I thought it would be a good time to do another painting by Claude Monet and this one is gorgeous! We haven't done a lot of green in the club so far so I thought it'd be nice to venture into some for the first month of the new year. This painting is called Le Pont Japonais a Giverny and is a wonderful landscape painting of a Japanese bridge.
Hope everyone's enjoying their holiday season! I'm so enjoying a couple of days off and thought it'd be a nice time to post the spoiler for December's colourway. It's always interesting to decide on colours from each painting every month and this month was no exception. I decided to go a little lighter in the colours for a bit of a "softer" colourway that would hopefully remind everyone of the Christmas season without being too bold or too bright. Enjoy everyone and Happy New Year!
Everything is ready and will be shipping today! Here's this month's teaser. I decided to go with the softer/medium tones in the painting this month as I always seem to gravitate toward the darker tones in all the paintings. It produced a nice, soft effect on the yarns. I hope everyone enjoys this version too! I am happy with it :) Enjoy!
This month's inspiration piece is called Plum Garden over Shin-Ohashi Bridge". Isn't it pretty? I'm looking forward to putting these colours onto the yarn...it should give an interesting result!
Here she is! November's colourway inspired by Gustav Klimt and called "Fulfillment". I thought it was a lovely colourway for the season and I hope everyone is enjoying it! Can't wait to see what people knit from this one too!
A little sampling of this month's colourway to peak everyone's interest :) I found a new "liquify" feature in my photo editing software that creates a very cool effect without showing the yarn at all...reminds me of an oil painting too!
I stumbled on this painting while browsing for an inspiration piece and the colours really resonated with me! Isn't this just a lovely and gorgeous painting? I'm excited to paint these colours! 
Here she is her non-teaser format! I hope everyone enjoys this colourway! I liked the effect the bamboo content gave this colourway - made the colours nice and subtle just like the painting.
Almost done with this month's yarns! The last batch is drying today and the colours came out how I wanted them to - woohoo! The bamboo gives them a nice water colour-ish feel and adds another dimension with the sheen. I hope everyone likes this one. Yarns ship tomorrow already which means it's October!
Awhile back one of the club members suggested this painting (sorry, can't remember who but thank you!) and I've had it in my back pocket for awhile for painting. It's lovely and it feels like October would be a nice month for it too. I hope you like it! It's called "Person at the Window" and I am planning on putting it on my Bamboolicious base yarn - the bamboo sheen would be lovely for it and bamboo comes out nice and subtle in colour like this painting is. I also like it for the mixing of colour tones.
I hope everyone's doing well and enjoying this colourway! I enjoyed painting it as always and am looking forward to next month already!
A little teaser of the yarn for September and hope everyone has a fabulous long weekend! Everything ships on Tuesday, September 2nd!
It's that time again! September's mailing is just around the corner and it's time to announce this month's inspiration piece! While searching through the art pieces I was looking for something that would be both summery but yet also hint at Fall coming and I think this piece captures that wonderfully. It's bright enough to take us through the last days of summer but Fall-like enough to remind us the leaves will soon be turning colours. 
Wow, who could believe a year has gone by already for this club? I sure can't! I am enjoying each and every month of this club and this month was no exception. I loved choosing the art piece and then dyeing the yarn to match! We had two winners this month and congrats go out to Mary and Kelly - you will both receive September's shipment free! YAY!
I'm so excited to get this out to everyone as I'm really pleased with how the colourway worked up from this month's painting! YAY! Don't forget to check your insert card for the word "WINNER" as we have two random winners for September's membership. How fun! I still can't believe we've come to the first year anniversary for the club - HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to everyone! Onto another year of great paintings and fun colourways!
I thought it'd be fun to incorporate "Zen" into this month's anniversary offering so when I did a quick search of zen on Art.com I stumbled onto this painting and fell in love! Isn't it gorgeous? The artist calls it Zen Peonies. Wonderful combination of colours...lovely! I can't wait to dye this one on the Louet Gems - it should translate in a beautiful way!
