Game of Thrones inspired mitts kits
I am a big fan of Game of Thrones and pleased that series Three of the hit HBO series is now being aired . I asked Anna Richardson (OneHandKnits) whether she would be able to design a series of fingerless mittens for me inspired by Game of Thrones Houses. The mitts have been designed with custom dyed yarn (Beautiful DK) from Karen Literally Yarn.
Anna has come up with a series of ten designs and yarn combinations that can be bought for £15 a kit. The kits are exclusive to The Yarn Cafe and able to be purchased at the website . The mitts can be knitted in 4 different sizes from child to large adult and the kits contain 50g of main colour yarn and 20g of contrast colour yarn. The yarn is part of the Beautiful DK range and consists of 100% Blue Faced Leicester giving excellent stitch definition. Which is your favourite?
House Arryn – As High as Honor
The motif is a white falcon volant and a crescent moon on a blue field.
House Baratheon – Ours is the Fury
The motif is a crowned black stag rampant on a gold field.
House Greyjoy – We do not Sow
The motif is a golden kraken on a black field.
House Lannister – Hear me Roar!
The motif is a golden lion rampant on a crimson field.
House Mormont – Here we Stand
The motif is a black bear in a green wood.
Night’s Watch – Sword in the Darkness
The motif is a black falcon.
House Stark – Winter is Coming
The motif is a grey dire wolf on a dark grey background.
House Targaryen – Fire and Blood
The motif is a red, three-headed dragon on a black field.
House Tully – Family, Duty, Honor
The motif is a silver trout naiant on a red and blue background.
House Tyrrel – Growing Strong
The motif is a golden rose on a green field.
Royal Mail Postal Changes 2013
As you may have read, Royal Mail are changing the price of postage from 2 April 2013. The Yarn Cafe use Royal Mail for domestic (UK) and international postage/shipping. The postal changes will affect all those who shop online as postal increases may be passed on to customers. It will also affect those who send packages. There is a petition which you may want to sign
Changes to Royal Mail Domestic Prices
The changes will mainly affect UK customers and those items more than 8cm in depth. This is because Royal Mail have changed the way that they classify packets (or small parcels) into small, medium and large sized parcels The new classification takes account of the height, weight and depth of a packet as well as its weight. The definitions and prices are in the table below.
| New Format | Size (up to) | Weight (up to) | Royal Mail Postage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small Parcel | Length – 45cm Width – 35cm Depth – 8cm |
2kg | First class from £3 Second class from £2.60 |
| Medium Parcel | Length – 61cm Width – 46cm Depth – 46cm |
20kg | First class from £5.65 Second class from £5.20 |
| Large Parcel | For Parcels greater in size than 61cm x 46cm x 46cm or heavier than 20kg, use Parcelforce Worldwide  products. |
||
This means that the use of Royal Mail will be a significant increase in postage for any package more than 8cm in depth.
Other Changes to Royal Mail Prices – UK
1st Class and 2nd Class Letters and Large Letters stamp prices
- 1st Class stamp prices for Letters remain unchanged at 60p
- 1st Class stamp prices for Large Letters (up to 100g) remain unchanged at 90p
- 2nd Class stamp prices for Letters remain unchanged at 50p
- 2nd Class stamp prices for Large Letters (up to 100g) remain unchanged at 69p
Royal Mail Signed For™ Letters and Large Letters prices
- Royal Mail Signed For™ 1st Class Letters (up to 100g) will be £1.70
- Royal Mail Signed For™ 1st Class Large Letters (up to 100g) will be £2.00
- Royal Mail Signed For™ 2nd Class Letters (up to 100g) will be £1.60
- Royal Mail Signed For™ 2nd Class Large Letters (up to 100g) will be £1.79
Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed™
- Our Guaranteed by 1pm service offers great value features, generous compensation and market-leading quality of service. Prices start from £6.22.
Other Changes to Royal Mail Prices – International
- Postcards to anywhere in the world will cost 88p
- Airmail letters weighing up to 40g will cost £1.28 to Europe
- Airmail letters weighing up to 40g will cost £1.88 to rest of the world – Zones 1 & 2
- International Signed For costs £5.30 per item (in addition to postage)
- Details of prices for international parcels are here
What this means to The Yarn Cafe customers
The online shopping system used by The Yarn Cafe, allows each product to be classified by height, length and depth as well as weight, so that postage/shipping by Royal Mail (including a package cost) can be calculated. We are aware that a number of yarns that are in balls, such as Opal sock yarn and Jawoll Magic have a depth of more than 8cm and will be classified as a medium sized parcel (and thus attract a higher Royal Mail postal rate). We have thus added more options to try to give customers the lowest possible deals on postage and have added the postal cost of a Myhermes courier. Customers will need to check whether Myhermes deliver to their postal area, but they are generally cheaper than Royal Mail.
