Dr Who Scarf combinations, in both wool & washable blends!

contributed by Shawn

This year is the 50th Anniversary (1963-2013) of the BBC's Dr Who television series. The demand for Dr. Who scarves is up and requests for knitting materials for these coveted scarves has been phenomenal in the past 6-8 months. We continue to order the colors for authentic replica knitting almost as fast as our suppliers can ship it! 

While customers continue to order the Brown Sheep Nature Spun yarns in sport and worsted weights for these scarves, some customers have been asking for machine washable alternatives. Because Plymouth Encore has such a good color range, we were able to find some close color matches for this scarf. A soft, easy care yarn, Encore will delight any Dr. Who fan. So if you are ready for a washable, wearable, wonderful Dr. Who scarf we’ve got you covered!

(Please note these colors are for the popular Season Twelve replica. See below for additional information and other television season alternatives.)

Dr. Who colors in Plymouth Encore Worsted:

• Brick (#212)
• Burnished Heather (#1445)
• Deepest Mauve (#960)
• English Fern (#045)
• Grey (#389)
• Golden Glow (460)
• Tan (#1203)

Dr. Who colors in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted or Nature Spun Sport: 

• Red Fox (#46)
• Saddle Tan (#123)
• Chocolate Kisses (#136)
• Wood Moss (#209)
• Goldenrod (#125)
• Spiced Plum (#142)
• Charcoal (#880)

Looking for patterns or alternate season color information for these scarves? Check out these sites: 

wittylittleknitter: dedicated to the knitting of the authentic Doctor Who scarf 

dr. who scarf

Vogue in Black & White!

contributed by Shawn 

The new Vogue Knitting Magazine is here! 

The spring/summer 2013 issue has some hot new black & white projects in it. Our customers all love the "sleek, chic white stripes" that are featured on Ellen Liguori's black mini-dress. This dress is going into so many knitting queues! 

We'll be sure to order additional stock of the Brown Sheep Cotton Fine in the colors Cotton Ball and Cavern for you this week.

Customer Project & Feedback - Dr. Who Scarf

Some of you are probably aware (as one of our patiently waiting customers) that we've had an overwhelming number of orders in the past couple of weeks for yarns to create Dr. Who scarves. Just this week many of those orders finally went out in the mail - hooray! Some of the Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted and Nature Spun Sport colors have been on back-order for weeks due to demand!

We just received a wonderful note in the mail from our customer Sidney, telling us about her scarf:

She wrote:

"Dear Ladies - Despite the fact that you were overwhelmed

with orders for Brown Sheep wool to make the infamous 

'Dr. Who' scarf, you remained calm and helpful. My inquiries 

as to the back-ordered yarns were satisfactorily answered

 - so you have made me a customer for life!   

Thought you might like to see the scarf with still two 

and a half feet to go, being modeled by me. 

I made the whole scarf in six days and it got to 

my 43 year old grandson just in time for the bitter weather. 

Thank you for your help."

She included a photograph - she still had 2.5 feet to go, but it looks amazing!

And in 6 Days!? Her grandson is over 6 feet tall :) Sidney, thanks so much for sharing this with us!

For those of you who are not familiar with the Dr. Who scarf craze you can find more information here.

Simple & Sweet Baby Sweaters

Each day we see customers in the shop searching for sweater patterns for newborn babies. It's no wonder - don't you always get the urge to knit a little sweater for a close friend or family member when you hear she's expecting? I know I do!

And as yarn shop employees, we've handled this many, many times, so we're always prepared to recommend a good assortment of patterns.

Like the Wee One Welcome Set from Knitting at Knoon.

This pattern is simply adorable. It calls for 400 yards of DK weight yarn. In our shop sample (above) we chose Sirdar Snuggle Crofter DK that knits up with a fair isle striping effect. This yarn is reasonably priced (it costs just $21 to make the set), comes in really sweet colors and is soft and machine washable.

We've got other great DK weight yarns that work really well for this little set. Berroco Comfort DK now has really fun variegated colors, and Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend is also a popular choice.

The Puerperium Baby Cardigan is precious! And it's easy and fun to make. This sweater is pretty hard to resist, once you see the (and feel!) the shop sample (shown below). We used Misti Alpaca Pima Silk and this yarn is just the perfect choice for a newborn. The color choice is spectacular, and it's heavenly to knit.

Another pattern that's been getting a lot of attention is brand new from Yankee Knitter. The Baby Sweaters, Hats & Blankets Pattern #31 is a great addition to the Yankee Knitter offering. The sweaters and hats are sized from preemie to 6-12 months and the blanket is a generous 33"x35". And they knit up quickly in heavy worsted weight.

