Local Charity Project

Are you getting that fall itch to knit, but don't have any projects inspiring you yet?  Here's an idea: check out the BSD Project, a super cool local charity project going to benefit homeless students, that still needs tons of helping hands.

She's got an ambitious goal going here (1,617 items by Thanksgiving).  And with cooler weather on the way, this can be a great way to put those crafty urges to a generous use, and join in on a super helpful community project at the same time.  

All the details are up on the YarnFest blog.  Keep those fingers busy -- we know you can do it!

Featured Yarn :: Charrierana

Charrierana

Peach, light pink, and lavender rayon is paired with a variegated cotton of similar shades, giving this yarn beautiful drape and sheen and an amazingly rich combination of colors.  With its fantastic drape, we think this would make a fabulous Jaden tunic.

• Fiber Content: 64 rayon / 36 cotton
• Yardage: ~540 yards
• Yarn Weight: Sport
• Amount on Cone: 8 oz.

Also available in our online shop!

 

Buttons!

When it comes to tedious stuff, I like to sit down and do it all at once.  Whether it's updating products in the online shop, folding 3 weeks worth of laundry, or weaving in the ends on a collection of 99% finished projects, I like to consolidate my busywork.

Which is why I spent all of last night sewing on buttons.  I have somehow accumulated three different projects which all require selection, placement, and attachment of buttons, and while I have no problem with the idea of button projects in theory, it's never what I want to do with my evening, when it's up against knitting a few more inches on my February Lady Sweater or a handful of granny squares for a gigantic afghan.

But for the past few weeks, these all have been clamoring to me, and so it was time.  Thank you, season premieres of fall TV, for being there with me.

More info about all of these projects to come once they've been blocked:

Brattleboro Hat

Baby Surprise Jacket

Buttony

Lanesplitter Progress (or, a lesson in frogging)

Whew!  This project is finally winding down to a close.  I had a major setback last week when I thought I had finished the knitting part.  Lo and behold, I bound off and wrapped it around my waist only to find that it was waaaaay too small.  

Here's the problem with the "knit until desired width is reached" directions: although I measured my waist and accounted for the fact that I'll be wearing this over jeans or at least leggings, totally didn't take into account the fact that the knitted fabric is essentially a rectangle when finished.  

What this means is that although the two ends of the skirt may touch at the waist, this leaves a gaping hole down the side, since my legs are wider!

Alas, the frogging.

I do have a favorite way to do this, when I have to rip back a large amount of work like this.  (I had already finished the entire decreasing part of the skirt, so I had to get myself all the way back to the knit-even portion.)

First, I'll freely rip back a few rows at a time, winding the crimpy unknitted yarn back onto the cone as I go.  When I get close to the row I have my eye on -- that last correct row knitted that I'm trying to restart myself from -- then I slip the needle back through the little loops that are remaining from all this frogging.

I don't pay too much attention here to whether the loops are backwards, or even whether some of the loops have accidentally fallen down to the previous row.  The reason for this is, once all the loops are accounted for and back on the needle, I actually un-knit (or "tink") another entire row or two.

This I don't mind, because I think about how much time I just saved myself by ripping back those 40 rows rather than tinking every single one to save the stitches. Put in this perspective, I'm totally content to un-knit a row or two the slow way, if it means assurance that all my stitches will line up nicely, and untwisted, and with undropped stitches, once I'm done.

See, when you're un-knitting stitches whose previous row was error-free, you can be sure those stitches are going back onto your needle correctly.  To do this, you just want to stick the needle right underneath the top arm of that first stitch on your right-hand needle -- regardless of whether it was knitted or purled -- and slide it over to your left needle, pulling the working yarn out of that stitch as you go.  

So I ripped back to the last knit-even row, knitted an additional 8" of that, and then redid the decrease section until I was back to the original 4 stitches, and bound off.  And...excellent!  It wraps around both my waist and legs perfectly, still with enough slack to give my legs some pedaling action when I'm biking around all fall.

Now all that's left is seaming, weaving in ends, and blocking!

Featured Yarn :: Mum

Mum

A fantastic, stretchy sock yarn made from peach bamboo, and an equal balance of rust and off-white wool

• Care: hand wash or cold delicate cycle / lay flat to dry
• Cone Weight: 5 oz.
• Fiber Content: 68 bamboo / 29 wool / 3 nylon
• Yardage: approx. 420 yards

Also available in our online shop!

 

CraftyPod Visits Yarnia!

Two years ago, the Knit & Crochet Show came to Portland.  Do you all remember that?  It was before Sock Summit was even announced to the world, so the fact that this huge fiber event had descended upon the city was a huge deal.  

We had a spot in the marketplace, and it was my first time ever running a booth at a huge show like this.  I had been totally stumped, though, about how to do Yarnia justice in this little 10x10 space.  

