Category Archives: Inspiration

A weekend dedicated to stash organization!

Last spring I purged my stash of anything I didn’t absolutely love. This weekend, with Karen and Tina keeping me company, I went through my much smaller collection of yarns and assigned projects to each grouping. It would have been overwhelming to purge and assign in the same process. I’m so glad I did it in two sessions. I started the whole process as soon as we were finished making the Chocolate/Caramel Pretzels. <

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Oh yeah, we had a stash exchange…

Watching Kelley’s videos about how to make those yummy looking pretzels reminded me that I never posted a blog about our recent company wide stash exchange party. Oops! It was on January 13th, so it’s not like it was THAT long ago. There was definitely quite a bit of method to the madness. First you had to get weighed in. This was a very important first step because there was a prize for the person with the hugest stash, and we all had to sit in a circle starting with the lady with the biggest stash (ahem, Karen) and ending with the person who brought the least. I was near the end because I’m still kind of a new knitter and I haven’t built up a very large stockpile of yarn yet. I think I brought 1.7 pounds. After ...

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Sweet Sustenance for a Knitting Weekend

Tina and Karen came up to the house last Friday night for a sleepover!! At our company-wide stash exchange a couple of weeks ago, Tina brought some absolutely delicious caramel/chocolate covered pretzels. Karen and I asked her to show us how to make them so we would be able to snack on them Friday and Saturday. Well, I kept a few to eat on Sunday. What I have learned from a weekend of filming is that I say “ok” WAAAAY too often. I promise to work on that bad habit in future videos. 🙂 <

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New Wallpaper images & new Imagination colors

I’ve just added some new desktop wallpapers of the latest Felici & Risata images, the Palette Tranquil Bag, and a new image of Imagination yarn. The Imagination image shows two of the four new colors that will be debuting later this week (Friday I think). Can you spot which ones are new? Imagination is a yarn line that marches to the beat of its own drum, as we plan to add a few new colors to it periodically throughout the year to keep things fun (rather than launching new colors with spring or fall yarns once a year). I always have such a great time coming up with the new colorways and the imaginative names to go with them. The good news is that soon you’ll be able to come up with your own colorways, as we’ll be offering Imagination in a Bare ...

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A delightful evening with the Seattle Knitting Guild!

I was kindly invited to speak to the Seattle knitting guild. My first knitting related public speaking engagement! The topic was the history of Knit Picks and how we plan our products. Deborah, the activity coordinator, called me the day before and asked if I was going to bring along any of my own knit projects. I hadn’t even thought of that!! I give away so much of my knitting that I don’t have much around the house. I did bring along a couple of lace shawls, my finished baby blanket and I wore my Fisherman Knit cardigan. I had a lovely evening! The high point of the visit was this little surprise! This is a purse from a lady who works under the name of Rebound Designs. I am so excited about choosing ...

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The great yarn donation of 2009

Did you get a chance to watch or listen to Obama’s inaugural speech yesterday? A few of us here in the office tuned in online. The quote that really struck home was, “The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.” That made us think about what we could to help our local community here in the Portland area. As you may have noticed, some of our yarn colors are on clearance right now and are being discontinued to make room for new colors. Most of our yarn lives in our warehouse in Ohio, but we do keep skeins of every color and ...

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Speed Knitting contest update #2- techniques and tutorials

First off, I’ve consulted with our judges and since our warehouse has been incredibly overwhelmed recently, and your packages have been taking a few extra days to go out (even though all the staff at the warehouse are putting in extra hours right now!), we’re going to delay the start date to make sure everyone who ordered the first week of January has time to get their yarn. The speed knitting contest will begin sometime during the first week of February. So if your yarn hasn’t arrived yet, don’t fret! Secondly, our judges have decided that you will be allowed to knit the pattern on sizes 9″, 10″, 10.5″, and 11″ needles, depending on your gauge. If you have ordered size 10’s, you should be a-ok. Since it’s a home decor project, gauge isn’t as important as if it was a garment, but we wanted to allow a little more wiggle ...

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Another use for all that lace yarn in your stash

I just finished my latest project… I loved using double-stranded lace yarn on my Tempest cardigan, and there are so many good colors of Shadow that I wanted to try something similar but at a lower price point. I already had a ball of Shimmer in Cumulus in my stash, and I thought it might go nicely with another favorite, Shadow in Basalt Heather. I swatched them together a few different ways to see if my idea would work, washed the swatches, then got down to business. I knit a basic raglan sweater in the round using two strands of Shadow held together. Every 6th row, I’d triple strand using two strands of Shadow and one of Shimmer. I was working at about 5.5 stitches per inch, so the miles and miles of stockinette went by pretty quickly. I also ...

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