Our top recommendations for this pattern are Plymouth Encore, Berroco Comfort Worsted, Berroco Vintage and if you'd like a soft wool, then Dream in Color Classy or Classic Elite Liberty Print.

And finally, one last recommendation for a great newborn sweater. We came across this one a few months ago and thought it was beautiful in its simplicity. It is more suited for little girls, but it's a top choice on our list for newborns.

In Threes: A Baby Cardigan is a pattern that's available on Ravelry. We also sell it in the shop through Ravelry. It's the sweetest little sweater. All worked from the top down, in one piece. It's absolutely precious!

We had some Putty colored Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece laying around and I knew it would be perfect for this sweater. It just needs buttons now, but the best part about using such a neutral color is that you can really be creative with your button selection!

Beautiful yoke detail

College Life

Late in August, Barb packed up her car and headed off to Ithaca to drop her daughter Liz there for her first year of college. 

A previous post shared the beautiful blanket that Barb was weaving for Liz - in the official colors of Ithaca College. Nothing like a little school spirit when you land on new soil!

Liz was kind enough to share a picture of the blanket in her new dorm room. It's beautiful, and her new friends are envious. There's no buying something like this in the college bookstore!

This blanket was done in 2 colors of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (Lapis and Gold Dust).

SPOTTED

...on a back street in Florence, Italy in July, while escaping the throngs of tourists.

The most cool light fixture I've ever seen!

I need to grab some Brown Sheep Burly Spun Yarn and figure out how to do this.

What cool things have YOU spotted recently?

Customer Project - Witch Rug

contributed by Shawn

Take a look at this wonderful witchy hooked rug.  Pam came in to get some Lamb's Pride Worsted yarn to use for the edge of her rug and that means we got to peek at her work! 

Lamb's Pride is a great choice, and many of our hookers end up choosing it when finishing off their rugs. Pam looked at our Brown Sheep color cards and we're going to special order two colors for her so she can blend them to match the red-orange tones in her project's border.

Awesome!

College Blanket in Progress

contributed by Barb 

The clock keeps ticking towards the day my daughter leaves for college.  I have finished weaving the 1st of 3 panels needed for her college blanket. It's the widest of the three panels - at least the other two will each go faster than this one!

I was able to weave this panel in just 3 nights - not bad!  I am just loving the Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece yarn for this weaving project. I will definitely be using this yarn in the future for any baby blankets or throws that I make.  

And if you are a weaver, this has amazing drape! It would also be perfect as a shawl or scarf.

Falling Water Ruffle Vest

contributed by Barb

We've been selling all colors of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece for some time now, but until recently they'd all been special order. The yarn has done so well that we decided to pick the top 20 colors (for now!) and sell them in the shop as stock colors. 

I had never worked with this yarn before, and I really wanted to try it. I decided to start (and hopefully finish) a vest for this fall.  Unfortunately, I'm at the age where my temperature can spike - without warning! - and so I thought the cotton blend would be ideal. I had just ordered a great new pattern for the shop, iMagine Knit Designs Falling Water Ruffle Vest, and the gauge is perfect for Cotton Fleece.

I love the way this yarn is knitting up!

Lace pattern on back

Front view

My daughter heads off to her first year of college next month and I promised to weave a blanket for her dorm bed.  After knitting with the Cotton Fleece I decided that it's the perfect yarn for this project. It's exactly the weight she wanted, and she loved the feel of it. Here is a very small swatch that I used to test my sett. A "sett" is a gauge swatch for weavers. (We have to swatch too!)

Dr. Who? Brown Sheep for You!

contributed by Shawn

Ever since we started offering our customers every color of Brown Sheep yarns  we've been getting orders for a rather peculiar color combination. It occurs most often on orders for Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted or Nature Spun Sport yarns. 

Here's the color combination. Any ideas what people are making with it?

The colors (left to right) are Red Fox, Saddle Tan, Wood Moss, Chocolate Kisses, Goldenrod, Spiced Plum and Stone.

I admit, I finally had to ask one of our customers why we keep getting so many orders for this particular combination of colors. (I am not a regular television watcher - this is my excuse for not being able to figure this out on my own!)

Turns out that with this color combo you can make your very own Dr. Who scarf (the original version).  In fact, there is an entire website devoted to knitting the Dr. Who scarf in various forms that even details how manyrows of each color to knit to get the best match to the television version!

There are variations for different scarves as they appeared in different seasons of the show since the scarf went through some evolution over time.  (I did read the history section!)