We were only six months old at the time, so I knew we'd be chatting it up with droves of the city's knitters and crocheters who knew nothing about how our store worked, and well...bringing the machine was out of the question.

Thankfully, I have inspired friends who have great ideas, and one friend in particular who suggested I bring shelves of pre-made cones, and make a demo video of how the process works in the store.

So that's how this came to be, and it wasn't until months after the K&C Show was over that I thought, hey, I may as well stick that on our homepage.

Little did I know, this would make life at the store unimaginably easier.  All of a sudden, people were coming into the shop already understanding how it worked, knowing what to expect, delighted at the prospect, and even with their non-yarn-loving significant others in tow, eagerly awaiting the play corner.

So imagine my delight when Sister Diane of CraftyPod came in last week with her mom to visit the shop, and made a video blog about the whole thing!  Sometimes when things like this happen, I feel like I'm on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Anyway, Sister Diane's podcasts and video blogs are fantastic, and it's another excellent little glimpse of what goes on here at the store.  And what's more, her mom also blogged about our morning together over at her blog, Gingerbread Snowflakes.

Check them both out, here and here.

Good News for North Portlanders!

Do you love perusing all of our premade yarns, but can't seem to make it down to the Southeast as often as you'd like?  Well you're in luck, because you can now browse a small selection of our yarn over at the new Major Panda storefront up on North Williams Ave.

A selection of Yarnia premade cones at the new Major Panda storefront

2124 N. Williams Ave.

What is Major Panda, and why are they featuring Yarnia yarn in their shop?  

Below is a little introduction to what this cool organization is all about, and a link to their recent mention in an article by I Heart Art: Portland.

They just recently added this retail component to their fiber arts studio and we are super excited to be supporting their endeavor by adding some of our favorite yarns to the mix.  Stop by and say hi to them next time you're in the neighborhood!

About Major Panda

In November 2009, Major Panda was born out of Port City Development Center, a sheltered workshop for adults with developmental disabilities. We share studio space and collaborate frequently with Project Grow. 

Our vision is to create a space where both individuals with and without disabilities can weave, sew, paint, draw, take and teach workshops; sell, buy, and appreciate artwork, and contribute to the art space with their own talents and interests. 

In addition to earning 75% of the art sales, the members of Major Panda receive minimum wage for the work that they do around the studio, something that is uncommon in sheltered workshops.

Beliefs:

• All people can create some form of fiber art, regardless of one’s challenges
• The fiber arts is a valid career path
• Everyone is an artist, student, and teacher
• Meaningful work accompanied by fair wage is a human right

Goals:

• Recycle all materials through creative uses
• Form relationships with fiber artists and centers within the community
• Support every individual in discovering and developing their unique talents in the studio
• Create both functional and fine art and receive fair compensation
• Move away from a culture of segregation to one of integration and appreciation

 Photo from Major Panda website

We invite anyone and everyone to come and make art with us, help us cultivate our dye garden, process the wool from our three goats, take or teach a workshop, rent a loom, attend our events hosted by Major Panda and Project Grow, and help us create a new reality that chooses inclusion over exclusion.

Go check it out!
 

Featured Yarn :: Hyacinth

Hyacinth

Shades of orange cotton, linen, and rayon mingle in this versatile yarn -- soft, lightweight, and cool against the skin, with a slight boucle texture from the rayon.  Imagine the depth of color this would give in the Petrie Tank!

• Care: hand wash / lay flat to dry
• Cone Weight: 8 oz.
• Fiber Content: 75 rayon-linen / 25 cotton /
• Yardage: approx. 400 yards

Also available in our online shop!

 

Camping...er, knitting.

Twice a year I drive up to Seattle, and get to do the funnest part of my job for the other crafty endeavor I'm involved in --  help choose vendors for the Winter Show!  

What that also means is a good excuse for me and my brother to meet up at my mom's house on Vashon Island for the weekend.

Months ago we had talked about going on a camping trip, so he and I converged from North and South with tents in our trunks.  But in the end, we decided to just keep it local, and set up camp on the deck of Mom's beach house.  

This made perfect sense, as Mom's house is the embodiment of don't-do-anything, don't-go-anywhere.  

Even though her house is a two-minute walk from the beach, most times I visit we don't even make it that far, and instead end up lounging around the house in pajama-like clothing, eating like it's a sport, drinking bottomless cups of coffee and looking out the window at this.

No wonder we couldn't even make it off the deck.

I know by now that this is how we roll down on Gold Beach Drive, so I usually come prepared with a knitting bag that outmatches the duffel from my year abroad.

This is like heaven for me.  I can usually squeeze in a half hour of knitting or so on my normal weeknights, but when do I ever have a full two days of lounging on the agenda, with nothing else on my list?

