Meet Flossie Bear

Made with Lotus Yarns Cashmere Soft in Oatmeal (MC), Ruby, Hot Pink, Chocolate, Lime and Sugar Pink. A Tuck-Under-the-Armable kind of a bear and ever so soft.

I based her on an old flat teddy that Skein Prince took everywhere with him until a fateful day when he was six and left him on a coach in Spain. He was called Flapjack was part of the family in a strange and slightly bizarre way. We left a missing poster and our address back in Spain, in case he ever turned up, but he's still on the missing teddies list.

You may notice that there have been some changes to the Yarn Types in the right-hand side column. Divine and Endure have been discontinued and the new yarns being introduced are:

Decadent - handspun cashmere - approx. DK weight
Duchess - superfine alpaca/merino - DK weight

And the following three have appeared in the shop previously, sometimes as guest yarns, but I'm adding them permanently to the range:

Glister - 100% silk - laceweight
Finesse - merino/silk laceweight
Squash - tightly spun superwash merino - sock weight

Also Desire will now come in two sizes - 100g as usual and also Small Desire in 50g skeins which comes in at approx. 112m.

Very loved knitted teddies

Once upon a time, about four Christmases ago, the Skein Prince saw some brightly coloured wool in a shop and wished for a teddy. Henceforth, `Colourful' was born, according to my own made-up pattern.

He started off all blue, pink and yellow and very fluffy. He's been much loved, so much so, his hand has nearly been twisted off.

That same Christmas, `Flossie' came into the world for the Skein Princess.

This started off something of a tradition, and now every Christmas, a new teddy or rabbit comes into the Skein household:

`Marshmallow' `Wonderful' `Olivia'

And of course, Blue Kangaroo:

(Think this could've been from a Debbie Bliss knitted toys book.)

And now, the Skein Prince is making his own. This is Hooting Henry from Lucinda Guy's Kids Learn to Knit book:They absolutely love getting their knitted toy at Christmas as they know it's taken me ages to knit, they usually get to pick the colours and yarn and they know they can't be bought (probably a good thing!)

And finally, the gratituous stash shot (though be warned, I have another box plus a duvet-sized box full of wool I got given from an old lady moving house. I'll save those for another day.) This is all my handpainted stuff:

In fact, I liked it so much, I put a copy of it at the top of my blog.