Creatures Great and Small sign ups are open!

Sign ups for Tripping Yarn Balls Creatures Great and Small club are open! Land and sea, furry and scaly, four-legged or winged, this year’s club will feature yarns inspired by animals. Each quarter will highlight a single type of animal. Which animals? Swing by our Ravelry group for sneak peeks and previews.

Once again, Jodi of Shameless Twist, Chrystee of Play at Life Fiber Arts, and Lillian of Please Stand By will bring their own dye techniques and love of color to each month’s yarn. We’ve been sharing inspiration pictures for several months now and we’re very excited about this theme!

Every month, you will receive a gorgeous skein of hand dyed yarn as well as other surprise goodies. At least once a quarter, you will also receive an exclusive pattern designed by Celia Jones. There will also be randomly released designs as inspiration hits, so you never know when you’ll get an extra boost of fun. Come join us for this year’s trip, it’s going to be a blast!

Just as with previous years, the subscription payments begin immediately, and the first shipment will go out by June 15, 2015 and every month thereafter for the duration of your subscription. Your payments will end prior to you receiving your final shipment so that you get the complete subscription. Worldwide shipping is, as usual, included in the price.

☆☆☆Spots are all filled up! Check back in 6 months for possible 6 month spots opening!☆☆☆

Retro Toons Sign Ups Are Open!

It’s finally here! Sign ups for the Tripping Yarn Balls Retro Toons club are open! Remember racing to the television on Saturday mornings to catch your favourite cartoons? Well, now you get to race to your mailbox to catch them embodied on yarn! With Play at Life, Please Stand By Yarns, and Shameless Twist, a dozen reminders of your favourite characters are available to you this year.

Taking the journey with us this year will be Lillian of Please Stand By Yarns. Her self-striping and variegated yarns are the perfect medium for the cartoon theme! We are also absolutely ecstatic to have Maureen Foulds, designer of many beautiful patterns, working with us this year! Club subscriptns will include one of Maureen’s patterns per 6 month period!

As always, Jodi of Shameless Twist and Chrystee of Play at Life Fiber Arts will bring their own dye techniques and love of color to the cartoon-y table. This year, Jodi will be working with a new luscious sw merino/cashmere/nylon base. And Chrystee will be dyeing up some semisolids to coordinate with the Maki for you stripe and colorwork lovers.

As always, there are 12 and 6 month spots available this year. Due to drastic postage increases, we’ve had to work another $2 per month into the cost of the club in order to be able to offer shipping included worldwide in our prices.

Just as with previous years, the subscription payments begin immediately, and the first shipment will go out during the first week of November and every month thereafter for the duration of your subscription. Your payments will end prior to you receiving your final shipment so that you get the complete subscription. Worldwide shipping is, as usual, included in the price.

We’ll be playing over in the Ravelry group the entire time, playing guessing games and having a ball! Come join us!

New Club – Retro Toons!

Remember when cartoons only aired on Saturday mornings? We do!

The next round for the Tripping Yarn Balls club will be inspired by the cartoons of the 70s and 80s:  Jem, She-Ra, Scooby Do, the Smurfs…etc. You woke up early on Saturday mornings to watch them but now they’ll be delivered straight to your mailbox in the form of yarn.

Taking the journey with us this year will be Lillian of Please Stand By Yarns. Her self-striping and variegated yarns are the perfect medium for the cartoon theme! We are also absolutely ecstatic to have Maureen Foulds, designer of many beautiful patterns, working with us this year! Club subscriptions will include one of Maureen’s patterns per 6 month period!

As always, Jodi of Shameless Twist and Chrystee of Play at Life Fiber Arts will bring their own dye techniques and love of color to the cartoon-y table. This year, Jodi will be working with a new luscious sw merino/cashmere/nylon base. And Chrystee will be dyeing up some semisolids to coordinate with the Maki for you stripe and colorwork lovers.

6 month and yearly paid-in-full and monthly subscriptions will be available by September 15th. Spots will close the first week of October or when the club is full. Need a reminder? Please join our mail list and we’ll let you know when spots are available! Want to see what the club is about and check out our previous themes? Head on over to our Ravelry group!

