So here are some facts I found on merino:

Regulates body temperature without over heating.
Merino fibres has lots of tiny pores on their fiber which traps air. This acts like a layers between your body temperature and the outside environment keeping you warm when the weather is cold, and vice versa.
Apparently Merino has high warmth to weight ratio. which means lots of warmth with less amount of fibre.

Merino wool wick moisture away so that your body feels nice and dry.
Merino is a hydrophillic (mening loves water!) fibre and can wick up to 1/3 of its weight.

Merino wool is naturally anti-bacteiral.
This means that the fabric is resistant to smell (unlike the sysnthetic counterpart).
The reason for this is that bacteria prefers to grow on an even surface with moisture but merino wool fibre has uneven surface and it draws water keeping the surface dry.

So I thought I would knit something for myself a nice little project using merino wool…

Free glove pattern Rayna by Artesano. Haven't knitted selbuvotter for ages!

Pattern: Rayna by Rita Taylor, a free knitting pattern by Artesano.

Yarn: Artesano Superwash Merino (100% machine washable wool; 112m / 50 g ball). I used Purple (3158) and Baby Peach (8413).

I LOVE knitting selbuvotter of all kinds. This was perfect because it is knitted with DK weight yarn so it’s nearly finished!

So warm and so cute!

If you are a merino geek, you might have heard of some controversial issues about museling on merino sheep. I don’t know much about this issue but the fact that people talk about it, it must be an important aspect of wool production. I think some of you would be happy to know that Artesano Superwash Merino wool comes from Peru and I have read that the practice of museling does NOT happen in Peru – it’s good to know these facts.

Front view of the glove.

Also I recently found out that Artesano is giving out free knitting pattern by Nick Atkinson when you complete a quick questionnaire. And out of those who has completed a questionnaire, 5 people will win the Superwash Merino DK in their colour choice to knit the garment!!!! The deadline is 17th Feb 2012.

I have done it already    I think the pattern is beautiful (see below). Isn’t it nice? It’s so clever that the diagonal eyelets are worked on the yoke. It continues even across the buttonband! I so want to knit with a red (colour: 8083) or teal (colour: 6701). I also think grey (colour SFN41) would look gorgeous.

This is going to be a beautiful cardi that you can knit up quick!

So much fun in winter. Happy knitting!

Have you heard of Innocent Big Knit? AND have you heard of Worldwide Knitting in Public Day?

Worldwide Knitting in Public Day starts from 11th June this year which is the day for the Innocent Big Knit starts.

Innocent Big Knit 2001. This is CUTE. If you are big on crochet, you can make crochet hats too!

If you live in the UK you would have seen a bottle of Innocent Smoothie with a knitted hat. It’s a charity knitting event where we knit little hats and send it off to Innocent Drinks. The hats you knitted will be put onto their smoothie bottles. For every hat knitted 25p is given to a charity. This is the basic concept of Innocent Big Knit. Here is a message from Innocent:

We want to raise £160k this year for Age UK by knitting 650,000 little hats which will go on our smoothie bottles and be sold in stores in November.

For every little hat knitted, we’ll give 25p to Age UK to help them make winter a little warmer for older people across the UK.  We need your help to reach this huge target – we have 3 different patterns to start you off and there will be lots more going up on our website very soon.  You can find the patterns by searching innocent’s Big Knit on Ravelry and the pdfs will also be going up on the website next week.

Every hat counts- so why not get together this Saturday with your Knitting chums and make a few hats for innocent’s Big Knit?

Here are some fun images of Innocent Big Knit.

The weather is getting better which is perfect for a knit-al-fresco. I really would like to make little hats this year (especially after browsing all the fun images!). It’s a great opportunity to get rid of your random stash. Often postage can be a limiting factor for charity knitting for overseas participants. I think Innocent Big Knit is fantastic as the hats are tiny and light the postage won’t cost much (well unless you make hundreds!). This means anyone from anywhere overseas can participate and send them off to Innocent!!

The pattern can be found on Ravelry, I am selecting the stash to use for the little hats

So today is all about giving. Last week, I met with Juliet who is the editor of The Knitter magazine for a nice knittery chat . She is a lovely person and I was so thrilled to meet her. She is multi-talented and is deeply passionate about knitting. With her positive energy, I now understand why The Knitter is always full of well-thought practical, yet fashionable patterns and forefront knitting articles.

Red Nose Corsage. You gotta make this one

18th March is Red Nose Day in the UK. It’s a day where everyone gets involved and do something fun to raise money for charity. On the day I met her, she had this really cute flower corsage. I fell in love with it so I asked her about it. She told me that it was a charity knitting pattern that she designed for Red Nose Day. I just had to make one.

