Happy New Year to you all (or y’all or youse, or yunz)! And why doesn’t English already have a way to distinguish between addressing one person or a multiple?? We have had to make up our own, and every region seems to have its own solution. Just one of the ways English is such a fascinating language. So flexible, so expansive, so inclusive. Did you know that Oxford University named “brain rot” as word of the year 2024? Merriam-Webster named “polarization.” And there you have 2024 in a nutshell!
I hope everyone has taken a look at our class list for the winter. It’s a great lineup that we hope will take you further in your knitting abilities. Deb has a fantastic progression from basic knitting and purling through your first project, then shaping, and knitting in the round in different ways, all while getting familiar with knitting instructions. Karen concentrated on colorwork this season, with an adorable hat in the Seaglass line (so popular on Ravelry this past year) then taking you further into the stranded knitting tradition with a beautiful vest. My sweater is all about needlework and texture in your knitting, while understanding simple charts and adjusting fit, and Deb threw in a lovely mosaic cowl and some socks for good measure. Mitts, hats, socks, cowls, and sweaters – I think that about covers it, unless you’re yearning to knit your own sweatpants. (On these cold days, I think about it. Just for a second.) Check out the list, and I hope something fits into your schedule.
It’s darn cold but I’m thinking about spring and summer already. Sales reps are coming around showing lots of pretty cottons and blends – so tempting! The new yarns will be arriving in March or so, new colors of some of our favorites and some brand-new yarns that I have only seen in tiny pieces. Sometimes I have to order with fingers crossed that I’ve made a good choice! Meanwhile a couple new things have arrived to brighten up the current season: Two new colors of Lucky Tweed (a beautiful, sturdy merino tweed made in Ireland) have come in:
This is Thistle, a soft rosy pink with flecks of copper and sea-green:
And this is Kelp, a dark piney green with flecks of amber and burgundy:
And we have two new colors of Smooshy Cashmere from Dream in Color. This is Fen:
And this is Snowy Twilight:
Lovely, aren’t they? With purchase of any Smooshy pop-up colors, you get a QR code that allows you to download several patterns from Ravelry. This is one of them, a brioche scarf made with the Fen colorway:
Enough for today, I have to get through about 400 emails, even though I diligently unsubscribed to a bunch of lists I never subscribed to in the first place. So annoying to have to wade through all this nonsense just to find the few things I need to address – talk about brain rot!! Wouldn’t we all rather be knitting?
