For a luxurious little treat, pick up a skein or two of Louet Mooi:

It’s a sumptuous lace weight blend of bamboo, bison and cashmere with stunning colour combos. The bamboo will add a lovely drape and sheen to your finished project. There are 320 metres per 100g skein, enough for a beautiful lacy scarf that would make a very special gift.

Clara Parkes loves this yarn, read her review right here.

And if you’re a lace knitter, you’ll also want to have a look at the Diamond Luxury Collection Baby Alpaca Lace that we recently put out on our shelves. This one’s 100% Baby Alpaca, with 400 metres on a 50g skein for only $7.95.

Use Mooi or Baby Alpaca Lace to knit some of the stunning designs from this new book:

It’s a must-have book for lace-knitters with stunning photography, interesting historical tidbits and loads of gorgeous lace patterns.

If you prefer knitting socks to lace, you’ll want to know that we recently re-stocked Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in ten beautiful new colourways.

And our special yarn this week is Online Punta at 40% off. It’s a wonderful novelty yarn that combines a strand of soft fluffy yarn with a strand of shimmery boucle in a contrasting colour. Jazz up a scarf or shawl with the great colours and texture of this yarn.

Happy Knitting!

We have a trunkful of Mirasol samples in Point Grey this week, including all the garments from Mirasol Book 3:

And the new Book 4:

We left one beautiful sweater sample in Edgemont on Sunday and we’ll send over a few more later this week.

The Mirasol yarns are extraordinarily luscious, just touch these garments and you’ll want to knit them!

If you missed our Jane Ellison event yesterday, you have a second chance to meet her today. She’ll drop by our Edgemont store this afternoon from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. She’ll sign some books, show some samples and chat about her experiences as a designer. Hope to see you there!

We have a fabulous new sock yarn from Araucania called Ranco Multi:

It’s 75% wool, 25% nylon and a great price at $15.95 per 100g, 344 metre skein. This one’s going to be popular with all you sock knitters…

We also have Araucania Azapa:

A beautiful new yarn that’s a mix of merino wool, alpaca and silk, with a touch of donegal tweed.

And we love the Araucania Nature Wools, Aran and Chunky, both 100% hand-dyed wool . There’s a great colour range with some beautiful rich hues that are perfect for this time of year.

NW Aran would be great for the February Lady Sweater. Or if you’re knitting hats these days, try Foliage, Thorpe or Stella’s Hat with NW Chunky.

There are two new Araucania books for Fall. The Araucania Collection, Book 1:

And In the Mood, by Jean Moss:

This one has some fantastic designs using Ranco Multi and Nature Wool Aran and Chunky.

And we have a special bonus today for all you loyal UY blog readers. We’re giving away 5 free tickets to the Cheryl Niamath/Jane Ellison event this Saturday, noon to 3:00 p.m., UBC Golf Club. The first 5 people to phone us at 604-228-1122 or send an email will receive a ticket gratis. If you’ve already bought a ticket, grab another and bring a friend with you. See you on Saturday!

We have the 2009 Knitting Calendars:

A pattern a day for a whole year! It’s an excellent bargain at only $16.95. A great gift for yourself or a knitterly friend…

We’re getting excited about the Cheryl Niamath/Jane Ellison event this Saturday. Still a few tix left if you’d like to join us…

And in keeping with the Mirasol theme, our special this week is Mirasol Cotanani at 40% off. This is a beautiful mix of 60% pima cotton and 40% merino wool. A classic DK weight, it knits up to 22 stitches on 4mm needles. And there are some great designs for this yarn in Mirasol Books 2 and 3.

Hope to see you on Saturday!

There’s another great new Noro book, Collection 3, by Jenny Watson:

With some fabulous designs for Kureyon and Silk Garden.

We also have a scrumptious new Noro yarn, Yuzen:

Just wouldn’t feel like Fall without a new Noro. This one’s 50% wool, 34% silk and 10% mohair with the trademark Noro striping.

Love this sweater coat knit in Yuzen:

The pattern’s in Jane Ellison’s new book, Noro Family:

With some great designs for kids and their moms.

And there’s lots, lots more. Details to follow…

We have some gorgeous yarns and books by Elsebeth Lavold.

Baby Llama is new this season:

It’s 100% baby llama, super-soft and cozy.

Silky Flamme has been walking out the door faster than we can bring it in:

It’s another uber-soft yarn with a stunning colour palette. A luscious mix of 50% wool, 30% alpaca and 20% silk. Endless possibilities…

We have several more EL yarns, including the classic Silky Tweed and Silky Wool. Also Chunky Al and Classic Al, both a sumptuous mix of merino wool and alpaca….

