The winners of our Xmas giveaways are......

......drumrolls please....

Winner 1 

                                                         Winner 2 

Congrats Ebony and Angela!! Hope this sweetens your Xmas a bit more!! I have also drawn the lady who can choose first which skein she wants and it was Ebony!
 I will contact you both tomorrow or you can also pm me on here or FB!
Thanks for participating in these giveaways and for the lovely comments !
Hope you all have a lovely Xmas with your loved ones!! Cordu xx

Xmas giveaways

Because of FB policies I need to change the giveaways to my blog. Could you please post here if you want to go in the draw to win one of the Silk/Merino blends. Thanks so much! :)

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Back again....

Gosh  it has been long log ago since I last posted ,,,so many things have happened.
I start with the most important part ,Miss Wooltopia who is now 9 months has joined our family. Kudos to her that new colourways are most of the time girly and that I can knit gorgeous girly garments for her!
We have moved to the outback of  NSW  in the home of black opal Lightning Ridge where we want to pursue our dream of finding the elusive red on black. Life is is interesting here.........never boring

So far we have no water problems so I can always dye and rinse my wool :)

We have new yarns on board like this gorgeous Sparkle DK ..

We can do bigger dye lots!!

100pureWOOL-choc-berry-skie, a photo by funknitter on Flickr.

This one is 400 gm of the same colourway handpainted on 3 Ply Worsted 100PureWOOL. This wool is just amazing, you have to be careful how to handle it while dyeing rinsing as it is really soft and delicate, but I really love knitting it. especially for my newborn knits. No wonder that 30 more skeins are coming my way from a 100PureWOOl co-op :)

First Gradient Club

surprise-gradient-colourway, a photo by funknitter on Flickr.

I am so excited !!
I am launching tonight my first gradient club at 8 pm QLD (Eastern Australian Standard Time)
I have created a beautful girly colourway not quite a rainbow as I left out some colours.
I can't show a picture with real colours just a teaser pics as it is a surprise colourway!;)
Hope my clubers will love this colourways as much as I do !! Especially on Licorice Twist it looks especially nice. Gonna knit my baking bubba girl a beautiful Tikki rainbow dress!

Socks that rock!!

Happy-Rainbow-4-Ply-Sock-fu, a photo by funknitter on Flickr.

I have dyed up some Happy Rainbow yarn for socks which hopefully will create a beautiful pair of socks for toasty warm feet. Each listing will be for 2 balls of 50 gm of the same rainbow gradient ending either in blue or green

Rainbows, rainbows rainbows...

Happy-Rainbows-Silky-Merino, a photo by funknitter on Flickr.

I have dyed the first time lots of gradients in the same dye pot. *Phew*
I was a bit nervous as they are the first for the LYS (Local Yarn Store- Yarn Over in Brisbane) on 4 Ply Silky/Merino in the Happy Rainbow Colourway which is a girly rainbow . Very happy how they have turned out!! ;)


http://www.yarnover.com.au/

WOOLganic stocking

WOOLganic-April-stocking, a photo by funknitter on Flickr.

After a quite long break of very little dyeing I have my mojo and parts of my energy back to create some new and some of my old favourite colourways! This time I had so much fun to dye the first time on 12 WOOLganic which is just such a plump, scrumptious yarn. I have not done any boys colourways this time as we are expecting a bubba girl in August and I am just thinking girly or gender neutral colours at the moment...;) Stocking will be Aprl 5, 8 pm (Easter Australian Standard Time)

http://www.wooltopia.com.au/category.php?SC=6

Cotton Semi-Solids

Cotton-Semi-Solids
Originally uploaded by funknitter

I asked in my wooltopia rav group what would be the preferences for my new Organic Cotton and I saw that Semi Solids were wanted so I decided to create some bold semi solids in aqua, purple/pink and electric blue!

Organic Gradient Cottons :)

Organic-Gradient-Cottons
Originally uploaded by funknitter

I have dusted my dye pots after a long break and that's what I came up with this last week. I wanted to dye cotton gradients for such a long time and was really itchy creating some.These are dyed on my new Worsted Organic Cotton colour ranging from purple /pink into salmon peach into buttery yellow, flowing into lime green into blue tones

New Logo & new home!

banner
Originally uploaded by funknitter

One week ago I was told that Yarn Collective would be closing down. I panicked a bit and decided that I want my own domain name for my independent store. I looked into it and decided to go with congocart as my shopping cart as I am familiar with the system. We are now found under http://www.wooltopia.com.au.