I enjoyed handpainting this month's colourway since it was a soft colourway with golds and blues and it seemed like a nice fitting for the warmer month of July. The base yarn is Louet Gems so I hope everyone enjoys knitting with it! I am excited for August as it's our anniversary and I get to choose the painting! Stay tuned...I'm hoping to find something exciting or even totally different. Thanks everyone for a wonderful year and onto our next!
I'm just not a sock knitting sort of girl. But I love, love, love this yarn. So I cast on 40 stitches on a size 3 needle and commenced to knit, knitting two together at the start of every other row. And when I was down to one stitch, I picked up 40 stitches along the 40 garter stitch ridges and repeated the process, decreasing one stitch every other row. As you can see, those decrease edges form the hypoteneuse of a right tiangle, and the triangles are arranged so that the hypoteneuse is the outside edge of the scarf. If you pick up only one thread from the garter stitch ridges, it gives an almost invisible join and makes your scarf quite magic. The pointed ends are very dressy and feminine. I got 6 triangles out of a skein of yarn, producing a scarf about 4.5 feet long and about 9 inches wide. You could make a narrower, longer scarf by casting on fewer stitches and working more triangles. Knit happy!
Wow, I'm so far ahead of myself - this is a record for a teaser post and how quickly I'm getting it up! However, after last month I was in a bit of a last minute tizzy so I decided to be a bit more organized this month and now I'm early...how funny! Ignore the reds in this teaser as that's the yarn label and in the middle is the art piece - the yarns are surrounding it :)
For the month of July I thought it would be nice to do something a little lighter and a little more serene since we've been doing brighter colours lately so with that in mind, I quickly fell in love with Melanie's suggestion of this painting called A China Urn with Flowers and Fruits on a Ledge by Pierre Redoute. It's soft, serene and gorgeous and my only hope is that I can do justice to these wonderful colours. Isn't it pretty? Congrats Melanie for a wonderful choice - this painting is stunning!
How's everyone's summers going? It's nice to finally see some great weather and I hope you're all having a great summer season! These yarns were handpainted to to be bright and vibrant just like the weather we've been having! I hope you are enjoying it and I can't wait to see your projects :) Click to see bigger!
Here we gooooooooo....the yarns are painted and ready to be stuffed into envelopes and shipped out tomorrow! I am really pleased with this one...it's sure to be a bright and cheerful knit for summer! YAY! Can't wait to see what everyone does with this one - it's pretty cool!
Every month I'm faced with the task of narrowing down all the wonderful selections from the clubbers and every month it's never easy! This month was no exception because I really liked two paintings. I ended up almost tossing a coin to choose Paul Jenkin's Phenomena Waves without Wind (1977) but what ended up swaying me in the direction of this painting is it's bright, cheerful and colourful nature. Summer's almost here and colour is everywhere so it seems quite appropriate to bring lots of colour into this month's colourway :) 
Thank you to Crista for choosing this month's art piece! I hope everyone enjoys the yarns and the colourway! This month was a record for delivery time too with most packages reaching the USA in 3 days...wow! 
A little sneak peek of the yarn colourway for this month! In the middle is the painting and surrounding it is the yarns. As you can see, I picked up on a good part of the tones in the painting but not all :) This was a fun dye yet again - I dyed the yarns, loved them when they were wet, looked at them when they were dry and thought "oh gosh, did I really dye them like that?" LOL I always seem to forget month to month that the yarn is the boss not me! It always tells me how it wants to reflect the colours no matter how much prodding or poking I do. In the end, I love how these yarns turned out and I hope everyone enjoys them too :)
I was really excited when I saw this suggestion from our contest winner Crista for May! I had narrowed down the entries to 3 and then based on colours we have done already and the base yarn, I couldn't resist this entry! 
When Tara chose Paul Klee's Flora on the Sand, I looked at it and thought, wow, that'll be a nice challenge to try to get the colours "blocked" onto the yarn especially since the skein is in a circle and the colours are in squares...LOL! These types of challenges monthly with this sock club keep me hopping that's for sure! 
