Every fall the whole shop shifts a little. I think of it as a little tremor that ripples through our shelves, as we move things from here to there, clean the shelves, inspect the yarn, and find a new home for it. The summer yarn moves out of the front room and the winter yarn moves in. The super-bulky takes over a certain space and causes a ripple effect through the rest of the weights from bulky down to laceweight. The work isn’t done yet, so excuse our chaos for a little while.
As we move things around, I find it interesting that our space allocation reflects the trends in yarns. Certain things are more prominent for a while, then slip a little as another gauge or fiber takes their place in the headlines. When I first started in this biz, worsted weight and aran yarns were the most popular, then novelty yarns took over the world. As they faded, super-bulky was the big news, then sock yarns, and for the last few years fingering and laceweight yarns were extremely popular, for shawls and featherweight sweaters.
This season I see several beautiful designs that are using multiple strands of these lightweight yarns to make worsted-weight sweaters. Can’t wait to explore this a little. Putting different fibers together to build an entirely new fabric is fun and creative; you are basically designing your own yarn!
Of course, you can also just simply buy the perfect yarn, and Maxima from Manos fills the bill for almost any worsted-weight project. Just look at all the wonderful colors we got in last week:
…and that’s not even all of them. Each bundle you see contains 10 skeins of luscious hand-dyed extrafine merino. That bright red-orange in the bottom right corner is going to be made into a Honey Cowl, a free pattern on Ravelry and one I’ve been wanting to make for a while. I’ll up the needle size and lower the number of stitches to cast on to adjust for worsted weight vs. dk. Here is a close-up of that beautiful light pink next to it:
Plump, and soft, and just scrumptious!
We also received a shipment from Crystal Palace. Favorite colors of Panda Silk are back in stock:
Sausalito, a fingering-to-sport weight merino-nylon yarn, is appropriate for socks or sweaters. Two self-striping plies twist around each other to make a tweedy yarn with interesting color transitions:
and Kid Merino, a multi-colored laceweight mohair-wool-nylon blend:
New colors from Frog Tree in Meriboo, their smooth, soft and lustrousmerino-bamboo DK:
I finished knitting my little Emelie cardigan, which is blocking right now. It needs 9 or 10 buttons and if Donna pops in this week, I’m going to try to talk her into sewing them on for me. Donna is recovering nicely from her foot surgery and I hope she’ll be back to work for us soon.
Did I show you my Little Sparrow Cowl, made in Paloma? It’s so soft and lovely and the stitchwork shows off to perfection in this yarn:
It’s a pretty berry (non-fluorescent) shade in real life, and completely reversible, which would make this stitch a good one for a scarf as well.
And this is our Berry Stitch Loop Scarf, made from 1 skein of Cascade Magnum. It’s a new free pattern in the shop:
Two really beautiful projects to show you:
Marci Frey brought in her finished baby blanket, from 60 Quick Baby Knits. It’s absolutely beautiful, and she lined it with a darling fabric. A wonderful job, but she wants to make it perfectly clear that this was not a quick knit! (She may be thinking of suing for false advertising.)
Deb Schlarb made this lovely shawl from Dream in Color’s Wisp laceweight wool/silk, and is going to use it as a curtain in her new house. Can’t you just see sunlight streaming through this pretty cloud of lace?
Lovely idea!
That’s it for this week. See you soon!
Trish
