Knitmas Photo Album!

Our Knitmas celebration on December 16th was so much fun and here are the pictures to prove it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30285126@N02/sets/72157622925649619/


We all brought an amazing food dish, a secret santa gift and wine! I can't wait for it to happen next year!

Thank you all to the Naked Sheep Knit Night folks! You are the best and I really look forward to knitting with you in 2010 and beyond. Like 2009, next year should be just as fun and we are planning some really great events to keep us together.

New Spindles!

We are expanding our stock to include drop spindles, rovings and spinning wheels. Currently we have a selection of drop spindle kits that include, a top whorl drop spindle, about 2 ounces of roving and instructions for 19.99!

We also have the drop spindle for $11.99 without the roving and instructions!

Pollika Shawl Pins!

Now at the shop! We have re-stocked these awesome sweater and shawl pins! They range between $9.00 - $24.00!

And they also have awesome buttons! Each one is $8.00.

Learn To Spin on A Wheel!

Learn how to work with your spinning wheel to create beautiful useable yarns. This series of classes will be geared to the absolute beginner and “still pretty new at it” spinner. It will cover adjusting the wheel to optimize success, learning to treadle, spinning a continuous single thread, and plying. For the first three lessons we will concentrate on spinning wool. After that, who knows…!


Take sometime for yourself after the holidays and learn how to spin yarn on a spinning wheel. Our class is designed for the absolute beginner! Spinning is so relaxing and therapeutic and like knitting totally addictive.



We have three wheels for you to borrow during the class if you don't currently have one!



Spinning On A Wheel 101 - $125, includes roving.
January 9th & 16th & 23rd & 30th 9am to 11am (4-two hour sessions)
Maximum Participants: 6 - 3 spots left!



If you have a wheel, please bring it in good working order, 3 bobbins, lazy kate, solid-coloured apron or lap cloth .


Our instructor, Julia Lee has been knitting since she was a child and spinning for close to 20 years. She is a graduate of the 1994-2000 OHS Spinning Certificate course offered at the Haliburton School. She is an amazing, patient extremely knowledgeable instructor and would love nothing more than to put her spinning knowledge from her head into yours, er, hands!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from Us to You!

Love,

Kim, Lisa, Sarah, Emily, Naomi and Lorraine!

Cascade Eco now comes in Heathers!

Just like Cascade 220 heathers, it's big sister Cascade Eco now is available in heathered colours. We have a few and are waiting for a bunch more. Eack skein cost $19.99 and has 437 yards.

Fiddlehead Mitten Patterns Now Available!

We just received a whole new order of Tanis Fibre Arts Fiddlehead Mitten Kits and we also have the individual patterns available! Each one is printed in colour and cost $7.00!

If you are not sure which yarn to use to knit these up, come in and we can show you which yarns to use.

Dipped Infinity Scarf by Laura Chau!

Wow does Toronto have some great talent! Laura Chau has designed another home run in my opinion and when I saw one of my favourite dyers put together a kit - I ordered 6 for the shop!


Laura and Tanis = awesome combination!




Each kit contains the pattern and enough hand dyed yarn to knit this awesome scarf. Kit cost is $60.00.

If you buy the needles with the kit, the needles are 10% off.

Quick Christmas Gift Idea!

Need to knit up a quick gift? How about Tudora and a pair of matching fetchings? Both patterns are found at knitty.com

We also have a whole bunch of Fetchings around the store in different worsted weight yarns.

Come in - get ideas - and make someone special happy at the holidays. What is better than a handknit gift to keep your loved ones warm?

Nothing I say!

Free Naked Sheep Mug!

For the month of December, we have a great promotion!

Spend $75 before tax (excluding class fees and gift certificates) and receive a FREE Naked Sheep Travel mug!!! Value of $12.00!

This will come in handy during the colder months - you will have a nice hot drink with you while waiting for transit, walking, driving - whatever you are doing, you will be warm.

Happy Holidays!

New Colours of Painted Fleece Yarn!

