HRYC

With my yarn dyeing sabbatical imminent, there is going to be a gap on our shop shelves. For ages I've wanted to find a way to provide a platform for local indie dyers, but between two shops and dyeing myself it was left to linger in the too-hard basket. 

No longer! It is with great excitement we announce the Indie Shelf Project 2015. Each month during the year we will have a different NZ indie dyer gracing our shelves. 

Are you a yarn dyer (or know one)? Send an email to shop@hollandroadyarn.co.nz and we'll get back to you with all the info. Fancy being involved but are based in Australia? Give us a yell too and we'll see if we can figure something out. 

To celebrate a lovely long weekend here in NZ, we've decided to take 10% off all our Zealana yarns! Hooray! An extra day in the weekend is a special treat, as is every precious ball of Zealana we carry. 

Here are a few pattern ideas for the most special of their yarns, Air, which comes in both lace and chunky weights:

The Clara Cowl by Gretchen Ronnevik - uses only 101m of yarn so is a perfect one ball project for Air Chunky 

or Betsy by Jane Richmond, which again only requires one ball of heaven to knit up. 

and for Zealana Air lace weight, we love:

The Simple Pleasures hat by the Purl Bee

The 10% discount runs from right now until Wednesday 29 October. You can either pop in store or use the code 'madetoamaze' at the checkout stage of your online purchase. Happy yarn shopping!

Sometimes, one simply needs to knit socks. You get to hunt out the most beautiful sock yarn in your stash, and browse for the perfect pattern. This is what I did last night. Bored of my lace weight cardi project, I wanted to knit some sunshine. And something toe-up, because this year was meant to be about challenging my habits and doing new things. Usually for socks i'll opt for cuff-down as it means less thinking, but here's a few ideas for toe-up socks that are straight-forward but still worthy of that special sock yarn:

 Reasons to be cheerful by Rachel Atkinson

Little Minx by Karen Scott - free! (And the pattern i've cast on) 

Little cable knee highs by Purl Soho (also free!) 

Two knitting truths: sock yarn doesn't count as stash, and there is no such thing as too many pairs of hand knit socks. Which I often forget and get all caught up in knitting yet another garment. It's the little things that are just as important. So i'm going to treat my feet a bit more from now on. 

Half-way through the first week of school holidays here in NZ, and this morning I had the great pleasure of teaching four new (school age) knitters. It was such a lot of fun and has me thinking about crafty things kids can do in the holidays without too much supervision, and that doesn't cost very much. 

Thanks to the newly longer days and what seems to be a good run of sunshine, how about some wet felting? We sell corriedale fibre in 50g lots for only $3.50, and a little goes a long way. 

 Here's a few ideas to get you going:

 I think i'm going to have to make a few of these projects myself...

Over the weekend I very happily stumbled across yarnsub.com - an awesome new website which helps you figure out appropriate yarn substitutions for your pattern.

It's currently in Beta so you should go have a poke around and let the developers know what you think. It's a brilliantly simple idea and very thoughtfully executed. I can't wait to see how it evolves!