Yarn Over Coffee is the official blog of Yarn Over.  We sell a range of American-branded knitting yarns, needles, pattern books, crochet supplies, spinning wheels, weaving looms and equipment.  We have a store based in Brisbane – 1/265 Blaker Road, Grovely, 4054.

Come on in and see us for all your yarn and fibre needs!  We are open – Tuesday to Friday – 10am to 4pm and Saturday – 9am to 1pm.  EFTPOS available and plenty of free parking.

This adorable bag, number 3 in our ‘Nihon Chic’ series of translated Japanese patterns, is crocheted with just one skein of Noro ‘Nobori‘ – a cotton yarn with a nylon tape along one side. The result is a very soft cotton yarn.

If you’d like the free pattern for this crochet bag, please click here.

As usual we have our store copies WAY before the newsagent, so if you want to be the first of your friends to have the latest copy of Crochet Today magazine, then read on!

here’s a little of what’s inside…

Greetings From Japan Asian-inspired crochet fashion in the season’s sweetest colors.

Garden State of Mind Break out your hook and pluck a bouquet full of fresh patterns.

My Only Sunshine Make kids happy when skies are grey.

Read Between the Lines Taking cues from geometry class with clean, linear concepts.

Folding fans Scarf

Dahlia Throw

Origami Bag

Blue Horizon Sweater

Easter Egg Placemats

Spring Training Cap

Noro Silk Garden Moss Stitch Baby Sweater

Noro Iro Bag – knitted in ‘Iro’ but could substitute Taiyo or Kochoran

Debbie Bliss has released some free patterns from her Noro Collection, 2002 book. These are for Noro Kureyon and are available on the Knitting Fever website.

Noro Kureyon Entrelac Sweater

Noro Kureyon Rabbit – knitted toy

Child’s Striped Noro Kureyon Sweater

Here is a summary of our KAL program for this year:

This year we have an exciting selection of KALs (Knit-a-longs) including:

• Cable-Ready Bag • Easy Zigzag Noro Scarf • Paintbox Noro Kureyon Log Cabin Blanket • Lacy Silk Garden Socks • Noro Kimono Cardigan • Lacy Shawlette

4th February 2012: Practice your knitted cable skills with this quick-knit bag featuring Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick’n Quick yarn. Materials: three skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick ‘n Quick wool/acrylic blend COST: $33.

3rd March 2012: Easy Zig Zag Scarf – Noro Silk Garden Worsted Materials: 4 x balls of Noro Silk Garden COST: $56.00

7th April 2012: Paintbox Kureyon Log Cabin Knitted Blanket – Noro Kureyon yarn Materials: 19 balls of Noro Kureyon in assorted colours, 2 balls of contrasting solid colour of worsted-weight pure wool. COST: $258

7th July 2012: Noro Silk Garden Kimono Cardigan Materials: 8-14 balls of Noro Silk Garden

1st September 2012: Lacy Silk Garden Socks – for intermediate to advanced knitters Materials: one ball of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn COST: $24.00

6th October, 2012: “198 Yards of Heaven” – lacy knitted shawlette COST: approximately $22.00 to $40, depending on yarn chosen

I hope you can join us!

Gabrielle and Beth

If you come into the shop, you’ll notice that all of our Noro has been moved to its own little shelf area!

We have yarns and pattern books for Noro in stock as well as some knitted and crocheted samples. For anything not in stock, you can pre-order it from our dedicated Noro section on our website. So let Yarn Over be your one-stop destination for all things Noro!

We have some new stock of Noro Kochoran in-store. Whilst Noro is lovely in garments, we tried to come up with a pattern which only used one skein of this luscious angora-blend yarn.

We call it “Simple Luxury Scarf”.

To download the Word version of this pattern, please click here.

Phew! It’s been a marathon effort, but we have FINALLY organised our Crochet-a-Longs for 2012. Below is a quick summary of what we’re doing. But if you’d like a copy of our colour brochure, please let us know, as unfortunately the file is too large for us to post on our blog – sorry!

All CALs start on the first Saturday of the month. You’re welcome to come into the shop for a free lesson and to pick up your supplies on this day. If you can’t make it in to the shop, please call us and order your supplies over the phone. Be sure to mention that you’re doing a CAL and we will include the pattern in your parcel. As each project progresses, we will have pics posted online and a quick blog entry. Feel free to follow us here or pages will be set aside for each project on our Ravelry group page. You can also follow our progress on Facebook.

We have some fabulous projects lined up for this year!

1. Starting on the 4th of February, we have a crochet summer tote in Noro ‘Nobori’ yarn. Nobori is a cotton tape yarn in bright colours. We have two colours available:

Colour 11

and Colour 17

I am currently finishing the model and pattern which will be available before the CAL begins.

2. Starting on the 3rd March, we are beginning a wonderful baby blanket – ‘Solas Caomh’ by Jodi Euchner – a cabled blanket crocheted with the ever-popular Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece.

It requires 6 skeins of the main colour and one skein of a contrast colour for the edging. You can download the pattern from the Interweave Store or through Ravelry.

3. The Solas blanket runs through April, so our third CAL begins on 5th May. This is another Interweave project, featured in the Interweave Crochet Winter 2011 issue (just out here in Australia). It’s called the Swain Sweater by Megan Granholm.

It’s a Tunisian Crochet cardigan/jacket and we’ve chosen fab ‘Peace Fleece’ tweed wool yarn to complete our shop sample, but you can use any worsted-weight wool or wool/blend yarn.

This is the Peace Fleece colour we’ve chosen – ‘Siberian Midnight’. We’ll be listing Peace Fleece colours on our website very soon so you can pre-order your supplies!

If all goes well, expect to have a cozy cardi for winter this year!

4. Starting on 7th July, 2012 – Ultimate Crocheted Socks! I’ve always wanted to try crocheting socks, so I made this year – 2012 – the year of doing, rather than wanting to do! LOL!

To make these socks, simply use 400 yards of any sock-weight (4 ply) yarn. Wool/nylon blends work best.

There are also some errata on the Ravelry page for this project.

5. Starting on the 4th August – Crochet Bullion Stitch Bag.

This is another Japanese project – featuring Lamb’s Pride yarn from Brown Sheep Company. More details and a pic of the project will be available once the pattern has been completed.

6. Giant Floor Ball – 1st September, 2012. This is the project I am MOST excited about!

This Vintage pattern is crocheted in Red Heart Super Saver acrylic and consists of 12 hexagonal motifs, each with 20 or so rounds. Sew each motif together, stuff with a pre-cut round foam insert and – Voila! – a giant floor ball! Imagine how cool that would look on your living room floor!

Colours and pattern will be available later in the year.

7. 3rd November 2012 – Christmas gifts. For this one, you have a choice of two projects:

(a) Coco’s Bobble Dress – crocheted in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece:

or (b) Bands of Beads Totebag: crocheted in Lily Sugar ‘n Cream or Bernat Handicrafter cotton

So! We have a super-full year of exciting crochet projects planned. Hope you can join us!

Gabrielle and Beth

At Last! We now have our new classes for 2012 up and listed on our website.

This year, along with our usual knitting and crochet classes, we are also offering classes in :

Felting Beading Kumihimo (Japanese Braiding) Machine-knitting (depending on demand) Spinning (TBC) Weaving (TBC)

Classes start officially in the first week of February.

We’d love to see you there!

Gabrielle and Beth

This hilarious music video send-up about Brisbane City Council workers is just fabulous!

Brisbane City Council Anthem