Another new colorway in the Purldiver Collection has just been launched by A Good Yarn!

Our newest Purldiver collection yarn is called Fit for a Queen Angelfish.  The inspiration for this new colorway is from a photograph I took of a Queen Angelfish while visiting my daughter Jennie for a dive vacation.  At the time, Jennie was studying at the Little Cayman Research Station on Little Cayman Island.  The best diving in Little Cayman is on Bloody Bay Wall.  The wall is an underwater ledge that starts at Little Cayman Island and stretches the length of the entire island chain.  It is a place covered with coral and full of cracks, crevices and small caves for all types of critters to swim through and hide in.   When diving the wall in Grand Cayman, it starts at 60 feet and goes to a couple thousand, but here it starts at only 25.  Being closer to the surface allows for better lighting conditions, and hopefully, better more colorful photographs.  Queen Angelfish are usually seen in pairs, but I’ve always had a hard time getting a good photo as they are quite skittish.  I never can get the pair, in fact I usually just get a tail, but here I managed to capture a full profile shot.  Sharon McMahon of Three Irish Girls has certainly captured its awesome colors in this beautiful new colorway.

daffodils in Noni studio

Nearly a year and a half after completing the initial designs for Noni Flowers, this wonderous new book is available to be read over and over. It will inspire you to make a beautiful sculptural garden of your very own.

“This book is an homage to, and an exploration of, what I find in the woods I walk through and in the garden where I work in the morning. If I were a nineteenth-century woman, perhaps I would use a small pocket sketchbook and a pencil or watercolors to capture the flowers that inspire me. But my medium is silk, merino, mohair, lace and worsted weight yarn. My instruments are knitting needles. With these tools, I’ve tried to recreate a little of the botanical beauty I see every day and it share with you.”

-Nora Bellows

Nora Bellows has been designing and selling felted handbags for more than a decade. Most are embellished with knitted or felted flowers. For her choosing the right yarn is vital to creating a flower that could pass for the real thing. The yarn must be the right shade, not too bright, not too soft. Most of the yarns in the book are from Stonehedge Fiber Mill in Michigan. Their colors are vibrant but not fake. To create her first book Nora sequestered herself for over a month to come up with 60 orginal designs and then cull those down to the 40 knitted flower patterns which can be simply knitted or felted and 6 additional projects that use the flowers as focal points.

Dahlia Pattern from Noni Flowers

When it comes to felting, making sure to choose the right yarn is important as well. Some of the best felting wools are merino and debouillet with cormo and rambouillet coming in close behind. Do not choose  machine washable wools as those are processed so as not to felt. Also, the presence of synthentic fiber will make the felting process difficult. If the yarn contains mohair or alpaca, however, it will  felt beautifully. You may want to swatch, and do a test run before knitting your entire project.

Enjoy knitting a bouquet that will never wilt, and never fade. You will always have spring at your fingertips with Noni Flowers: 40 Exquisite Knitted Flowers