In addition, we will try to send out orders for single patterns out in a envelope as a large letter – meaning that the postal cost is much lower (it is shown on the product page as fixed postage). If a postal estimate is much higher than actual postage, a refund for over payment of postage will be made by The Yarn Cafe.
Christmas 2012 Last Posting Dates
Christmas 2012 Posting Dates
You may wish to note that the last Christmas posting dates for Royal Mail are as follows:
Wednesday 5 December – airmail to Asia, Australia, Far East (including Japan), New Zealand
Friday 7 December – airmail to Africa, Caribbean, Central and Southern America, Middle East
Monday 10 December – airmail to Eastern Europe, Canada, USA
Wednesday 12 December – airmail to Western Europe
United Kingdom
Thursday 13 December – Standard and Mail Order return parcels
Tuesday 18 December – Second Class and Recorded Signed for
Thursday 20 December – First Class and Recorded Signed for, Parcelforce express48
Friday 21 December – Parcelforce express24, Special delivery with Saturday Guarantee
Saturday 22 December – Special Delivery
Further details are available at www.royalmail.com/greetings
We shall be at W.I. Goes Pop on 24 November, 2012
After the success of the last W.I. Goes Pop event in April, they have again teamed up with Theatre Absolute to open a festive pop up shop. The event will take place on Saturday 24th November, from 10am until 4pm at the Shop Front Theatre, 38 City Arcade, Coventry. The Yarn Cafe will be there and supporting the event with wool, needles, books, notions and some knitted items for sale.
The following stalls are confirmed:
- Earlsdon WI, 2 stalls selling edible goods, bric-a brac, a tombola and a children’s lucky dip.
- Mary Lee – handmade teddies, sewn items and mirrors
- Nightingale Bouquets – fabric bouquets
- Miss Ellie’s Cakes, Jams and Preserves
- A Little Birdie Told Me – lovely hand made bunting and cushions
- The Yarn Cafe – suppliers of yarn, needles, notions, books and some hand made mitts
- Sophie’s Handmade – lovely hand made items
- Tinderbox Toys and Trinkets
- Phoenix cards
- Julia O’ Connoll – quilted items
- Made in Coventry – crafts
- Emma Wilcox – hand knitted items, cards, crafts
- Maria Chalkia – Moroccan goods including slippers and bags
- Crystal Club Jewellery
- Nine Arches Press
- Coventry Society
- Hudson and Heart Jewellery
- Angelic Aromas
- Vintage Mave
Lace Knitting Workshop on 1 December, 2012
Anniken Allis will be giving a full day workshop on lace knitting. Anni is famous for her beautiful designs, featuring in a large number of magazines and for her hand dyed yarn. For further details, see her website – http://www.yarnaddict.co.uk/
The workshop will take place on Saturday 1 December from 9.30am to 3.30pm with a half hour lunch break. The event will be at The Village Hotel, Dolomite Avenue, Coventry Business Park, Coventry, CV4 9GZ.
Juice, water, fruit and cakes will be provided at the workshop but participants may want to bring their own lunch (there is also a restaurant, bar and Starbucks).
The workshop will cover the following:
- How to read lace charts
- How to work yarn overs and decreases
- How to add beads using a crochet hook
- How to use stitch markers and lifelines
- Stretchy cast offs
- Shaping and blocking
Notes will be given out at the course.
Participants should bring 4-ply, sock yarn or lace yarn (but can be done on larger weight yarn) and appropriate needles and crochet hook.
Numbers for the course are limited. Although advertised on this site, the course has been arranged on a personal basis by the owner of the site and a paypal payment will be sent to the owner.
The cost of the course is £55. Please only order if you are able to attend the course and a paypal invoice will be sent on to you . You can order here.
London 2012 – The Ravellenic Games
I thoroughly enjoyed watching the 2012 Olympic Games and was proud that my home country had hosted such a spectacular games, with two fantastic ceremonies, well organised events and the best of the World’s athletes breaking records. I cried, cheered and jumped up and down as Team GB won medal after medal (costing me a small fortune in First Day Covers – special stamps of the Gold Medal winners!). I will remember the games for equality and the fact that all participating countries has female competitors. Nicola Adams became the first female Olympian to win a boxing match and there were was plenty of discussion regarding who was the greatest Olympian – Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Osain Bolt or Michael Phelps?
