Pattern Idea :: Amiga

A customer recently emailed me, with an idea she was building in our Custom Yarn Creator for a yarn to use in the Amiga cardigan from the most recent issue of Knitty.

She was asking for some color advice, so I put together a little wraps-per-inch test and sent her a picture of what she had been considering (yes, if it's a simple enough request, we'll do this for you!).

This yarn incorporated one of our new slubby rayons -- a wonderful assortment of which just came in last week in all sorts of colors -- a super soft, drapey fiber which will lend an awesome sheen to any yarn you create with it.

All week I've been having such a fun time using these new rayons to swatch up the next batch of house blends, and every time I've tried one out that's near to the fingering weight called for in this pattern, I can't help but picture it worked up into this fantastic cardigan, that calls for slubby yarn itself to give it that fun texture.

 Image via Knitty

Even though the pattern shows it in a nice dark eggplant color, and this Custom Yarn customer chose a mellow dark rose colorway, I'm also envisioning it in all these blues and sage greens.

Anyone started on the Amiga cardi yet themselves?  Which yarn combo is your favorite?

Featured Yarn :: Orchards

Orchards

This simple springtime blend is made up of a single strand of fluffy yellow softball cotton, and a matching strand of shimmery rayon.

• Fiber Content: 53 cotton / 47 rayon
• Yardage: 350 yards
• Yarn Weight: Worsted
• Amount on Cone: 8 oz.
• Care: Hand wash / lay flat to dry
• Pattern Suggestions: Pretty Puffs Slouchy Hat

Also available in our online shop!

Introducing...Our New Pattern Station!

Often, the possibilities stretching before you at a create-your-own-yarn shop can be intimidating.  Even if you're just perusing our house blends of yarn, if you don't have a specific pattern in mind, providing you with a specific gauge and yardage to aim for, we know the prospect of deciding on the yarn you want can be totally disorienting!

Of course, you may have had your eye on a certain project for weeks, and come in to the shop totally prepared, pattern in hand, for us to help you find the perfect yarn for the occasion.  But it's also just as likely that you may be stopping in on your way home from work, or while you wait to pick your child up from school next-door, and don't have anything in particular in mind.

Enter...the new pattern station.

Want to sign in to your Ravelry queue and see what you've got lined up?  Go right ahead.  Ready to browse the newest edition of Knitty?  Just hit the link on the desktop.  

Remember seeing a pattern featured on our blog that you want to take another look at?  You can pull that up too with a single tap.

Want to make sure you can find that pattern again once you're back at home and ready to cast on?  Tape the URL once to copy it...

Open up the email program...

And email it to yourself!

Let us know what pattern you have your eye on, and we'll help you come up with the right yarn to match it.  And trust me, if you've never had the pleasure of perusing knitting patterns on an iPad before, it's sooooo delightful.  You will be instantly addicted.  Seriously, I haven't gotten any work done all week.

And, in addition to patterns, there are so many cool knitting-related apps on here that you can use as you make your decision.  Trying out a swatch of a possible combo?  Lay it on top of this "ruler" app, touch the corners, and find the exact measurements instantly!

Or, while we'll still have our hard copy class listings printed out for you to peruse, you can also sign up through our website, right here in the shop.

 Make sure to try it out next time you come in!

Featured Yarn :: Beauceville

Beauceville

A rich spectrum of reds, pinks, and magentas combine together in this fingering weight yarn, whose metallic pink component lends it just the right amount of shimmer!

• Fiber Content: 53 merino / 32 cotton / 15 lurex
• Yardage: 530 yards
• Yarn Weight: Sock/Fingering
• Amount on Cone: 4 oz.
• Care: Machine wash / dry OK
• Pattern Suggestions: Raindrop Shawl

Also available in our online shop!

Let's just pretend it's spring

Well, the weather may not agree with me, But I'm going to go ahead and call it spring anyway. It's still pouring/hailing/dismally gray outside, but all the other telltale signs are here -- weeknight barbecues, a steady stream of bluegrass shows, a weekend coming up in Seattle to jury for the hottest craft show around this summer...I even hosted a clothing swap last weekend -- an entire afternoon with friends, expunging winter from our closets and drinking Mojitos and snacking on little luncheon finger foods.

And while I may still be cooking up soups to try and chase the chill out of my bones after wet bike rides home from work, at least they're of the springier variety.

Curried ginger carrot soup from Six Dollars A Day

Now, I know this is the time of year when seasonal knitters tend to drop out of the game, but I'm here to convince you that there is till plenty left to knit and crochet even once the sun finally does (hopefully?) appear.

The projects I like to turn to in the spring and summer months aren't any fewer or less substantial than in fall and winter, they're just different. 

Omelet Shawl :: Photo via Knitty

Like wraps and shawls (come on, who else has some summer weddings to attend?)

Grrlfriend Market Bag :: photo via Flickr

Or market bags (to tote around all the summer bounty that's coming our way!)

Rivercat Socks :: image via Knitty

Or socks (Did you know Sock Summit is coming back to our fair city this year?!)

Ball Band Dishcloths :: image via Flickr

Spring is also a great time to get cracking on houseware projects like dish towels, pillows, amd curtains.

If you don't already have some project ideas in mind, come on in and we'll help you figure some out. After all, we have a brand new Pattern Station nearly up and running! More about that soon, but let's just say...it involves this:

Featured Yarn :: Denny

Denny

A variegated bamboo featuring a spectrum of greens is paired with a muted olive rayon boucle in this lightweight, slinky yarn.