My favorite part is the photos. Check them out!

Can't decide what color?

Remember, we sell color cards for yarns from Berroco and Brown Sheep. Sometimes you know what you want to make and what yarn you want to use, but you just can't decide exactly which color...

And new Fall 2012 Berroco Color Cards are now in stock!

Gifts for Kitty

Some friends who watched my two cats earlier this month while we traveled just got a kitty of their own and we're going to meet him today! I wanted to take him a little cat toy, and a hand knit mouse was just a little too boring for me.

So I did some pattern searching on Ravelry and found a free pattern for a crocheted can of sardines. I thought it was adorable, and since I haven't crocheted for a month, I thought it would be fun!

I grabbed some fun colors of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece and got started. My can looks a little wonky, but oh well! The sardines were fun to make - I felt like I was making gloves!

Because this is for a kitty, I did not put any catnip in with the stuffing. I thought I'd test the toys out on my cat Maisy, who loves toys. Unfortunately, she was pretty much in the midst of a midday catnap, and she was more bothered than amused. If I sprinkled a little catnip on the sardines, it would be a different story!

What the heck are these things?

Yawn. I'm already bored with this game. You're making me guess?

 

Ok, I'll guess. A hat?

A back massager?

I've got it! A pillow!

No!? Ok, I quit. Naptime.

Puff Daddy

contributed by Shawn

Wow. That's what I thought when I spied the Puff Daddy ottoman by Anna & Heidi Pickles on Ravelry. These things are neato! Inspired by the pouf from Christien Meinderstsma Anna and Heidi came up with a DIY version, and were nice enough to have posted it as a free pattern. 

 

The original artist/designer seems to have created this object from one strand of an absolutely enormous yarn and there is a video showing the process that I found quite fascinating toward the end when the 'yarn' is going through the spinning process at the mill. 

When our first shipment of Brown Sheep Burly Spun yarn arrived at the shop I knew I was looking at the perfect yarn for a Puff of my very own! I calculated the yardage and took home 6 skeins of Burly Spun.  The puff is knitted using 3 strands of this yarn held together at the same time!  So I also invested in a pair of new Addi Turbo circular needles in size 19 US!

First chore: yarn winding.  One skein of the Burly Spun just barely fits onto the bobbin/spindle on my ball winder before I have to finish winding the skein by hand. I ended up winding the last skein by hand from my swift - it was just as fast as using the ball winder.

The knitting was super fast at this gauge! My puff was done in one day! (Ok, truth, it was my day off so I had more knitting time available than on a typical day.) This pattern is super easy - no shaping and no purling - it's simply one large garter stitch rectangle. 

I made a couple of key modifications - I used a provisional cast-on so that I could do a 3-needle bind off. Why? So that my seam would not be bulky! This slight modification also give me a more invisible join along the garter stitch fabric of my puff than if I had seamed two finished edges together.

When the rectangle is finished you thread yarn through the side stitches to gather the fabric together leaving the bottom edge open for stuffing.  I happened to have an old duvet so I balled this up and put it inside.  Unfortunately one old not-so-fluffy duvet was not enough stuffing for my puff.  So I went in search of another inexpensive comforter to put inside as stuffing. 

Needs more stuffing! This was when I only had stuffed the puff with one duvet!

My other modification was to pull the bottom stitches shut tightly and knot (instead of cut) the ends of my threaded yarn.  I just tucked all the loose yarn and the knot into the inside of the puff.  If I ever need to wash the puff, it is now really easy to take apart and clean.

The feline residents in our house are mortified by this thing and will not go near it. So much so, that the orange cat even hisses if we try to move the puff too close to his perch.  But the upside is that we humans will actually get to use the puff as a footstool! 

Ever since I brought the finished puff into the shop for its photo-shoot we've been considering large numbers of these urchin-like footstools and how fun they are! I wish I could make enough puffs to fill an entire kindergarten classroom - wouldn't it be neat to see a story-time if every student had their own puff? 

I can't wait to make a second puff in a much brighter color (I think Limeade). I think all of my friends are going to start asking for puffs. I thought about challenging as many of our customers as we can to make a puff and schedule a finished puff day.  Can you just see all of our customers carrying their finished puffs up from the back parking area and coming over to the shop all on one set date to have a puff knit-in?  It would be great!  Let's fill the entire front yard of the shop!