Inspired by the build up to the Games, I decided to take part in the 2012 Ravellenic Games, organised by Ravelry – a knitting and crochet community with over 2 million members. The Ravellenic Games has not been without their own problems (much like the real games) with the U.S. Olympic Committee objecting to the original name of Ravelympics and mocking the competition. This was a bit rich given various knitters in the UK had been knitting spectacular wool cushions for the athletes!
Anyhow, the brief was to cast on during the Opening Ceremony on 27 July 2012 and cast off by the end of the closing ceremony on 12 August 2012. The aim was to make something challenging and there were 32 events, such as “felted freestyle”, “double knit boxing” and “”baby dressage”. As I had not knitted many socks, I decided to take part in the Sock Put and chose “Fields of Gold” by Anna Richardson as the pattern had recently been in Knit Now Magazine (issue 10). I remembered that I had some rather lovely yarn from a Skein Queen sock club called “Old Yellowed Photographs” and it looked like it had gold, silver and bronze colours.
I duly sat down to watch the Opening Ceremony to London 2012, at 9pm on 27 July and was so entranced by Danny Boyle’s production that it was 11pm when I started to cast on! I still remember the making of the Olympic rings and the spectacular cauldron and wondering how many people outside the UK understood the historic and social references. I had a brief holiday in the middle of the Olympics to a place so unusually warm that my hands were too hot to knit. Despite that I did manage to finish one sock in the comfort of the air conditioned hotel! Unfortuately, I had left myself the marathon task of knitting one sock in less than two days and knitted like a demon. I finally cast off at 2 minutes to midnight whilst watching the Closing Ceremony. I may not be an athlete but I was certainly inspired by them and have a lasting reminder of the time that the modern Olympics came home.
Knitting an Arctic Tern – a bird called Elvis
I have been knitting an Arctic Tern for the last couple of days for Bird Yarns. This is a community of knitters that has been brought together by Deirdre Nelson, a textile artist and is in response to the changing migratory patterns of seasbird’s across Scotland’s islands. The idea is to have an installation of knitted Arctic Terns who will be on Tobermory Pier, on the Isle of Mull from 18-24 June 2012. Further details are available at this website.
With this in mind, myself and a friend received a knitting pack, consisting of wool from Ardalanish in Mull, a pattern and an instruction to be creative when creating the beak and legs (using recycled material if possible).
I knitted the tern over a weekend and my partner created the legs for the birds from some old pipe cleaners and 2 pence pieces (to give some weight to the legs, so that the bird could stand up). I then knitted two red tubes to cover over the pipe cleaners and an extra long beak. My bird looked a bit like Elvis! I am looking forward to seeing all of the knitted Arctic Terns and seeing if I can spot my Elvis in the crowd.
World Wide Knit in Public Day – Charity Knitathon
It is World Wide Knit in Public day tomorrow (9th June) and we will be at the charity knitathon at the Welcome Centre in 47 Parkside Coventry (from 9am to 9pm). The Knit A Thon is being held to support the ongoing and new transformational projects of Next Level International across Europe. The creations, squares to blankets, will be provided to the less fortunate across Europe. More details are available on the website – http://www.nlieurope.com/letsgetknitted/ There are prizes for the longest time knitting, prettiest square etc. Please support this worthwhile cause.
Jubilee themed yarns
We have added a number of items to the site to celebrate all things British including the Diamond Jubilee, British summer and London 2012 Olympics. DyeSpinKnit have created some lovely red, white and blue mini skeins for us (some are plain and some are striped). We are also stocking Wendy’s Jubilee DK yarn and Celebrate pattern book (which gives you an opportunity to create your own bunting, bags, cushions with a British theme. We are also stocking the lovely British Bear from Gift Horse Knit Kits and London Themed Bags from Undercover Owl.
Earlsdon Festival 2012
The Earlsdon Festival 2012 officially started today. From now until 6th May, there are daily events such as hearing a talk from David Moorcroft, plenty of music, and a pamper evening. The event culminates on 7th May . Earlsdon Street will be closed off and there will be around 50 stalls in the street and all of the shops will be open. There will be events at Earlsdon School, the Methodist Church, Open Gardens and St Barbara’s Church Hall.
The Yarn Cafe will be having a stall on Earlsdon Street (outside Cards n Things)
I hope the weather is good! More details of all of the events are detailed on Facebook and on the website.
Hope to see you there!