We will have more changes this year!!Stay tuned!!

Our beautifuln new logo was created by the very talented Sam from Cherry Fresh Art- http://web.me.com/sam_cr/Site/Welcome.html

Blackberry on Cotton/Bamboo

Blackberry-pale-trim-Cotton
Originally uploaded by funknitter

A customer asked me for a variegated colourway of my Blackberry Gradient, so I created this one which was handpainted in the shade varying from from pale pink into darker pink, bright raspberry into the dark purples. I really love ihow it has turned out especially as it was handpainted on my oh so yummy soft Worsted Cotton /Bamboo!! :)

Organic Eden's Adam

Eden-Adam-deck
Originally uploaded by funknitter

This is my Organic Turquoise Gradient knitted up into an Eden's Adam.(from the talented lovely pattern designer rav id tikki)

First Gradient on Worsted Organic Cotton!!

Green-Blue-Gradient-Organic
Originally uploaded by funknitter

I thought this would be the first yarn of my life which would be undyeable. I really was fighting at the start of the gradient to get some colours on this yarn! I didn't give in and create a beautiful boy gradual gradient in turquoise-blue tones.:) The yarn took eventually the dye beautifully just needs lots of dyes and was not really bleeding a lot when rinsed. Have knitted it already up in an Eden's adam for my DS.It is not splitty even not when I had to restart my garment which was at first try far too big.

The Cotton is quite soft and has brown specks throughout the yarn which is not a quality problem, it just shows the husks and seeds of the cotton which are not bleached in organic cottons. The specks are not really noticable in the knitted garment! THe Organic Cotton will be my regular Worsted cotton as I prefer it to the 10 Ply Worsted Cotton which I have usually which is Peaches and Cream! I can source it from my LYS (Local Yarn Store) which will also stock my gradients in Organic Cotton and 4 PLy Kiama (Silk/Merino)! :)

A lovely Cottton haul!

lovely-cotton-haul-2
Originally uploaded by funknitter

This was just one customer order of lovely summer knitting yarns.It is not very common that I have so many lovely colourways in stock at the same time and some are new colourways so that was best photo opportunity!! Just love the yummy Worsted Cottton Bamboo and also my NEW Worsted Organic Cotton has dyed up lovely!

Mosaic Element Scarf

Mosaic-Element-Scarf
Originally uploaded by funknitter

My Elements mosaic scarf is done and I am loving it. I had maybe 3 cm of the blue yarn left and I was sweating the last rows if it will be enough. I am loving this colourway. It is good for people for love rainbow colours but don't want it too bright.It is nice and subtle.

Peach Pink Purple Sorbets

Semi-Solid-Gradient-8-Ply-C
Originally uploaded by funknitter

Another cotton gradient finally balled up and already sold again. :)
They seem to turn out a bit semi solid, cotton dyeing is really a tricky business and especially the gradients seem to have a life by itself.
I'll have to dye some more over the next week...

Colours everywhere.....

Collage-Nov-dye-ups
Originally uploaded by funknitter

I love the variety I am dyeing these days. It never gets boring and most of them are customs so what else can I wish for! Sometimes I don't have enough time to dye a gradient as they are so time consuming so I can just hand paint my cotton or cotton/bamboo blends and let them sit in the sun for a day or two. Love solar dyeing it is soo easy...
Kudos to my grea customers that I am a happy indie dyer at the moment...colours always around me...wouldn't have thought that colours would be once so important for me..nothing worse than a grey day...

Cotton-Bamboo Oasis

Oasis-Cotton-Bamboo
Originally uploaded by funknitter

Looking again for a name and showing a friend on MSN a photo of it, she asked me if this was Oasis,\which is a colourway I had only dyed yet on wool, I looked for this colourway in my flickr pictures, and saw that it used the same colour combos just a different kind of blue so decided that this will be the version with fibre reactive dyes on cotton or cotton/blends.
I really love this yummy worsted cotton/bamboo yarn.....

Pink Unicorn

PInk-Unicorn-Cotton-Bamboo
Originally uploaded by funknitter

I am not good with naming my colourways,I must admit.
When I showed a friend this picture of my new colourway which was a custom for my best and lovely customer who wanted lots of pink in a colourway she suggested unicorn. I was thinking immediately of "The last unicorn" and looked for images but only saw blue ones. Then I goggled pink unicorn images and I found a clipart of one which looked fairly similar to that colourway so it gots its name...easy ;)

http://www.clipartof.com/details/clipart/39227.html