still here

It feels like ages since we’ve been able to post regularly, but I promise we’re still here!

When we haven’t been sewing up new and exciting WIP bags, Emmms has been hard at work on her thesis (just waiting to hear back from her supervisor about a chapter she submitted) and Lou has been wading through some franky INSANE hours at her job.

This means we totally missed our anniversary!! But, man, as soon as the madness dies down, there will be champagne and drunken posting all over the place.

We have some new patterns that are waiting to be released, some crafty ideas that need publicly mulling and a host of early-winter gardening tips and discoveries that really, REALLY need to be shared.

In the meantime, owls!

a snail we may be able to love!!!

I was just perusing the BurdaStyle photo album of homemade halloween costumes and came across this beauty!!

This definately has to be one of the greatest reasons to have kids, dressing them up in the most insane outfits and taking photos!!

As I am a fan of the ‘odder’ costume my other favourites is this:

 

eunoia beauty

For the past week I have spend my working breaks knitting the gorgeous Eunoia Tunic, designed by our own genius Emmms. She is so fantastic and has created an absolute beauty to knit.

When I first saw her in the process of designing it all those months ago I was amazed at the little construction tweaks she had made to the traditional style of top down raglan sweater knitting.

The main body is stockinette with a billowing high/floppy neck however to hold the interest of the knitter she has continued the ruched effect used on the neck as a panel which ripples down the centre front as you go! 

 The increases for the bust are made using pleats which sit just under the arm giving a very different but perfect shape to the body and I am really looking forward to repeating the same technique in the arms to create the puff sleves!

I am so glad I chose this yarn for this project as It gives such texture, shine and definition to the tunic. It is Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Shop Aran, 100% wool in shade number 103m and it is divine! Definatley something I would recommend and use again in the future!

 

And the buttons, well what can I say, little round pieces of gorgeousness from Textile Garden

All in all this is a project I just cant bear to put down!!!!

with a drool and a sigh

Lou and I met up yesterday morning for a very brief swoon and delight over our collection of luscious fabric. We only had a couple of hours, as she had to get to work and I had to get to the library.* It’s a pity we didn’t have longer, as we had some very serious business to attend to. We’ve booked ourselves in for a stall at Christmas craft fair and thus the real reason for gambolling with fat quarters was to play matchmaker and decide what they are all destined for.

I’m unbelievably excited about all of this. My initial hesitancy towards actually cutting up fabric (‘It’s so pretty!’ ‘It could all go horribly wrong!’ ‘But it’s so pretty!’) has turned into a gleaming excitement at the potential of the clean, uncut length. Planning what threads to use, how they might be embellished, which buttons to use… Give me a bottle of wine and a Friday night and I’m happy.

I think my very favourite of the combinations I trotted home with is this:

I was going to make one of our sock-perfect knitting project bags with it, but I think it needs to be bigger — bolder! I want to give those demure Japanese ladies room to breathe and the delicate dragonflies space to soar.

*You know, I frequently wonder what it must have been like in those days wherein everyone seemed to have a rich aunt willing to bestow a paltry allowance on her favourite niece. Where have all these aunties gone? If we had the Edwardian good luck to find ourselves with such a thing, I’m sure we would be able to spend far more time in gleeful rhapsody over luscious fabrics.)

horror slugs

Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbage.

They want to suck your brassicas.

etsy update: owls and sparrows and gorgeous vintage atomic barkcloth, oh my!

The Sparrows (like The Birds, but purply and cute, not savage scary)

We have been sitting on these fab knitting and crochet project bags for ages,

slightly psychedelic and chocolatey, too!

and all because I, Emmms, finished the sock we used in the first photoshoot and needed to knit up enough of a second sock to use for this photoshoot!

divine vintage atomic barkcloth

That will teach us to not do it all in one go!

fish eyes? abstract fried eggs? pretty orange on vivid blue...

