Tag Archives: Curio

Announcing Our “Yarn Glam” Instagram Contest!
by on Feb 13, 2014

Cottons
I love dreaming up new ideas to show off all of our gorgeous yarn! At least one yarn line each catalog cycle needs an updated photo to represent the family for the year so I keep a sketchbook full of ideas.
Curio
We have a small stockpile of backgrounds that I rotate through, some cycles I’m all about our recycled barn wood boards and others are all about the concrete floor in our warehouse of all things!
Dishie
We almost always use soft, naturalistic light because it shows off the texture and shine of each skein and gives the photo a dreamy quality. Our photographer Amy is a pro when it comes to lighting our little scenes in our little set up here at the offices! Whenever we can, we take advantage of our photo locations during our pattern collection shoots.  Palette
Now it’s your turn! Ready to try your hand at it? Today, we’re pleased to announce our “Yarn Glam” Instagram Contest—a chance for you to share your creative eye for yarn beauty, and maybe win a delightful $100 Knit Picks gift card in the process!
Reverie
Here are the rules:

1.)    Follow @knit_picks on Instagram.

*Don’t have an account yet? Instagram is a fun photo sharing network for smartphone users (that’s easy to join)—and for those who don’t have smart phones, fear not; we have plenty more fun contests planned for 2014 on our blog and other social media channels! 

2.)    Take a photo of an arrangement of yarn; our only requirement here is that it be Knit Picks yarn only!

*A tip for success: The more thoughtfully composed your photo is, the better—beauty is nothing without uniqueness, after all!

3.)    Tag your photo with both #knitpicks and #yarnglam; essentially, this will help us find your entry.

* Please specify the Knit Picks yarn type (and color, if you can!) in the description.

On February 19th, we’ll pick a winner and two runners-up to receive a $100, $50 and $25 Knit Picks gift card, respectively. The winning photos will also get the glory of being featured in one of our weekly KP emails.

An important note: Please limit yourself to three separate photo entries! The exact contest deadline is February 19th at 5pm PST; entries will be judged on adherence to these contest rules, as well as beauty, humor and other such ineffable qualities.

Good luck, all!

Details: Contest ends February 19th 2014 at 5pm PST. Entries must follow the above-listed requirements to be eligible to win; photos posted on the blog or social media channels other than Instagram are not considered acceptable entries. Winning entries may be shared by Knit Picks on social media sites (Instagram, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) as well as in weekly emails.

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Tags: Contest

Crochet Week: Curio Luminarie Cozy and Hanging Planter Pattern
by on Jul 7, 2013

I’m pretty sure that I just took my crochet skills to a whole new level this past launch when I released my very first pattern (the Luminarie Cozy and Hanging Planter Pattern) as part of Knit Picks, for free! I can’t tell you how excited I am to share what I’ve been tinkering with since we got our first samples of our new Curio crochet thread in the office.

I’ve been oggling jar covers on Pinterest since I created my account but never wanted to make a set out of something as heavy and wooly as Palette, and none of our lace yarns seemed quite sturdy enough for the job of bearing the weight of a plant. In stepped Curio just about the same time summer truly got started here in Portland and I seriously starting to pine for something cute to work on. Curio has the perfect combination of sturdiness, stitch definition, extraordinarily lovely palette and dainty thread weight for this sort of project.

I chose the ever-classic Natural color and picked up my 1.5 mm steel crochet hook and started playing around with different stitches.

Some of the very first images that really caught my eye were jar cozies with candles inside. I LOVED how the light shines through the fabric and casts beautiful lacy shadows on the table top. A simple sleeve that fits snugly over a jar seemed like the perfect place to start. I found a fairly solid stitch pattern that I thought would hold it’s shape, stay situated on the jar right where I wanted it while still allow enough of that romantic candlelight to shine through.

Isn’t that lovely? And it’s so easy. I decided to crochet it flat, working back and forth until I had just the right length to wrap around the jar. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about twisted foundation chains and I could just stitch the ends together for a quick finish.

The second pattern was a bit of a challenge because I needed to find some way of making a base to support a jar with a plant inside so that I could hang it in a window. It couldn’t be too open, or the whole shebang would sag, but it still needed to have a touch of delicacy about it.

I settled on a simple round motif for the bottom that transitions into a simple two-row repeat in the round for the sides. My favorite part about both projects is that if you’re familiar and comfortable basic crochet techniques, you can whip both of these up in a day and have PLENTY of thread left over to make many more.

I would love to crochet a few of these in gradated colors to line up down a table for a dinner party. Maybe Natural, Bluebell, Ciel and Navy? Oh, how those blues get me every time!

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Tags: behind the scenes, crochet, KP Crochet, Patterns, Yarn