Now you can find lots of TurtleDove Yarns at Wooly Bully in Tallahassee, FL.  After hosting our debut there 2 weeks ago the shop has decided to carry TDY full time.  We are honored & excited to be able to offer our wares to our very own local community at our, of course, all time favorite LYS. 
Thanks Hannah!!

So, if you are in the area, take the opportunity to stop in & fondle some of our yarns including our much loved DK weight, Chickadee - a blend of bamboo, silk & merino.  You'll also find our Pigeon Sock, Pigeon w/Bamboo Sock and our Magpie sock in lots of colorways. 

Our RareBird Lace sold out completely at our show, so it is coming soon & with gorgeous new colorways.

enjoy!

BlackBird will soon be avialable in a number of our other colorways, including Hard Cider, Blood Orange, Peacock & some new ones too. 

Recently my mother received an email indicating that Mars would be swinging into Earths orbit come August 2009.  The email indicated that the red planet would be visible to the naked eye - as clearly & as large as our own moon.   THAT would be amazing - to look up & see the Mars just like you were looking at the Moon!  It'd be like we were living in a scene from Dune or Land of the Lost.  (i sent my mom a link from Sky & Telescope, letting her know the email is a hoax).

I happened to be working on these socks at the time that my mom disclosed this supposed upcoming event to me.  The pomegranate colorway resembled the Red Planet & reminded me of the new trace elements discovered recently upon an expedition to Mars, thus the sock was aptly named Trace Elements.  

Construction:  This sock is knit using 2 circular needles, but could easily be adapted to using double pointed or magic loop method. 
I used a heel flap design & Kitchener toe technique.

Stitch Pattern:  The overall design of the sock has vertical lines - which is really nice for a sock if it is destined to be on my foot.  I always prefer that my socks have linear vertical elements rather than any type of horizontal lines.  I do not need a sock to make my legs look any more like sausages.  A thin, long line throughout a sock pattern creates length through my ankles & eliminates some self consciousness from my mind!

The Yarn: I chose to work with the TDY Magpie for this sock.  A) because no one believed me that it was in fact a fingering weight yarn because it is fluffy & bouncy, springy & full of body.  B) becaues it is fluffy, bouncy, springy & full of body.  and C) because i wanted you all to see just how the colors from the House Blend Collection work up. 

Our House Blend Collection yarns are not dyed in a traditional manner which can create patterns of stripes or repeating colors throughout your fabric.  Instead, our House Blend Yarns are dyed in a way that creates a wash of various shades of a single color or color family.  This method results in less frequency of pooling, flashing & striping.   This is one of my favorite ways to dye yarns & definitely one of my favorite yarns to knit.

Pattern coming soon    ish...

Big thanks to everyone who came out to our introduction party at Wooly Bully in Tallahassee. 

We were so excited to see how everyone received our yarns & colors, and to see our old friends & customers again. 


We brought yarns in each of our 3 different categories of colorways including our Hand Dyed Collection, Carnival Collection & our House Blend Collection. 

In addition, our brand new DK weight yarn, Chickadee, combines bamboo, silk & wool.  It was very popular & you can expect to see more of it in the future. 

I used this yarn in the slouchy lace beret which was on display.  It is a personal pattern I'll be adding as a free download to this site & to ravelry soon.

There was a lot of baby holding going on!

And we were able to get some serious feedback from you guys about our colorways.  Particularly what you want to see more of - definitely more of the Carnival Collection and I promise to get more Qwerty, Insect & Firefly as soon as possible. 

You all were crazy about all three varieties sock yarn, as we'd expected.  Many of you bought our Pigeon, Pigeon Plus (bamboo) or Magpie with the intention of making Pteryla, a pattern provided to us by our very own, Shari Hill, of Blue Button Studios. 

You can look for more of her great patterns on our website. 

 

Pat Puckett got his winding arm in shape ahead of time.  He knew what was in store for him during the introduction day!

At some point I think he talked Reagan & Heather into doing some winding, telling them it was "really fun!"

Definitely one of our biggest hits was our RareBird Lace - a perfect blend of Baby Alpaca, Silk & Cashmere. 

We sold out of this one & will be restocking it ASAP.  I am so excited to get to see what you all are creating with this stunning yarn!

Pat & I are so grateful for our Tallahassee community for turning out & supporting us in our new adventure. 
We are very appreciative to Hannah of Wooly Bully, who invited us to host an introduction party to our line of new yarns. 
I am looking forward to hearing from all of you about how your yarn is working up & what you are creating.

thank you again, we love our tallahassee peeps!
x o x o

This is a very pretty light gray & pale yellow variegated yarn from the Pigeon Sock selection.  Its actually a mistake skein - which is why it gets to stay home with me. 

One of my favorite colorways is Waxwing - which consists of 2 shades of yellow, one pale & one darker & 2 equally varied shades of gray.  This skein was well on its way to being a Waxwing, but was stopped in the process, as it was accidentally dyed with just one shade of gray & one shade of yellow.  It works out wonderfully though, as while i contemplated making Swallowtail, i really wanted a gray yarn.  I remembered this mistake skein & grabbed it from my stash.  The gray & yellow are similar tones & that keeps the yarn looking sophisticated & simple, but with just a hint of added interest. 

