Indulgence

Self striping sock yarns sure are fun, but sometimes those size 1 & 2 needles can really tire out my fingers! So when my sales reps were visiting last month, I found a nice DK weight sock yarn to bring in to the shop... Knitting Fever Indulgence.

It's available in 12 really fun colors and it's an extra fine merino blend, which makes it SO amazingly soft. 

Of course it's a sock yarn, so it's great for sock knitters. But we've always got customers looking for striping yarns in sport and DK weights for shawls, scarves and baby sweaters. Even lightweight hats and gloves! 

My latest project is the Niche sweater, by Norah Gaughan, knit in Berroco Maya. It's a fun pattern and not one I would normally want to set aside, but I had a vacation with the family planned for last week. And the Niche sweater is knit all in one piece, from cuff to cuff. This is great for people who don't like to seam... but for travel knitting? 

Not so great, especially since I'm about halfway finished. I wanted to pack light on this trip, and dragging half a sweater around on my needles wasn't going to cut it.

So I grabbed a ball of Indulgence and found a really cute and fun free pattern on Ravelry (the Top Down Raglan Baby Sweater - Garter Ridge version). With 12 great colors, picking one was the hardest part!

It was the absolute perfect project for my trip. I'm sad to say I did not complete it (some of the roads were pretty windy and I'm prone to getting carsick!) but I'm only about 8-10 rows from having it completed.

The only changes I made were to the ribbings. They were supposed to be k2p2, but with the modified garter pattern on the body, I thought a regular garter stitch ribbing looked better!

It's Baaaaack!

Close your eyes, and think back to a time about 5-7 years ago, when novelty yarns were all the rage. Eyelashes weren't just on your eyes, they were on your scarves, and in every yarn shop across the country, including ours. 

I'm not saying we're going to be overrun with eyelash yarns again, but novelties are definitely back for the coming fall and winter season. We've already seen the rage with ruffle yarns (and there are some interesting new ruffle yarns coming out soon, just you wait!) and now we're seeing some old faces back in the crowd, like eyelash yarns.

We have ordered several of the better eyelashes, and the first one has arrived. It's by KFI and it's called Flutter. We've got 6 colors that are quite beautiful. We could have ordered some crazier colors, but we really felt that to do eyelash right (right NOW) we needed to stick to more elegant, rich colors.

So get those brains a spinning! Of course you can add this to any old beautiful scarf yarn, and it will look great in a felted bag, and pretty in a necklace... but what new things will you come up with this time around?

Ruffle Alert!

For the second year in a row, ruffle yarns are a big hit for the holidays. The popularity of these yarns is no surprise, but this year we've had a harder time keeping these yarns in stock, and so have our suppliers! We have received some recent shipments and so we do have quite a few of these yarns in stock now - even if your favorite is not available, there are plenty of choices for substitutions that are very similar, if not almost identical.

So, here's a quick stock status for those of you who are planning to make a ruffly scarf or two in the next week and a half...

As of this posting, we do have 6 colors of Triana Lux and 7 colors of Triana,
4 colors of Flounce, 6 colors of Lacey and 3 colors of Flamenco. 

We also just received another ruffle yarn called Broadway. This is similar to the Triana Lux - it has a thin metallic fiber running along the outer edge. Just one skein is enough for a scarf and it's gorgeous. Check it out!

Scarf with 1 skein of Broadway