Second half of Come As You Are memberships are available!

We’ve had an awesome first half of Come As You Are yarn club, featuring colourways inspired by 90’s alternative & grunge songs dyed by Nerd Girl Yarns, Play at Life, and Shameless Twist. All colourways are done on fingering weight yarn so you can get the most bang for your buck. You can see the first colourways here. We’ve delivered our last of the first half, so it’s time to release the spots for the second half. There are only 10 spots available, so get ’em while they’re hot!

This has been a really fun club with some beautiful colourways to boast, and we’re really looking forward to the next 6 months.

ALL CLOSED UP NOW!

We have a group on Ravelry for playing guessing games as to what’s next and showing off our FOs & WIPs from the yarns, and of course our general silliness and fun. Come join us!

NEW CLUB!

We had a wonderful year with the Tripping Yarn Balls Zodiac theme. Sadly, Erin of Tyrannosaurus Knits has retired from the dyeing business and while she will be sorely missed (she and her pants!), we’ve chosen another fabulous dyer to take her place in Tripping Yarn Balls. We’re pleased to introduce Christa from Nerd Girl Yarns into the family, and she will be dyeing along with Chrystee from Play at Life and Jodi from Shameless Twist.

This year we’re doing a club based on 90’s alternative rock & grunge. Remember the 90’s? The plaid jackets and torn jeans, Kurt Cobain belting his lyrics out unintelligibly and being so great at it? Well, we want to celebrate some of the innovations from the music industry from that era through yarn. We hope you’ll join us for this ride. It’s going to be more fun than Adam Sandler at a hacky sack competition.

As last year, the club is going to be fingering weight yarns, each dyer taking turns sending out the yarn.

We! Are so! STOKED, MAN!

Taurus

As expected, when one searches for images tagged with “bull”, one finds many, many pictures of bulls. But one may also find some adorable pictures of pit bull puppies like this one. DED

That adorable picture inspired me to focus on a baby bull. A calf. Specifically a Holstein calf. Members have been posting project pics at the clubs Ravelry group. Head on over to check out how this self-striping yarn knits up.

Aries

Aries was easy for me. I have absolutely no experience being an Aries, but when I considered the Aries people I know, the colours just popped right into my head. I really don’t know how to describe this yarn, so I’ll just post a picture of it so you can see it for yourself.

 

It’s definitely one I’m going to do again. I love this yarn so much.

Aquarius

Happy February Yarn Ballers!

Aquarius has arrived at most subscribers homes and I’m happy to say that you all seem to love it. In planning for this month, I did the ever popular Google Image search for inspiration. I knew I wanted to do something blue, but I didn’t want it to be too much like Erin’s Sagittarius or the blue sections of Leo. There is a lot of zodiac art out there! Most of it didn’t connect with me very much. And then I found a picture of Hematite.

 

Source: http://www.minerals.net/MineralMain.aspx

This was a great jumping off point for a Maki! The final yarn (below) transitions from a deep charcoal/navy blue to a pale grey with turquoise undertones. It’s one of the most subtle colorway’s I’ve ever dyed.

Play at Life Fiber Arts - Boundless Sockie Maki - Aquarius

Coming in March, Tyrannosaurus Knits (Erin!) with Pisces.

Capricorn

There’s something so cozy about the months of December & January. Sipping a warm cup of coffee while contemplating the brilliant colours painted across the winter sky can create such a feeling of contentment. It’s with this in mind that I created the Capricorn colourway, after getting up every morning and chasing the sunrise with my camera.

 

This morning;

 

Inspired this;

 

I washed the sunrise colours a little bit to bring a little more calm to the skein. I hope you enjoy working with it!

Club Recap

Left to right - Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius

5 months have flown by with 5 very unique club yarns. Our members have made socks and neck warmers. We’ve shared project ideas and materials sources (like this bead store that sells triangular beads!) Jodi, Erin and I have had great fun planning our colorways and teasing our members with clues and spoiler links.

Want in on the fun? Spots are full for the next 6 month run, but you can come visit us at our Ravelry group!