The Swallowtail Shawl, by Evelyn Clark, was originally published in Interweave Knits, Fall 2006.  It was a project that i was immediately drawn to the first time i came across it. 

i frequently dug through my magazines & found the pattern when contemplating a new project.  I have spent lots of time perusing the finished Swallowtails on Ravelry.  But as a yarn shop owner, i was forever knitting samples for the store & never just because i wanted to make something. 

Now, it is 2009 & i am not stocking my shop full of samples & there is not a baby in my belly, i am free to knit as i please. 

Swallowtail it is!

Recently my friend Bethany gave me this bee hive mobile/chime.  She is an amazing potter & creates the beautiful yarn bowls we offer on the hedgehog site. 


Bethany teaches pottery at Florida State University.  She hand made each little porcelain bee, hand knit the hive using an organic cotton/wool blend yarn from O-Wool.  She used power tools, hardware & a lot of brain power to create the skeleton of the hive. 


Its really amazing.  The little bees make a sweet twinkling sound when they meet.  I feel so lucky to be the recipient of such a work of art!  Thank you Bethany!!   

I loved this yarn when i pulled it out of the pot. 

The brown was so creamy (and i definitely prefer milk chocolate over dark) and the pink was pretty and thankfully didn't look like the pink elephant in Mercy's crib. 

I had originally dyed the 60" skein in these two colors at a 1:1 ratio.  If I knit socks out of this same yarn, I would have had thin, relatively equally spaced stripes of pink & brown.   While this appealed to me, I instead decided to use the yarn for a new scarf pattern. 

My limited math-brain couldn't have foreseen exactly what would have been the outcome, but I had a hunch...

Yea!  I love the way this yarn created this awesome zigzag pattern in my already zigging & zagging fabric!

I'm making this pattern available here on the blog.  Special thanks to Shari for testing it for me!  If you'd like to make this pattern using a TurtleDove Yarn, let me know with a quick email & I'll let you know what current colorways should give you a similar pattern effect.  Of course, this pattern would work up nicely in any semi-solid or variegated yarn.  Usually a rigidly vertical lace pattern (especially one as simple as this one) will not get lost in a variegated yarn.  But I know it would look lovely in a semi-solid as well.

This particular colorway is sold out.  But I'm dying up another batch of CuppyCake for the shop during the next couple of days. 

Cuppy Cake Scarf

Materials:
1 skein TurtleDove Pigeon Sock (or appx 400 yds of a fingering weight yarn)
US 5
darning needle

Cast on: 52 sts.

Row 1: Knit
Row 2 & all wrong side rows: K1, Purl across to last stitch, K1.
Rows 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, & 13: K1, *K2, ssk, K2tog, K4, (YO, K1)twice, repeat               from * to last 3 sts, K3. 
Row 15: Knit

Rows 17, 19, 21, 23, 25 & 27: K1, *K3, YO, K1, YO, K4, SSK, K2tog; repeat         from * to last 3 sts, K3. 

Row 29: Knit

Repeat these 30 rows (row 30 is a purl row) until scarf measures 60" or desired length. 
Bind off all sts loosely. 
Weave in all ends. 
Block, or don't for a fuller look. 

Being married to a musician, this "show on the road" phrase has some special connotations I don't care to explore at this time...   But in this case, I am speaking of our new business, MyHedgehogKnits.com
Its my new web store carrying natural fibers from large & small companies.  Basically, I carry all the yarns I love & use & can give honest glowing reviews of.  But its also the center of the universe for my own line of yarns, TurtleDove Yarns.

About 2 years ago my husband, Pat Puckett, began dying yarn for me & my knitting group.  He was instantly good at it.  I bought him professional dyes, books, and I dove into the world of base yarns, searching for the best stuff.  I was pregnant (for a very long time) so I lived vicariously through him as a dyer until it was safe for me to get my hands dirty.  Finally, after lots & lots of research, trial, and definitely some error, we have decided to bring our wares out into the fiber arts world.

January 12th, 2009, Mercy June was born.  She was 4 weeks early, spent 2 weeks in the NICU & came home in a daze.  We're so fortunate to say that she is now, at almost 5 months old, our sweet, healthy, amazingly hilarious baby. 

What am i doing?  I'm still figuring it all out.  For the past 3 years I have been the owner/operator of a LYS, Wooly Bully, in Tallahassee, FL.  I LOVED my shop & my customers are the best. 

In May of 2008 I became pregnant with my daughter, Mercy.  My customers/friends/family could not have been more supportive & enthusiastic about my new circumstance.  I was planning to just strap that baby on me & go about my day at the shop as usual.  As the pregnancy grew closer & closer to that magic end of the 3rd trimester, it started to become clear to me that there was no possible way that I could provide the level of customer service my customers require & deserve AND take good care of my baby at the same time!  Crap.

I passed the torch.  Wooly Bully is now owned & operated by Hannah, who worked at the shop a great deal when I was running it.  She is experienced in a variety of knitting methods & techniques, teaches her own classes, has a great eye for design & color & is one of the smartest & funniest people I know.  (Are you in Tallahassee?  Visit the shop's site & call for hours)