A little hint at April's colourway! Everything will go out tomorrow and for those that ordered something extra with this month's yarn, I may need an extra day to get it together for you so you may get a shipping notice a day later - if I'm good at getting it all together, it'll go on the first with the others :)
I think most everyone should have their yarns by now! If you don't and you're in the USA, it's been too long so please email me! I am trying to wait as long as I can before posting a spoiler photo so most everyone has their yarns!
I just wanted to share my Flaming June socks. The yarn looks so beautiful in the cake but WOW! It looks truly terrific when knitted up. I love how the colors stripe and the blue and gold mix and highlight each other. I am in love with the way they look. The pattern is Go With The Flow from IK's 25 Favorite Socks. I think this is my favorite yarn so far. But I say that all the time!
Here's a little teaser of this month's colours! I enjoyed dyeing this month's colours and what I found interesting between this Van Gogh and the last we did is that his colourations seem similar from one painting to the next - the big difference being this one is much brighter and lighter than the last! 
For the month of March I was looking for something that said "Spring" to me and when Sallee suggested Van Gogh's Almond Branches in Bloom as a piece to consider, it really left a great impression not only for it's fabulous colours but also because it really does remind me of Spring and everything getting ready to bloom.
I have been looking at doing the Monkeys pattern for awhile and when I saw someone had done it without all the purling I decided it was time to try this pattern too! Not that purling is bad but it's less thinking when you read the chart/pattern...LOL I'm such a lazy knitter but I like results without too much effort! 
I am hopeful most of us have received your yarns but if you haven't, please don't click the photo to be taken to a larger photo of the spoiler. 
I'm such a yarn tease but you know what? I can't help it! When the yarns are in the envelopes and ready to be going out the door tomorrow I just can't resist! 
Thanks everyone for entering all your suggestions for this month's art piece! It was fun to read through everyone's favourites and when I came across Discarded Roses suggested by Lynda, I couldn't resist! It's a Renoir piece and flowers...so pretty and very nice for the month of February. It has colours we haven't touched on yet too - reds/greens! Yum. So with that, we do have a winner! I'm sure lots of you know Lynda but she's going to drop on by and introduce herself in what I thought might be fun - a contest winner spotlight each month! So take it away Lynda... :) I’ve been really thinking about how to get everyone more involved in posting here and on Ravelry and here’s my first idea - let’s have a monthly contest!! And yes, it does involve free yarn…if you get chosen!
Let’s try it out for our upcoming February month. Here’s what I’m after - suggest an art piece for me to dye and tell me why you think it’d be a great piece to use!
In order to win, I will have to choose your art piece as the colourway for February. What do you win? The following month membership free! Yup, that’s right…free! Free yarn and free shipping!!! So get your thinking caps on and post away!
The only thing I ask is the following:
**You have to have been a member for 3 months and also a member for the coming month you’re suggesting for. The 3 months don’t have to be consecutive either, just 3 months so tell me how long you’ve been in the club when you post.
**You can only make 2 suggestions - any others will be disregarded - hold that thought until the next month as I plan on doing this every month.
**Please make sure it’s a fine art piece so as to keep with the theme of the club - it’s masterpieces we’re after!
**Duplicates will not be considered so please try to suggest something someone else has not - only the first suggestion will count.
And that’s about it until I think of something else….LOL Now get to suggesting and have fun with it…I do every month.
If I don’t choose any of the suggestions which I reserve the right to do - don’t worry, I’ll do a random drawing of all those who entered to give away the next month’s free membership.
Oh yes, a good resource I use to find the artwork is Art.com.
(cross-posted on the Ravelry group - please feel free to suggest either on the blog here or in the Ravelry group)
Hopefully everyone or most of you have your yarns by now...the postal system seems to be cooperating a little better this month - guess it's not Christmas anymore :) Don't click the photo unless you want to see the yarn up close! Have you decided what to knit with this yarn yet? I'm working on another REIMS STOCKINGS (linked to Ravelry project) sock because I pretty much have the pattern memorized so it's easy for me to knit after a day of dyeing yarn :)