First up, the ever popular Painted Fleece Sterling Silver yarn! This is one super awesome yarn that is very hard to resist! Missy dyed up some new colours and filled in our basket with fantastic colourways. Keep in mind, these are one of kind skeins, which will be difficult to re-produce exactly.

Each skein is $30.00 and is enough for a small shawl, socks, hats - any pattern uses fingering weight yarn, this can be used for.

Next up - the Painted Fleece Merino/Nylon blend sock yarn. Each skein is $24.00 and these beauties, are well, beautiful. I think I might want to use the orange colour with Viola's sock yarn in light purple to knit helloyarn.com's new squirrel pattern.

Edited to add - this is Missy's Merino & Cashmere yarn - 575 yards @$25.00, all hand dyed soft goodness!!! We have a beautiful scarf knitted with this scumptious yarn. Come on in and feel it for yourself!

Hopefully by the time this post hits the internet, the pattern will be available to purchase. I will be stalking her site until it is

OMG The # of Books we received is CRAZY!

Holy cow batman! Did we ever receive a HUGE LOAD of new books! Long time coming that is for sure!!!! Look at them:

And there are other books that are on back order and we hope to receive them soon!

We also received a bunch of new Knitting Pure and Simple Patterns. Hats, mittens, socks, baby blankets, scarf patterns and girl sweater patterns.

Come on in and get inspired!

New Shop Sample! Baby Sized Log Cabin Blanket.

Yippee - this one is hot off the needles! I used January One's how to log cabin receipe she got from the Mason-Dixon recipe to make this Log Cabin Blanket:

I used four colours of Cascade 220 Superwash on 4.5mm circular needles. The colours are:

Centre Square: Dark Blue (less then a 1/4 of the ball) and the single crochet trim

Orange Stripes: one ball

Light Blue Stripes: one ball

Light Beige: one ball

Dark Brown: one ball and less than a 1/4 of the 2nd ball

Size: 28 X 28 inches which is 71 X 71 cm.

There are 17 rows for each stripe. To keep this project to four balls (and a 5th for the centre square), you can knit 15 rows instead of 17 and you will only need 4 balls.

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If you are feeling like you can move mountains, you can knit a log cabin blanket that fits a double sized bed, like the one I knit a few years ago for my husband:

I've also knitted one using Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece for Neice (btw - we don't have this yarn nor these colours as substitutes!) I just want to show you different colour combos I've come up with.

New Yarn - Cascade Magnum!

Just in time for those last minute Christmas gift you decided to make! We just received 9 colours of Cascade Magnum- a Polar weight yarn! Cost for each skein is $24.95 and has 113 meters. One skein is enough for a scarf, or two would make a fantasic long squishy scarf. Make a hat, mitts and blanket with this yarn.

So if you need a quick gift, this is the yarn for you!

Customer Projects!

Oh my goodness, our Naked Sheep Peeps are truly knitting like crazy lately! Beatrice who looks super cute in her new pixie hair cut just finished her first knitting project - a scarf, using three balls of Noro Bonbori. Doesn't she look super cute?



Next up - Patricia knit one of a pair of socks using Regia 6 ply yarn - colours are great, knitting is impeccable and now she only has to knit the another one.

Past Newsletters and Finished Object!

I finally figured out how to link to our past newsletters. Technology isn't always my best friend, but figuring out a way to get them up on this blog wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. See to the right and a bit down and you can read through all our past newsletters.


On to knitting. One of Naked Sheep Peeps, Erica knit Opart from knitty.com using Cascade 220 superwash. She used three balls of each the cream and the purple and 4.5mm needles. She started this project in the summer with hopes of finishing it before the baby was due to arrive in November - and she did it! Go Erica Go!!!!


I totally love knitting blankets and when someone wants to knit one I am all over it! Hint, hint - I love them so much that one is about to make an appearance on the blog soon.....

New Sample Alert!

Oh yeah baby - we are knitting up a storm here at the Sheep - knitting scarves like you wouldn't believe. Our Naomi who works with us on Sundays knit this Big Wool scarf up in no time and look how awesome it looks on Emily:

Naomi used three balls of Big Wool, 10 mm needles and used the Scrunchable Scarf.