Excellent mini stash busting project. I was able to untangle this yarn which was left like this for about 5 years.

Clever construction of the nose. Look how cute it is!!!! I might have to start making knitted plush in future. Super squishy and super cute.

Finished. Thoroughly enjoyable pattern. I can't wait to wear it and show it off to people in town!

I used my old stash, Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4 ply for the Red Nose and the leaves. For the petals, I used Kidsilk Haze. I am deciding whether I should put it on a clip or on a hairband.

If you would like to knit this pattern, HERE is her charity knitting pattern page. It would be wonderful if you could donate something in exchange of this cute little pattern Also, do have a look at The Knitter’s charity knitting page. For those who are into charity knitting, this page is very good because it is current and fun.

Happy weekend everyone!

Today, I would like to share with you my latest FREE knitting pattern called “Frilled City Scarf”.

C&C's latest free charity knitting pattern

The pattern includes 2 versions: medium length to wear as above and the long version for those who would like to do the European loop (I found a webpage to show you how you can wear scarf here).

A smart not-so-wide scarf, ideal for cold sunny days in the city.

You can see I am totally into frill knitting at the moment. I based the main scarf pattern as the leaf motif. Bobbles are added to make them look like red fruit stuck on the leaves

This brings back lots of my fond childhood memories of red fruit plants like lantern plants in Japan. I think wearing accessories should makes you happy as much as make you look good.

Usually knitting a scarf for a gift is a long process but this pattern is a fun and quick knit and is ideal for a gift.

download now

FREE iPhone Purse Pattern

Hope you’ve all been having a great first week of 2010. Today as promised, I would like to share with you my brand new FREE knitting pattern for an iPhone (well, you can put anything you want ).

My cool electrical gadget must travel in style. So I made this retro-style iPhone purse for me to take everywhere I go.

My knitted iPhone case.

This Knitted iPhone Purse…

♥ has an external pocket where you can put your earpiece

♥ is seamless

♥ is knitted in one piece (i.e. no joining required – grafting is involved but this is optional as you can cast off and join the bottom anyways you like)

♥ Is double-layered for extra protection

♥ has flexy internal purse frame to securely hold your precious gadjet

♥ is very simple, very fun, very stylish

♥ works really well with tweedy yarn

♥ involves Judy’s Magic Cast-On method. Her site is here and my short blog post is here.

download now

Have a wonderful weekend! ;D

Mini purse frames

The great thing about this pattern is that you can make lots of them from a piece of fat quarter fabrics. So you can turn your fabric remnants into cute little purses!

Another thing is that you can make TWO VERSIONS of the purses: flat and puffy styles. Surprisingly, puffy style is easier to make (well this is from my own experience).

Flat version

Puffy version

The mechanics of these purses are very simple. The pattern has 5mm seam allowance. For the puffy version, you will first need to make two pleats. You will be joining both the interior and exterior pieces with the RS facing together to turn RS out so there are no visible raw edges at the joining of the purse frame (if you see what I mean?).

For this pattern, Mini Round Purse Frames are used.

For the interlinings, I used Vilene General Purpose Single-Sided Fusible (I LOVE this interlining because it’s so versatile – I use it literally for everything) and Vilene Fusible Fleece Single Sided: Light Loft (but this is optional – use it only if you want the purse to be a softer and puffier).

Fabrics used in the photo are some of my Japanese remnants as well as Kokka Ume fabrics from my shop.

The more the better.

The pattern can be downloaded from HERE or click the little thumbnail below (PDF file size: 1.5MB):

If you like the pattern, please re-tweet this post (you can click on the button near the title which says re-tweet). Hope you enjoy. Happy holiday crafting!

My my lunch is often shoved into a plastic bag last minute before I leave home. It has come to a point that I really needed a nice bag that I can quickly put my lunch in it and grab and go out.

I won’t bore you with too much mechanics of this bag. Though if I were to mention just one thing about this bag is the contrasting wide gusset which allows you to put a fairly large Tupper Ware (which has your yummy lunch in it). I have used Colourful Japanese Fans (natural) fabric and light loft fusible fleece.

You can download the pattern directly by clicking here. Enjoy!

By the way, I will now be starting a FREE newsletter. You will get all the product update and news. There will be a discount code in the newsletter that you can use for all items in the shop. I’ve added an extra step to help keep us safe from spammers so that you will receive an e-mail which you will have to confirm your sign up. I will make sure that the newsletter is fun and exciting. I will the thrilled to see you on the list!

Enjoy!

Hope you enjoy the pattern.