Try knitting Branching Out with Silky Wool. Always wanted to knit this one but haven’t yet gotten around to it. There are almost 3,000 of these beautiful scarves shown on Ravelry.

We also have a few fabulous books by Elsebeth Lavold, including the most recent editions, Book 15 and 16.

Book 15 features a bunch of beautiful designs for Baby Llama and Silky Flamme:

And Book 16 has some fantastic designs for aran weight yarns, with a touch of romance:

There’s even romance for Rover:

And our special this week is the lovely soft and fluffy Elsebeth Lavold Angora, a beautiful mix of 60% angora, 20% wool and 20% nylon:

It’s 30% off the regular price, only $7.66 per skein. Use it to knit these beautifully soft Christmas Eve Cabled Mitts. Or try Elinor Brown’s Ridged Lace Cowl. Two very tempting projects…

Becky and Jess have been bustling around this week, unpacking boxes at warp speed. We have soooooo much fabulous new stuff, there’s too much to write about. Drop by and have a look sometime soon…

And one more thing, we’ve added a couple of new classes due to popular demand. There’s a Beginner Knitting class in Edgemont and a Beginner Crochet class in Point Grey, both starting on Monday, November 10. And watch for a Christmas Gift Ideas class, coming soon. For more information on these and other classes, phone Kathleen at 604-228-1122, send her an email or check out our class schedule.

We’re pleased to announce that Cheryl Niamath will join Jane Ellison for our special event on Saturday, October 25, noon to 3:00 p.m. at the UBC Golf Club.

Remember Cheryl? She’s the amazing Vancouver woman who learned to knit about four years ago, then very quickly moved on to publishing her own designs. This is Fetching, Cheryl’s first published pattern:

The truly amazing part of Cheryl’s story is that Fetching has rapidly become the second most popular pattern on Ravelry, with a remarkable 7511 knitters who have either finished or are working on their own fetching fingerless gloves. 7511!!! Imagine learning a new craft one day, then calmly progressing to publishing a stratospherically popular design in just a couple of years!

Cheryl went on to publish a bunch of terrific designs like Dashing, Wisp, False Modesty and Glowbal Warming. You can see them all on Cheryl’s site. We think her Sprout baby hat is one of the cutest ever:

Becky and Anina couldn’t resist knitting a Sprout. Just one ball of Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran and you’re done. Betcha can’t knit just one.

Cheryl will kick off the event at noon so don’t be late. She’ll give a short talk and show some of her hats, mitts and other samples.

Then Jane Ellison will take the stage at around 12:30 p.m. Talk about hot new designers, Jane has published thirty design books in the last five years! She started with Simply Noro:

One of our all-time favourites. Alison recently knit the cover shawl:

Love it. We’ll be showing the shawl at our event. Thanks for sharing, Alison!

Following Simply Noro, Jane produced another six Noro books in rapid succession, including Noro Knits, Naturally Noro, Noro Unlimited, Pure Noro, Noro Joy and Noro Family. If you have any of these books on your shelves, feel free to bring them along for the author’s signature.

Jane’s gone on to publish three fantastic books for the Mirasol line of yarns. Mirasol Book 3 was released this Fall:

And Mirasol Book 4 will be launched at our event. It’s a brand new book with designs for children and babies, using the wonderful Mirasol line of yarns.

Jane has become a dedicated Ambassador for the Mirasol Project. She’s passionate about the work being done to help the shepherds’ children in the Puno region of Peru, where the Mirasol Centre is located. She’s seen firsthand what’s been accomplished in a short period of time and she’s excited about the project’s potential. A portion of all sales of Mirasol books and yarns is contributed to the Mirasol Project.

Jane will talk about the design process and her experiences as a designer, then she’ll show off a bunch of samples from the Mirasol books. We’ve had a sneak peek and they’re fabulous! She’ll also talk about the progress of the Mirasol Project.

After their talks, Jane and Cheryl will sign patterns and books and chat with guests. The designers’ books, patterns and Mirasol yarns will be 10% off the regular price at this event and we’ll take special orders for any books or yarn colours that we don’t have in stock.

Then we’ll head down the street to Urban Yarns for some casual chitchat with wine and nibbles on hand. Should be fun!

We’ve sold a lot of tickets for this event and space is limited so if you’d like to attend, don’t delay! To purchase a ticket, either send an email or phone us at 604-228-1122. And if we’re sold out when you call sometime next week, don’t say we didn’t warn you…