• Fiber Content: 45 rayon / 40 bamboo / 15 cotton
• Yardage: 450 yards
• Yarn Weight: DK
• Amount on Cone: 8 oz.
• Care: Cold gentle cycle or hand wash / lay flat to dry
• Pattern Suggestions: Chevron Wrap

Also available in our online shop!

WIP :: Bronze Beauty Top

This is my newest leave-at-work project, which means I have to spend my Mondays/Tuesdays off plowing through the 90-percent-finished projects I have littering the couch in my living room, while this monster cone of yarn and hook wait patiently for my return.

I am totally in love with this project, and totally wowed by the serendipity of actually finding a pattern for a summery pullover that exactly matched what I was dreaming up in my own head.  

I'm not quite adept enough at crocheting garments yet to write my own patterns from scratch -- after ten years of casually crocheting afghans and borders and placemats, I just finally made my first crocheted sweater this year -- so I find myself at a frustrating impasse when I can picture a garment in my head and not know how to make it come out of my fingertips without at least the rough outline of a pattern to get me started.

But now I totally get how this top-down construction works (pretty similar to a knitted top-down sweater, unsurprisingly), and I bet after I finish this one, I'll be able to design my own from scratch!

It's pretty straightforward: start with a joined chain at the collar (this one seems like it's going to be extra wide to give that off-the-shoulder look), create "corners" a couple rows in, which separate the symmetrical front and back sections from the shorter sleeve sections (akin to placing your markers for raglan increases in a knitted sweater).  

A few more rounds of a simple double crochet shell stitch to let these respective sections grow wider for the shoulders, and then just when you're at the ideal size, you just skip right over those sleeve sections altogether, leaving them as gaping holes for later.

Now I'm on the home stretch, just crocheting that lovely simple shell stitch around and around the body until it's as long as I want it.  (Bonus: without the restriction of a cable needle, it's so easy to try this on as you go!)

Big fan, Doris Chan.  Big fan.

How do I use that tag cloud in the Online Shop?

If you're active in the blogosphere, you may already be a regular user of tag clouds, as a way to sort information or search for something within a site that has lots of different elements -- like an online shop, for example.

So what are tags?

Think of them like little topics or attributes that you can mark something with, whether it's a blog post, or an item saved in your Ravelry queue; they're a great way to organize things when you have a lot of information to sort through.

Sometimes tags are organized in list form, either alphabetically or by frequency.

And sometimes you'll see them displayed in what's called a tag cloud, which shows the most popular tags in a bigger/bolder font than the rest, so you can visually see which tags occur the most frequently.

Here's an example of how the tag cloud can come in handy.  Our online shop is full of our house blends of yarn, and is primarily organized by the weight of each yarn.

This is helpful if you have a pattern that tells you what weight of yarn you need; then your only job is to peruse that section in the online shop and decide which colorway you like best.

But what if you don't necessarily care whether the yarn is worsted weight or DK, and you're more concerned with it being wool-free, or machine-washable, or made with the soft silkiness of bamboo?

That's where the tag cloud comes in.  Each yarn is tagged with various characteristics, pertaining to its color, fiber content, washability, and other various attributes.

When you click on one of these attributes in the tag cloud, you'll be taken to a page with only yarn fitting that criteria.

Try it out for yourself!

Featured Yarn :: Aurora

Aurora

Rich blues and purples mingle in this slightly textured wool/acrylic yarn.

• Fiber Content: 40 wool / 34 acrylic / 20 merino / 6 nylon
• Yardage: 465 yards
• Yarn Weight: Sock/Fingering
• Amount on Cone: 4 oz.
• Care: Hand wash / lay flat to dry
• Pattern Suggestions: Secret Shell Socks

Also available in our online shop!

WIP :: Mythos Cardigan

Let me tell you a little story.  Sometimes, even after you've been knitting for 11 years, and you think you really have the following-a-pattern thing down, you can still make really stupid mistakes and have to rip out hours of your life in knitted form.

So this was one of the three projects I'd been psyched to bring on my trip a couple weeks ago -- the Mythos cardigan, with its miles of mindless stockinette knitting, I was sure would be the perfect companion to my attention-needy crocheted tank top, providing the perfect backdrop for plane reading, and movie-watching.

And it totally was, the only breaks in the fluid motion of back-and-forth stockinette; thin, soft yarn on nice slick needles, the reliable popping of each stitch as it flew off in either knit or purl.  Until 20 minutes before our descent back into the Portland area, when I realized I'd stapled the two pages of the pattern together backwards, so that I'd apparently knitted straight through from Page 3 to Page 5, skipping over Page 4 altogether.

What's amazing to me about this is that even though Page 3 ends mid-sentence, I didn't even notice the rocky transition to page 5, and also did not stop to ponder the odd construction of this garment I was knitting.

I suppose it's because the Mythos is kind of off-the-wall to begin with.  I'm used to top-down sweaters that have a reliable rhythm of yoke-chest-body-sleeves, so the fact that the back of this sweater is knitted sideways, or that most of the shaping is done with short rows that make all the different elements look like they kind of melt into each other, rather than intersect with clear seams, gave me the green light to push forward without even double-checking my work.

The truly phenomenal thing is I think I can actually make this work without having to backtrack too much.  Fortunately a totally new segment of the pattern begins on Page 5, so really all I had to do was rip back the last section I'd done, and I may have to do a little bit of finagling when I go back and pick up the stitches from that first sleeve I mistakenly put on hold, but all things considered, it could have been a lot worse.

Moral of the story: Pages are numbered for a reason.  If you're trying to outsmart the printer, manually re-feeding it in order to print double-sided, take the time to collate the pages in sequential order.  The pattern will make WAY more sense, I promise.