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.
Meet the team »
If you are familiar with Elizabeth Zimmermann (EZ), and you definitely should know about her, you know that besides being an absolute genius knitter, she was a talented story teller.
Read more »Wow, the response to the Viola Afghan
was much bigger than I expected! Some of you have been asking about
washable yarn substitutions for it, and I’ve been working on that for a
few days to get the colors right.
One benefit to our good ol’ workhorse Wool of the Andes
is that, since it’s really a ‘staple’ yarn, we can have an enormous
breadth of color. That makes it so versatile for designing – but not
machine washable! Finding a suitable substitute for Viola has proved to be quite a challenge. The palette of Swish has waxed and waned to a balanced, tight family, and Brava
is too new to have the expanded color range that it likely will see in
the future. The best option came in the wide range of purples in Shine. So, along with washability, Viola has had a drastic hue shift in this version!
Since the yardage on Shine is a little less than that of Wool of the Andes,
you’ll need a little more of each color, and each substituted color is
used in place of the original in every instance. So, here is a Shine-y, purple Viola!
When it gets cold outside, there’s nothing better than to snuggle
your feet in a cozy pair of felted slippers! They are so toasty warm! I
have made many as gifts and for myself. Wool of the Andes
is the perfect yarn for these projects, and my preferred yarn of
choice. I used worsted weight for this project. This last week I
finished a pair for a good friend of mine using the Fiber Trends Felted
Clogs pattern. (I love this pattern!) They have a double sole which
felts nice and thick. Before felting, these slippers look enormous!
Earlier in the year, I wrote a post outlining my crazy goals for 2011. Well, 2011 is over – how did I do?
First of all – the total! I wanted to hit 100 knitted projects, plus
11 sewn projects to make a total of 111 in 2011. Did I make it?
Boy howdy, I sure did! 100 knitted projects, from cast on to bind
off, finished in 2011. To me, that’s really the biggest achievement,
considering how much else I’ve been working on. But, what were they?
Well, here you go!
(see them all after the jump!)
Read more »We seem to have a theme to our Freebie Fridays – sweets! Well this week, we have adorable Amigurumi Cupcakes by the wonderful designer The Itsy Bitsy Spider!
In the past I’ve shared different techniques that I’m learning. I finally tried Fair Isle last summer, which I absolutely love! Also, I shared that my grandson wants a lego hat. (that decision was after I convinced him he didn’t really want a skeleton hat!) After lots of research and asking all of you, I’ve decided there wasn’t a hat pattern out there that fit my idea of what the hat should look like. So, as is so usual for me, I did things the hard way!! I’ve created a pattern! But the only way to get the pattern to look the way I wanted it to look, was to do intarsia, a technique I had yet to learn! The hat is not done, but it’s on its way! (I’ll blog later with the complete hat on my grandson).
Birch Bay is back! Last
time, I had just spun the roving into a (roughly) fingering weight
single and was just getting ready to ply the ends together on my wheel
at home. Now it’s all spun up and ready to knit!
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A friend of mine has two little girls age 9 and 7. I volunteered to knit each one a scarf figuring it would be a great way to use up some of my leftover fingering weight yarn. In my enthusiasm, I completely forgot about the possibility of sibling rivalry. So, I came up with a plan.
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Over the past few weeks Birch Bay evolved from an unspun batt, to spun singles and then to a two-ply yarn. Today, I finally finished
knitting it into a delightful slouchy hat (a bit slouchier than I
intended, but more on that later). I know that I was imagining a red and
black hat last time, but I decided to start at the opposite end of the
ball and wound up with an (almost) entirely vivid blue hat instead! I love that the colors shift into the dark magentas towards the crown and the shiny strands of sparkle really pop too.
I had a little bit of relaxation time during the holiday season, and it was nice to be able to sink my teeth into some fiber projects (both new and old). I did start a bunch of knitting projects, but I also had time to take my spinning wheel for a, um, spin.
