Kitchener - stash enhancements

I promised to show the stash enhancements that occurred this weekend, so here they are...

Beaded jewellery kits from Brenda Franklin. I have one of her books already, and I love what she does with string, needles and beads. She does a lot of fine seed bead work, and it's beautiful. these are both choker patterns, and while hard to see, the one on the left is of seed beads and bugle beads, and is the pattern only. I have an obscene amount of seed beads, so I'll just have to purchase the co-ordinating bugle beads (I swear, I'm walking into a bead store and getting JUST the bugle beads. I swear!) The one on the right is a full kit with the silk thread, seed and dagger beads included. I picked a wonderful bronzey colourway, and it may get started sooner rather than later...

Here's the yarn for which Stephanie and Rachel decided my Need Factor was quite high. Sheepstrings Rainbow yarn. The colour is a little off here - it's not quite this bright. It's deeply, richly, Canadian autumn-y coloured. Its that roadside grove of trees when you drive outside the city, and the leaves haven't fallen yet. In other words, it's gorgeous, it's mine, and I thank Steph and Rachel for making me buy it!

Did you see the content of it? It's like butta, I tell ya...Sock yarn! Like I could ever turn down sock yarn. But the deal I made with myself was that I was only going to buy sock yarn that I couldn't easily get otherwise. So all the Regia and all the Opal was out. It had to be special, and unique. Well, where else would I find special and unique than at the Sweet Sheep? Plus, the best people were there - I said Mama E owned it, but actually, Mama E is the genius behind C*EYE*BER FIBER. Go there, but be prepared to be overwhelmed - as nice as the skeins are on screen, you have to see them in person. Michelle is the operator of the Sweet Sheep.

At the top - Sweet Sheep yarn in Colourway Coffee Bean. 50% merino / 50% tencel. This is for my husband who will wear any colour in his socks except pink. Hubby rocks the hand knit socks - he loves it when people spy a sliver of sock between pant leg and shoe and ask if they are hand knit. Okay, its usually only knitters that do this, but a husband of a knitter once spied them during a business meeting. Two guys started discussing the merits of hand knit socks in the middle of a brewery equipment meeting. I love that. So, by virtue of the pink content of the bottom skein - it's mine! Brooklyn Handspun, in the Genuine Leather colourway. Hard to see here, but there are tones of pink, brown, grey and all those shades in between. Delicious.
Atacama Alpaca. I have no need for this, just an amazing WANT for it. (The fact that it was 50% off didn't hurt). This stuff is funny - the colourways look like crap in the skeins. (sorry, but they do!) Once wound and knit up, they are gorgeous. No pooling (not that there's anything wrong with that...), and what looked so disparate in the skein blends beautifully in the fabric. I'm thinking a shawl or hat and mitt combo here.
What could be my new obsession (once I dig out from under the pile of beads in my house). Needle felting. Specifically gnomes. This is a kit, and I'm planning on using it as a general instruction for construction purposes. I have an idea of how I want my gnomes to look - a little less cartoonish than those in the kit. I have books on needle felting, so this will be a good test, to see if I can combine instructions for 4 or 5 different sources. I have a ton of roving all ready, and I don't spin, so this will be a good use. Hopefully it works. Who knows, I may suck at needle felting, then I'll have to take up spinning...
And last but not least, Wellington fibres. Rachel bought a box of their fibre, but I headed right to the ready to use yarn. I found the last two skeins of this colourway - it's rich blues, golds, some brown, some green. Just beautiful. I keep pulling it out and looking at it. I got one skein of a co-ordinating blue to stretch the handpaint a little further. I originally bought it with my sitter's teenage daughter in mind. E is a great help to her mom and my son adores her. She's a fabulous rep soccer player and played tons of soccer with him and the other kids this summer. She'd love some fingerless mitts. The only problem is that I love this more and more every time I look at it. I may have a tough time letting it go...