It all takes so much longer than I thought...

OK, only one shop update over the weekend - once the photography, labelling, inventory and the rest are taken care of, dyeing the yarn seems to be the smallest part of this business - but I did get the silk listed!

'Candy', available here

During the swatching process, this yarn renamed itself from 'Shine' (I know, original, right?) to 'Smitten'.  Because I was so totally and utterly smitten with my swatch:

Swatch on 4mm needles, 'Soft Slate'

I didn't exactly choose the best background for that swatch; the colourway, Soft Slate, is a soft grey with lavender, blue and soft brown highlights; click for bigger to see the shine, the soft colours, but I can still promise you I didn't do it justice.

I love the texture of this yarn.  It's a 2-ply structure, which is quite unusual for thicker silk yarns; they're often singles.  The problem with singles is that they tend to bias in the knitting, and they are much, much more prone to pilling and other abrasion-related damage than plied yarns.  This yarn, though, is plied, and it's quite dense.  You can see that there is an almost pebbled look to the yarn; the same sort of effect you get in high-end sock yarns, and that adds its own detail to the surface texture of the fabric:

'New Growth' (my favourite greens!) - available here

I'm guessing that no-one will be too shocked to hear that I couldn't resist keeping some of this for myself.  I have a whole skein of the Soft Slate, and yesterday, I cast on for the Yarn Harlot's pattern, 'Pretty Thing' cowl (Ravelry link).  It's looking luscious.