I was reluctant to bring any projects that I was even close to finishing, bowing to my phobia of finding myself trapped on an island without sufficient knitting. So instead, my needles gave birth to two new projects this weekend.

This one is more out of duty than choice.  As soon as we wound up our new Bigelow yarn, all I could think about was rows of slubby stitches, accented with autumnal colors, diving into each other in a basket weave.  

I wasn't even intending to work up a sample to show off how beautiful this yarn is, but I think this does a damn good job.

What's going on here?  How is this yarn folding into itself in a braid of infinity?  Cables.  You heard me, cables.  I know, I know, this doesn't look like the traditional little braid you're used to associating with the word, but this is actually a super simple combination of cables.

So simple, in fact, that it's going to be the class project we'll be working on in our Beginner's Cable Class!  You know how our classes work, right?  You fill out our class interest form with the classes you want to take, indicate your availability, and we'll let you know when we're scheduling a class that fits with your schedule.  

With some chunky yarn and Size 10 needles, this fun scarf whips up super quick, and is the perfect little treat to wrap around your neck this fall.  Come join us!

How to Add a Hood to Your Sweater

I did not begin my knitting career as a follower of patterns.  I find this baffling since now, as the owner of a yarn store, I spend hours each week reading patterns like they are poems, analyzing them for clarity, coherence, and purpose; wading through hundreds of possibilities to find the perfect pattern to show off a new favorite yarn.

I had no idea.  My first year of knitting was spent without a local yarn store, without Internet, and with a lot of free time.  I figured patterns were an option, rather than the norm.  So when I decided to make my first sweater, it didn't even occur to me to check and see if someone else had done this before, and had written down some instructions.

But this post is not about my first sweater, or even my second sweater.  It's about my third sweater.  Back in the States, two years later, I stumbled across Debbie Stoller's Stitch and Bitch, when it was still in its early years, and it blew my mind.  

All these things that I thought I'd made up myself -- how to change colors, how to make buttonholes, how to increase -- these were all things that other knitters had encountered before, and there were actually "best practices" out there for doing them!

When I came face to face with Under The Hoodie, I was flabbergasted.  You can knit a hooded sweatshirt...with a pocket??  This was how I became a pattern knitter.  In fact, this was the first pattern I ever followed, and wouldn't you know it, if you follow the directions, you end up with a hoodie sweater.

Me and my Under The Hoodie, age 20

Look how funky my college bedroom was!

What really amazed me about this sweater was that adding a hood seems like a super advanced skill, like something you conquer after socks and lace and cables.  But really, it's fantastically simple, and I'm usually tempted to add a hood to almost everything I knit, which is why I've been going nuts with the hooded Baby Surprise Jackets.  And I'm going to show you how to do it.

First, you're going to pick up some stitches along the back of the neck and shoulders.  This might sound confusing, because it's hard to imagine where you're going to pick these stitches up from, when they don't exist yet.  Picking up stitches to add a new piece, like a hood or a pocket, really just means pulling a new piece of working yarn through some stitches that already exist (like those along the sweater back), adding live stitches to your needle that are also connected to your already-knitted garment.

You'll want to do this with the right side of your work facing you, so that the ridge that is created by doing this is left on the interior of the work.

This picture shows a needle with some stitches already cast on, but when you're starting out, your needle will be empty.  Stick the needle through the first stitch, from front to back, and use it to grab your working yarn and pull it through that stitch.  This can be a little tricky at first; you can make it easier on yourself by using a crochet hook to reach through and grab that working yarn, pulling a loop through that you can then insert your needle into.

Continue reaching through and pulling up these loops, and adding them to your needle, until you've gotten all the way around to the other side.

Then take a stitch marker (or in my case -- where I always find myself at the crucial part in a pattern, without my toolkit -- a hair elastic), and mark the midpoint of these stitches.

This is where you're going to increase one stitch, before and after this stitch marker, every other row.  This is what creates the hood depth.  On a baby jacket like this one, I increase 9 times (a total of 18 stitches increased); on an adult sweater where you're already picking up a hefty amount of stitches, these increases may be unnecessary (like in Under The Hoodie -- no increases!)

See that subtle ridge of increases, right in the middle of the work?

Then you're going to happily knit even for awhile.  Here I'm doing this in garter stitch, because that's what the BSJ is all about.  I've marked my place so I know where the straight knitting started; I'm going to go for 30 ridges here, whereas on an adult jacket you'll want about 13" of height total.

Now how does this blob of knitting become a hood?  With the magic of the 3-Needle Bind-Off.  There are a handful of situations where this bind-off can thankfully be used in the place of the Kitchener Stitch, and this is one of them!

Here's what you do: on your next row, knit only half the stitches on your needle.

Then fold your work in half so that you have the same number of stitches on each needle, and they're side-by-side.  

