Every year people knit and crochet purple hats to be given to parents of newborns to raise awareness about the period of purple crying and shaken-baby syndrome. On Sunday, August 21st, we’ll meet at the shop between 1 and 3 to get started on this worthwhile project. I’ll have free patterns for knitting and crocheting and you’ll get 15% off purple yarns. Check out the website Click for Babies.
I went to Nancy’s Alterations and Yarn Shop in North Conway to do the drawing for the grand prize with Nancy. Stephanie Brooks was our winner! The grand prize includes a yarn ball winder, a drop spindle, a pewter shawl pin, project bags, multiple skeins of yarn, a gift certificate to Elegant Ewe, a felting kit, tee-shirts, a book, and much more. How fun for her to open that package! Congratulations!
When I read the title, “Vintage Crochet,” I must admit my heart dropped just a tad. I imagined granny squares galore, but this special publication from Interweave changed my appreciation of the craft. The historical articles that open the magazine cover Irish crochet—in both Ireland as Bebe crochet and in Italy as Punto d’Iranda and Merletto di Orvieto—and an interesting assortment of other articles, including one charting the role of crochet in the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery. The patterns featured in this issue find their inspiration from family and film, and most are introduced with a brief background story. My favorite is a little girl’s Pineapple Dress, recreated by Tammy Hilderand from a reader’s 1946 picture of herself in her “favorite dress–ever.” The patterns range from shawls and skirts to peplum tops and pillows. And do you know? Not a granny square in sight.
Love.Yarn.Shop. is all set for you to begin the Great Northern Yarn Haul this Friday, July 8th. You can pick up your bag and goodies anytime, especially if you want to visit shops on Friday, but the kick-off for us is officially Friday night at the shop 5-7, with door prizes and sips and nibbles! Please come join the fun! If you haven’t signed up to participate, just give me a call at 869-2600 and I’ll set aside a bag for you.
Yikes! Twenty people have already signed up for the Great Northern Yarn Haul, so if you’re interested give me call or drop me an e-mail! What’s it all about? From July 8th to the 17th, 16 participating yarn shops from Lake Champlain to the Atlantic are offering goodies and events to “travel card” holders. Visit shops, see what’s new, get a “goodie” or two, get a signature, and have a good time. Send the travel card with signatures to Love.Yarn.Shop. to be entered in the Grand Prize, to which each shop has donated a gift. The Love.Yarn.Shop. Kick-off is on July 8th from 5-7. Yarn Haulers make their first purchase worth $20 from their local LYS and receive a tote and brochure with travel card.
Participating Shops: Love.Yarn.Shop., Grand View Lodge and Country Store, Nancy’s Alterations and Yarn Shop, A Wrinkle in Thyme Farm, Portfiber, Fiber & Vine, Yarn, Must Love Yarn, Yarn & Yoga, Green Mt. Fibers, Six Loose Ladies, Elegant Ewe, Spinning Yarns, Northern Nights, White River Yarns, Inspire 2 Knit & Tea.
I remember one World Wide Knit in Public Day, I overheard a young woman say to an older woman, “Look, they’re knitting. How cute.” I still feel like a little old lady thinking about it. I wish she had said, “cool,” or “great,” or “neat,” or even better, “I’d like to learn to knit.” This Saturday, June 18th, is World Wide Knit in Public Day. We’ll be knitting outside Love.Yarn.Shop. in Bethlehem, NH–weather permitting (our summer seems to be vacationing elsewhere). People will pass by on foot or in the car, see us outside knitting, and I hope that at least a few will have a vague yearning, a tickling, that this activity might hold something they’ve been missing, might even heal something, and that one day, they’ll have to follow that thread.
I love Cocoknits’ patterns. I just received a few of my favorites: Leisl, Maude, and Sabine. Some of you may have seen me wearing Liesl, a long tunic, knit in a maroon sport weight yarn. The Cocoknits site has excellent advice on binding off a neckline to make smooth transitions, especially important if you aren’t going to do anything else to the neckline. Here’s the article: http://cocoknits.com/tips-and-tutorials/techniques/a-proper-cocoknits-neckline/ I hope it helps next time you are binding off a neckline! Happy knitting!
I have been looking for USA superwash for my shop. Who would have known that there were zero facilities in the USA by 2010 that super washed wool? The journey has also taken me to find Larry Kissell on my radar, a democrat from North Carolina, who worked in a hosiery factory, understood the effect NAFTA had on the textile industry, and who worked to beef up the Berry Amendment, which basically “restricts the Department of Defense (DoD) from using funds appropriated or otherwise available to DoD for procurement of food, clothing, fabrics, fibers, yarns, other made-up textiles, and hand or measuring tools that are not grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States.” The DoD has been the biggest influence on the rebirth of the wool industry in America. In 2010, a grant to Chargeurs enabled the company to buy equipment to super wash wool. One company, Jaggerspun of Maine, buys from Chargeurs. A good article by Debra Cobb in the Sourcing Journal talks about this history.
All well and good. It is important to note, however, that many people don’t support super washing wool…period. It uses chemicals and often people don’t even consider it a natural product by the end of the process. As one hand spinner writes, “Superwash wool is created in a surprisingly toxic way. There are several different processes that can be used to make superwash wool, but all of them start with its chlorination by caustic chlorine-based chemicals. These chemicals can cause burns and can easily produce deadly chlorine gas.” (Bren) It’s hard for sock knitters and people knitting for families with young children to think about not using superwash, so I think its place in our knitting lives is pretty secure; however, in a world where we want to know what is in everything we consume, yarns should be part of that landscape.
Never mind the nine patterns for tops, all of which make me weep for more time to knit, what about the cotton clothesline bag, Hollis, designed by Vermonter Lynn Brennan, made with size 19 needles and a Q crochet hook? You do have to seam together the individual pieces, but how long can that take when you’re using clothesline?
If you’re not familiar with Pompom, I recommend checking out this issue. You aren’t going to find a better collection of summer patterns. I immediately honed in on the tunic pattern Olivette by Thea Colman. The asymmetrical lace panel and little pocket stole my heart. Plus, tunics are perfect for the changeable weather we’ve been having…leggings to pull on and off as the temperature fluctuates from hour to hour, day to day.
Each top in this issue has some sweet detail to attract the knitter. Trailbreeze by Courtney Cederholm has a handkerchief hem that is knit first, with some stitches put on waste yarn, which are used later to knit the body. Red Bud Isle, also by Courtney, is a “wrapped” tank, once again tempting the knitter with its clever design.
I could walk you through each pattern, extolling the virtues of it, but then I wouldn’t be knitting, and if I’m not knitting, I’m “downright grumpy,” as Kiyomi Burgin says on the contributors’ page of this issue. You’ll just have to get your own copy.
Love.Yarn.Shop. 