, 1 June, onwards, we’ll still offer free shipping within Australia, but only for orders of A$50 or more. So if you just want to try a little taster order without having to pay extra for shipping, now is the perfect time!

Here’s my first free knitting pattern: Joan’s Simple Socks. I’m encouraging my Mum, Joan, to try knitting socks from the top-down.

Not that there’s anything wrong with knitting from the toe up! But it’s good to have another method in your repertoire, and I find the heel flap construction neater and easier than a toe-up short-row heel. One of these days I’ll try a toe-up heel flap, but for now I’ve just captured my preferred basic recipe for a top-down sock.

We’re currently test-knitting the pattern, and will add photos and more sizes once that’s finished. If you try the pattern, please send me feedback! Especially if you notice any errors or confusing parts.

I’ve finished as much photography as I can do for now. There are still a few yarns that were already out of stock by the time my photography improved to the point where I wanted to re-photograph them. So they’re still in the original style and I’ll re-photograph them when I re-stock them. The rest: yay! I’m starting to feel quite proud of my little photography set-up.

Here’s the second attempt at photographing the Sockittome Fall Foliage colourway. Isn’t it vibrant? Finally the photos seem to approach the glorious colours of the actual yarn.

Next on the to-do list: a visit to the bank to set up credit card merchant facilities. Although you can use a credit card through the Paypal gateway without having a Paypal account, several customers have told me that they prefer not to use Paypal at all. I can understand that! So I’ll see if Yarnomat can be set up to take credit card payments through ANZ instead of Paypal.

After that, I plan to add to the information content on the site. I’d like to publish some information about selecting the right yarn for a project, other uses for sock yarn (such as baby garments), and a couple of simple patterns that I’ve been working on.

By then I hope there will have been enough sales to place re-stocking orders for the yarns that are currently out of stock. After that, once the shop is properly established, I’ll start considering other suppliers to add to the store. Currently I’m considering half a dozen different suppliers, and have to do some costings to see which ones the store can afford first. It would be great to have one of the big German sock yarn suppliers too, but they have fairly high minimum orders, so it might be another few months before Yarnomat is able to offer a German sock yarn.