Now take your third needle (you'll want to find one that's around the same size as your other two, but don't stress about it) and stick it through the front of the first stitch on each needle, just like you would if you were about to knit two stitches together on the same needle.

Knit these two stitches together, leaving one neat little stitch on your righthand needle.  (This can feel tricky to coordinate at first; you're juggling a lot of needles and trying to scooch just two stitches off without causing a landslide.  Don't fret!) 

Now do this again, so you now have two stitches sitting on your righthand needle.  And then, just like in a regular bind-off, hop that bottom stitch right over the top one, leaving the top one on the needle.

You're back down to one stitch!  Now knit the first stitches from your partnered needles together again, and you've got your second stitch on the righthand needle, ready to be hopped over by the stitch below it.

You're going to continue this process, alternating between knitting the topmost stitches together, and then binding stitches off one at a time, until you've bound off all the stitches along the top of the hood.

Now, you could stop here and call it a day...or, since you know how to pick up stitches, you could do that around the edge here and add a cute little border!

Be a Part of the Pancreatic Craftacular!

Many of you are probably familiar with Kim Werker, author of Crochet Me and all sorts of other crafty goodness. Well, we’re helping her out this month to reach her goal of raising $3,000 to help fight pancreatic cancer.

You can read all about her big fundraising effort here, but in the meantime, you can also help out by buying some yarn! Yep, you heard that right. From now until September 12, 10% of all purchases made in our online shop using the code PCRAFT10 will be donated to the Pancreatic Craftacular.

Remember, this only applies to online orders, so if you live here in town and still want to support the cause, you can always choose your yarn online, and select “in-store pickup” as your shipping option.

(Or, if you don’t see anything you like online, here’s a hint: buy yourself a gift certificate that you can use in-store; the 10% donation will still apply!)

Remember to use code PCRAFT10 at checkout

Featured Yarn :: Bigelow

Bigelow

Soft and chunky, this yarn mixes a cream-colored slubby wool/acrylic blend with a thin strand of variegated cotton, showing hints of autumnal browns, oranges, and reds.

• Care: hand wash / lay flat to dry
• Cone Weight: 8 oz.
• Fiber Content: 78 wool-acrylic / 22 cotton
• Yardage: approx. 320 yards

Also available in our online shop!

 

What's on the Needles This Labor Day

The downside to having my days off on Mondays is that it sort of feels like I get cheated out of national holidays.  Or maybe it's that I'm used to having Mondays off, so when the rest of town gets excited about it, I'm like, yeah I know, it's great, right?

But I felt like I should still do something special to celebrate, like somehow make this an uber-day-off.  So...instead of doing work in my office, I'm doing work on the couch in my pajamas.  It's pretty sweet.

Taking stock of my current projects, it's clear to me that this is my first fall in awhile where I haven't had a massive deadline blanket in the works, hogging all of my at-home knitting time.  Here's what's on my needles, in all of my various venues:

At Home:

February Lady Sweater

I've got two different parts of this sweater live right now -- the sleeve stitches (above), which I'm about to finish up with a few inches of garter stitch and bind off, and the body stitches (below).  I wasn't sure if I'd have quite enough yarn since I originally wound this up for a different project, so I put the body on hold, and once I bind off the sleeve I can finish the body with however much is left.  

This is a fantastically fun sweater to knit.  It's a perfect balance of boring old garter stitch, raglan increases, and an easy-to-memorize 4-row lace pattern.  You don't even need a row counter for this one, because you can tell from the placement of the yarn overs which of the two lace rows you just completed, so it's an easy one to put down and pick up later with no terrible consequence.

At Yarnia:

Lanesplitter Knit-Along

Some serious frogging happened yesterday afternoon...let's not talk about that today.

In Transit:

Something To Ponder

Some might prefer a pair of socks as their in-transit project, rather than a 12-ounce cone that will someday be a t-shirt.  But this pattern is delightfully simple, the majority of it just straight knitting in the round.  Plus, it's all in one piece, so if you like to strut around town with a gargantuan messenger bag like me, it gets the transit thumbs-up.

Look how cute those little sleeve stitches look, on hold, waiting for their moment of glory, as the finale of the project!

And then, running out the door from work the other night on the way to a friend's house for dinner, I realized I really needed something to keep my hands busy.  It had been a long, frustrating day, and I needed some yarn therapy.  I'm not really a hat person, but I've had the Brattleboro Hat on my mind ever since I saw it in the latest issue of Interweave Knits, and thought hey, maybe if I make a really cute hat, that could change.

 Photo from Interweave Knits

This will be a quickie, as I've already picked up the stitches from the horizontal ribbed band and started on the moss stitch section.  

Happy Labor Day, everyone!  Aren't Mondays off great?