Follow along and discover your next inspiration as we cast on for projects we love, explore new techniques, and dish about the latest and greatest from Knit Picks.
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Believe it or not, folks, we are halfway through our annual 12 Weeks of Gifting series. We’re inching closer to the holiday season with every passing moment, and that means our gift knits are getting smaller in size and/or quicker to make. This week’s free pattern, the Fair Isle Lavender Sachet set checks both of these boxes.
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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.
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!
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. 
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!
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.
I think that by now, we’re all pretty familiar with the gorgeous shot of the Palette family that’s been in the catalog and on web since September of last year. I know it particularly well because Kerin and I are the ones who sat down and sorted each ball into the lovely color order that you see here and I’m the one who sat down AGAIN and resorted it after the photography department was done with it in order to label each ball correctly in catalog. I can’t tell you how long this took, only that I’m getting pretty good at spotting the differences between Thicket and Briar Heather!
There are now so many colors (150!) in Palette that we’ve started storing the balls on ten, four foot rods to make it easy to keep them together and move them around as a group. Essentially, we’ve created a system of giant yarn skewers just for this family!
I’m always stumbling upon partial or unmarked balls of Palette around the office and I’ve developed quite a large collection at home which wound up being featured in our last minute shoot for April Fool’s with Linus!
I’m constantly dipping into my bin to make a few of Anna Hrachovec‘s Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi, or a pair of spontaneous fingerless mittens. A few weekends ago, I took a peak inside my bin and found just the right colors for Lucinda Guy’s Oluffa Doorstop from Northern Knits Gifts. I whipped it out in a weekend and decided just to stuff it as a pillow. Now it’s sitting rather pertly on the back of my couch, surveying the living room.
This latest project is just the most recent in a long line of projects knit in Palette. I’ve done cardigans, mittens, hats and toys and it’s definitely been my go-to yarn for any colorwork project. I still have trouble keeping my tension consistent, charts are still a little hard for me to read, but choosing Palette has always been the easy part when I start a new project. There are just so many colors that I can pick the exact right color orange, the perfect blue and the crispest white for projects like this one.
What color combos do you like in Palette?