Or rather, it’ll teach me to have an array of half-finished socks at the ready, should we need a prop!

wide-eyed owls against the moon

Which really means I should get cracking and cast on…

These bags are all up for sale in our Etsy shop, Made by Loumms. Oooh, and exciting news: we’ve had our first custom order at Folksy! How cool is that?! Even cooler, it’s for a secret pal swap! We’ll post pics of the finished piece as soon as it’s been received.

drum roll, please

The winner of our Friday Giveaway Bonanza Grand Finale is:

Katie M. of brokeknits

Yay, Katie! We’re so excited to be sending you our Ultimate Sock-Lovin’ eXtreme Giveaway! Keep an eye on your inbox as we’ll be hitting you up for your addy so we can send you stuff.

Thanks to everyone who commented, and most especially to everyone who has supported us over the last year. It’s been a fab year, chock full of highs and lows we never thought we’d ever associate with the hand-knit sock.

We currently have a new Year of Stuff in the works, but if you have anything you’d like to see us tackle, let us know! You might just tip the balance…

new fabric avaliable!!!

Check out some of the new fabric me and emmms found at the Knitting and Stitching Show on friday!!!!

There are loads more to come too!!!

week six, the ultimate friday giveaway bonanza

Break out the champagne, it’s the Ultimate Super Giveaway Championships of eXtreme Awesomesauce Finale! Yes, today is the last giveaway of our Friday Giveaway Bonanza, a one-day contest series, to celebrate the completion of our Year of Socks!

We’re giving away a project bag, a notions purse, buttons, Moth Banishment sachets, other stuff we have yet to decide on and a skein of the awesome yarn custom-dyed for our final LYOS sock, Dawn of the Dead, by the ever-fabulous Nimu, yay!

For your chance to win your own ginormous parcel of Loummsy delights, just leave your comment below, before midnight tonight, on how much you love socks, knitting them, wearing them, designing them! We will announce the Ultimate Sock-Lovin’ winner on Sunday, so stay tuned!

Good luck!

dawn of the dead — lyos october 2009

Just in time to celebrate George A Romero’s trilogy of how many is it now, of the daily threat of a zombie uprising, this sock pays homage to the unrelenting undead hordes. It’s no secret that we at Loumms have a healthy respect for the undead. If you hang out with us long enough, you can be sure conversation will eventually wander over to escape routes, secure zones and ways to ensure your stores never run low. When the zombie uprising comes, we will be ready for it — why else do you think we do all this crafty, gardening, ‘make more with less’ malarkey? We don’t advocate self-sufficiency for nothing!

These socks, the last entry in the Loumms Year of Socks, have been about a year in the making. They began as a spark in Lou’s eye and quickly caught Emmms’s imagination. Between us, they evolved into the piece you see before you. The sock uses lace, drop-stitch cables and elongated stitches to mimic the later stages of zombification.

The elongated drop-stitch cable, which tapers down the leg to the heel, gives a lot of stretch without losing any elasticity in hugging the curve of your calf and ankle. These cables are reflected in the dropped stitches that scuttle down the foot between the lace, to give enough ease to comfortably accommodate narrow and wider feet alike.

We would like to give especial thanks to Claire of Nimu, whom we leapt upon with a barrage of ideas at I Knit. She took our request for zombie grey, blood-fleck red and bruise yellow and created this amazing colourway for us. It’s not only exactly what we were looking for, but it knits and wears like a dream. Claire is both incredibly talented and awfully nice. We wish she lived a bit closer to London so we could fete her regularly with tea and cupcakes.

‘Dawn of the Dead’ is the eighteenth pattern and final to be released under the Loumms Year of Socks, yay! It is available on Ravelry as a free download, but you can download the pattern here. ***** This pattern is in the process of being re-edited, please bear with us!! The current version available has the correct charts but we want to make sure the text is right, too!*****

Please note that while we’ve done our best to make sure there are no errors, we can’t guarantee there aren’t any. If you find something that looks amiss, get in touch! We’ll be posting updates if we find any, but we are always grateful for feedback of any sort.