Monthly Archives: May 2011

Getting to know the lady behind the designs – Kerin Dimeler

Kerin is the in-house pattern designer for Knit Picks and is
one of the most talented knitters our company has ever had the
opportunity to work with. We thought that you all should get a chance to get to know Kerin the way
that we do, so how better than with an interview!  I hope you enjoy
getting to know our funny (and all-around-awesome) Kerin as much as I did. 

As
many of our blog friends know, you are the pattern designer for Knit
Picks.  This job requires that you know pretty much everything there is
to know about knitting.  When and how did you learn to knit? 

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Knit Picks yarn featured in Interweave Crochet and Crochet Magazine!

We always love getting emails from Interweave
(and any other magazines for that matter) saying that our yarn has been
featured.  We are particularly excited about the latest email we
received from Interweave Crochet annoucing that our yarn was used for the beautiful Arboretum Cardigan, designed by Annette Petavy. 

Isn’t it just lovely?  For the cardigan, Annette used CotLin DK in Lilac.  The little flowers are aslo made with CotLin in Cerise, Blackberry and Sprout. 

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Website Updates!

You may have noticed we’ve made a couple of changes to the way our yarn and tools pages display on the Knit Picks web site.
You can see a good example of the yarn page changes on the Shine Sport
page.  The biggest change to the yarn pages is that we’ve added a new
tag, “Goodbye”.

Items
that show a “Goodbye” tag on the top are those that are being
discontinued. We are committed to labeling all discontinued items as
soon as we have made the decision to no longer carry them.  We’re hoping
this will help you with project planning and give you the opportunity
to stock up on discontinued colors you love while they’re still
available. “Goodbye” yarns, books, and tools are not necessarily
discounted, it’s just a heads up that we are not re-ordering them once
our current stock is gone.

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Podcast Episode 160: Behind the Scenes – New Tonals and Dishie

Alison got a chance to chat with our art director, Christina about the development of all the new tonal colorways for Shadow, Stroll, Swish and Wool of the Andes. Kelley dishes about her love for Dishie and talks about knitting with cotton yarns. Hear all about Kelley’s fiber fun and what she is currently working on in the “What’s On My Needles” segment.
Kelley also reviews the book Knitted Socks East and West by Judy Sumner.
 
3 easy ways to listen…
Subscribe in iTunes Episode 160: Behind the Scenes: New Tonals and Dishie RSS feed
 

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Customer Questions about Dishie

Many times, our customer service department receives questions about our
new products with regard to their washability, durability, texture and
so on.  Recently, a couple days after the launch of our new Dishie line,
a customer called in and asked our wonderful representative, Daryl,
whether the yarn colors would bleed or fade in the wash.  She also
inquired whether the texture and feel were comparable to one of our
competitors’ 100% cotton yarn. 

When we are selecting new yarn lines, we always go through a vigorous
vetting process to determine whether the yarn is up to our standards. 
As soon as we receive the yarn samples, we distribute the yarn to two or
more knitters and/or crocheters to swatch.  We do this for three
reasons: to test gauge, to make sure the spin is consistent, and to see
how the yarn looks once it’s worked up.  Once we have swatches in place,
we essentially beat one of them up.  We wash it in hot and cold water,
we put it in the wash with heavy items, and test to see how it will hold
up with a lot of abuse.  Next, we wash another swatch according to the
care instructions that we recommend.  Once we know how the yarn works up
and holds up, we make our decision.  One thing that we hadn’t done in
the past is bleach the yarn.  Until now.

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Say hi to Dishie! (and find out how to win a $20 gift card)

Thank you to everyone who participated!  This contest is now closed.  To find out who won, please click here: WINNERS

I am so thrilled to introduce you to our brand new yarn- Dishie. Dishie is a hard working worsted weight yarn, made of 100% cotton with a tight spin and high absorbency. Dishie is made of tougher stuff than super-snuggly Comfy or the organic cotton in Simply Cotton, which were designed specifically with garment knitting in mind. Dishie is more of a multi-purpose yarn well-suited for projects like dish cloths, market bags, baby bibs, but we made sure the finished yarn is still soft enough that it’s a pleasure to knit. Dishie is also one of our most affordable yarns at only $3.99 for 100g ball, and comes in a rainbow of colors.

Dishie is the darling of the Knit Picks’ office right now, we’ve never knit so many dish cloths! Kerin even made up a dish cloth template for us so that we could each design our very own dish cloth pattern which are now available as free patterns. She also re-formatted the template to create a downloadable DIY Dishcloth free pattern. Now we want to see what you can come up with.

Send a PDF, word doc, or jpeg of your own charted dishcloth pattern, or a photo of a knit or crocheted dishcloth you designed to contests@knitpicks.com by May 15th, 2011. It’s up to you whether you want to use the DIY Dishcloth pattern or free style it- anything goes! We’ll randomly select 3 winners and give them each a $20 gift card to Knit Picks. The winners will be e-mailed and their names will be posted here on the blog, along with some photos of a few of our favorite submissions.
Now I’d like to show what our staff dreamed up to give you some inspiration…

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Dishcloth Design Winners!

We are so pleased with the wonderful response we received from the Say hi to Dishie contest
Thank you to everyone who submitted their dishcloth designs, I can’t
tell you how much fun we had looking through all of them.  We have
selected three grand prize winners who will each get a $20 gift card to
Knit Picks. 

Our winners are:

Sabrin Rehnke with her Giraffe dishcloth

Continue reading to find out who the other winners are and to see the dishcloths that earned honorable mentions.

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My visit to Doernbecher

This past Friday, I had the honor and privilege to visit with a woman
named Peggy Adams from Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland,
Oregon.  Peggy works as the Child Life Specialist in the Family Resource
Center and is working hard to arrange a program for the parents of
children to participate in while their sons and daughters receive
treatment.

I reached out to Peggy a couple weeks ago because I thought she might
know of some local charities who might benefit from yarn donations. 
After speaking with her for a few minutes, she mentioned that she was in
the process of starting a knitting and crochet class for the parents of
kids at the hospital.

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