Iced Gems from The Yarn Yard

Just a quick post to show you my progress on working with Natalie of The Yarn Yard's 'Iced Gems' that I purchased earlier in the week before her new Etsy Shop was cleared out of HDT...

From this:

to this:

UK has a new HDT Supplier!

OK Natalie is not exactly new to the dying game as she's been successfully running 'The Yarn Yard' for several years now supplying knitters and crocheters with beautiful colour combinations of yarns in solids, semi-solids and variegated colourways.

Anyway she rang me last week about her venture into the 'embroidery' market with HDT as I've sold Oliver Twists for several years anyway we talked and she would send me a sample. We talked some more and due to my new found interest of tatting I said we're short of HDT supplier in the UK so I suggested some base threads and suggested she got in touch with Jane Eborall of 'Tatting and not a lot Else' who is one of the UK's foremost & prolific tatters. Natalie also sent Jane a skein to try and this is what she said about the 100% Swiss silk thread.

I tatted a small motif called 'Starchic' by Jon Yusoff with the silk thread and this is what it turned out like:

The thread was nice to tat with but as a new tatter I did find untatting I had to be careful not to pluck the thread. While it tats up nice I have to confess to saying I prefer 100% cotton to tat with - I love to see those crisp little stitches that have such great definition you get with 100% cotton. I know Jane felt the same in regards to what makes a good thread for tatting - but it does boils down to the individual tatters taste, but Jane and I seem to like the same base threads of 100% cotton and especially Lizbeth 20.

Anyway we reported back to Natalie, by which time she'd bought in some Lizbeth 20 and was under way in dying some HDT for her new Etsy shop. Here's were you can read about it and see some of the glorious colours she created with evocative names like 'Passionate', 'Iced Gems' and 'Gunmetal'.

Anway you got to support a new venture haven't you? so I ordered two skeins one each of 'Iced Gems' and 'Gunmetal' - they arrived today (Tuesday) and here they are, glorious aren't they?

Now I know Jane has already tried her thread she bought yesterday so go back and check her blog out on Wednesday to see what she did with 'Birthday' ;o)

Now does anyone know where I can buy 'time' so I can try out Natalie's new thread sigh...