Alien Invasion

contributed by Shawn

Michele is on a roll with her knitted toys!  She brought in "Alpha" to show us recently. Knit from Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky,  this version of Alpha from the Knitting at Knoon Take Me To Your Leader pattern is 10" tall sitting on the table. This is bigger than the 7"-8" tall worsted weight versions shown in the pattern photo.  We love him!   

Barb and I have both got one of these guys in progress at home - we just seem to have bogged down in start-itis lately instead of finish-itis.  We both picked out Berroco Lustra worsted weight yarn because of it's sheen - perfect for aliens! 

Here's a photo of my Lustra version of Alpha in progress: 

The Five Spice Hat

contributed by Barb

So my second crochet "show and tell" for the Learn to Crochet class later this month is a quick crochet hat.  We just started carrying some Brown Sheep Burly Spun colors and I happened upon this free pattern – Five Spice Hat. 

I know it is not really winter here in Vermont right now, but what a great hat!  I was able to make this in about 1 ½ hours.  I actually made the hat twice over the weekend.  My first attempt was too small, it is a little tricky to keep the tension loose enough – this is done in slip-stitch crochet, which I had never done before. 

I am considering making several of these now and putting them away for gift giving next winter!

Nature Spun Fingering on Parade

contributed by Shawn

We thought we would share this lovely customer project with you because it uses one of our favorite yarns for color work!  This fair-isle hat was knit using Brown Sheep Nature Spun Fingering yarn.

This yarn comes in 77 colors (and we sell all of them!) so the hardest thing about using this yarn is choosing the colors you want to use! We do have color cards available for this yarn which does make it easier for folks who use it again and again.

For those of you who doing color work in heavier weight yarns Nature Spun is also available in Sport, Worsted and Chunky weights.

(The hat pattern was published in the Vogue Knitting On the Go! Caps & Hats knitting book.)

Extending your living space

The weather here in Finland is getting nicer! We've had a week now of gorgeously sunny days, and we're up to 11h11m of daylight as of today. In just one month we have gained almost 3 hours of daylight (Vermont - you've only gained about 1h15m!) After experiencing a very dark winter here, you can bet that I'm excited to enjoy every moment of daylight and sunshine that I can get.

Which is why I'm doing a couple of crochet projects for our outdoor living space. Utilizing your outdoor space here is important, especially when your indoor space is on the small side. We Americans call it a patio, but Finns call it a parveke (par-vay-kay). Whatever you want to call it, we've got two of them, and they give us a lot of extra living space once it warms up outside. Last year was our first year here, and I wasn't really sure how to utilize our outdoor space. We didn't have the "right" patio furniture to make it feel like a room, so it kind of felt like a sun deck/eating outside area/grill area/laundry drying area. The large parveke faces due west so it gets quite hot with the sun shining on it from about 1pm-11pm. It was so hot that using it was unbearable at times.

This year, I'm determined to make it liveable - since we would like to enjoy the space. We're going to put up some sun shades to keep the temperatures down a bit during the hotter parts of the day, and we just got some porch furniture to make it feel more like a room. I'm happy to say that I'm already using it, despite temperatures being in the 20s!

I'm taking a break from knitting wearable things and have begun some crochet projects for my "living space". I'm crocheting 2 large scale rugs - a circular one for Helen & Sophie's parveke and a rectangular one for ours. 

 

The circular one is going to be beautiful. I am totally flying by the seat of my pants on this one. I'm proud of the work I've done so far, but circular crochet is harder (for me) than just back and forth! Luckily I haven't had to rip out too much. I haven't written a pattern up for this, but I think that once I am finished Barb (our most seasoned crocheter) should be able to look at it come up with a great pattern. We'll probably make one up in Brown Sheep Burly Spun. (Did you know we are carrying that again? YAY!)

My circular rug taking shape.

My rectangular rug is going really well and is much easier because it's just single crochet. I bought some remnant Ikea fabric and after washing it, ripped it into 1.25" strips. 

The easy part is the crocheting. The tough part is the preparation of the strips! When I rip each strip there are a million threads I have to remove. It's a bit time consuming. 

This ripping was a total arm workout.

But, it's my very first crocheted rag rug and I am super excited about it.

Maisy is already enjoying the rug

For both rugs I'm using the largest hook in my Denise Crochet Kit (a US size 19/15mm) and I won't lie, it's tough on the hands! But the rugs are both so thick and comfy underfoot. I know they'll be awesome this summer.

The past few afternoons at 3pm I've ventured out with a cup of tea, my rug project, and my fabric strips and have joined the girls while they do their homework. 

Soaking up some sun

We open just one section of the patio windows to get that direct vitamin D, and now we're really itching for nice weather!

Not a bad view!