This scarf is so squishy to the touch and would look equally good of both men and women.

And...We Are Back!

We get so many emails and comments appreciating all the blog posts we do and we are sorry we haven't posted in a few days. Between crazy busy at the shop and personal stuff, we have neglected this blog. Doesn't mean we don't have weeks worth of updates to do, but just been so super duper busy.


Thank you all for taking the time to write and pop in to say how much you appreciate us updating our blog - we now know you read it! Woot!


Now on to better things - look what we received last week:



Ewe Dye It Sock Kits:

Description from the website:

What if you could dye yarn in your choice of colors with NO big (or small) messy dye pots ?

Our Ewe Dye-It Kit makes it possible! Now you can create your own beautiful hand-dyed yarn using just your microwave oven and common vinegar.

Our Kit includes 6 blend-able primary & secondary color dyes, a skein (100g) of fingering weight 75% wool / 25% nylon yarn, 3 dye dispenser bottles, protective gloves, easy-to-follow instructions and more.

Our Kit contains enough dye to color from five to six 100g skeins of yarn. And, since all the other supplies are several times re-useable, our Kit is eco-conscious.

Each kit costs $45.00 and we can get our hands on more bare sock yarn to dye up more. Each kit has enough yarn to dye 5-6 skeins of yarn!

Wisteria - Shop Sample!!!!

If you are not signed up for our monthly newsletter you might have missed our announcement that Emily finished knitting Wisteria. A beautiful top down cable sweater that we knit with 7 skeins of Malabrigo worsted.




I am sure you can tell what Emily is thinking here, but just in case. "Yippee, I am done knitting this beautiful sweater!"

Close up of the cable on the sleeve:

And another Wisteria knit by one of our customers, who was inspired by ours:

New Yarn Alert!

Sometimes our suppliers offer us great deals on yarns and we scoop them up to pass on the savings to you! We just received a 100% wool, chunky weight (12 sts/4"), 108 yards at 25% off!

Regular price is $10.00, your cost is $7.50. We have 10 great colours to choose from:

I just finished Ysolda's Grown Up Booties, and once they are all seamed up, pictures will be shown and a new sample is born! Woot!

When Good Knits go Bad!

When Good knits go Bad is a new feature at The Sheep! We like to keep things positive around here, but our knitting doesn't always allow us to have the 1/2 full glass feeling. However, we can still have a good laugh at our knits when they go down hill.

Jacqueline is knitting the Fiddlehead Mittens with us and finished her first one and started the 2nd one to match. Good plan, BUT, the thumb on the first one is huge and the 2nd one is mitten is turning out much too big. Why? because she is using the Addi click system except, on one side is a 3.5mm tip and on the other a 3.75mm tip! Oh well. At least she is knitting them with exceptional yarn - Classic Elite Princess:

To ease her pain, she started a scarf on size 10mm and knit through one ball of Jo Sharp Aran in 30 minutes! Nothing like knitting a chunky scarf!

Customer FO Alert!!!

Adrianne finished this beautiful sweater with Rowan Cocoon:, a yarn with 80% merino wool and 20% Kid mohair.

Doesn't it look super duper awesome on Adrianne? We think so!

Around The GTA!

I get great inspriation looking through all the finished objects in the GTA and The Naked Sheep group on Ravelry. We have great talent in GTA and here are a few that I totally love and wish I had all the time in the world to knit:

The Knitting Basket has a great number of free patterns for you to knit and crochet and I especially love the owl coffee cozy:

In the Naked Sheep group, Dunskins (ravelry link) just finished a few pairs of fingerless mitts. Check out her Finished Objects page in Ravelry.

Chumily (ravelry link) finished two great hats designed by Ysolda.

Gretel, knit with 2.5 skeins of Mirasol Miski:

Ripley, knit with 1.1 skeins of Baby Alpaca Sport, one of the softest yarns we have!