Tag Archives: andrea mowry

Cody + Arroyo + The Shift.

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We’re so pleased to have a new bundle of Malabrigo Arroyo in stock!

Malabrigo Arroyo:

  • sport weight
  • hand-dyed
  • 100% superwash merino wool
  • 335 yards/100g
  • $18.40 each

Unpacking and arranging the Arroyo had me daydreaming about Andrea Mowry’s “The Shift” again, thinking about what other sport weight yarns would play well with Arroyo in this slip stitch cowl. That brought me to Mountain Meadow Wool Cody, a springy and soft 2-ply merino.

Mountain Meadow Wool Cody:

  • sport weight
  • hand-dyed
  • 100% nonsuperwash merino wool
  • 200 yards/50 g
  • $9.80 each

Mountain Meadow Wool is a small yarn company out of Wyoming that is dedicated to producing locally sourced and naturally processed yarns. Run by co-owners Karen Hostetler and Valerie Spanos, Mountain Meadow Wool seeks to support the ranching industry, thereby preserving the open spaces of the American West. Thinking of those open spaces and others, I’ve named each of these “The Shift” colorways for mountain ranges around the country.

Order online if one of these colorways sparks your curiosity, or if you’d like to see a special combination just for you! We’re happy to help you plan your next project, and can ship your order or hold it here at the shop for local pickup. Thanks for all your support through our temporary closure to walk-ins!

Washted + Rios + Nightshift!

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Our recent Malabrigo Rios restock has us thinking about Andrea Mowry’s “Nightshift” again, that popular slip stitch shawl that still seems to be on everyone’s needles. We’ve seen several knitters make it using Rios and Washted, another Malabrigo yarn.

Malabrigo Washted:

  • worsted weight
  • single ply
  • hand-dyed
  • 100% superwash merino
  • 210 yards/100g
  • $16 each

Flashback to Pam’s “Nightshift” in progress – look closely and you can see she’s used both plied and single ply yarns.

The combination of plied Rios and single ply Washted makes for intriguing texture along with exciting color – here are a couple of ideas!

Order online if one of these colorways sparks your curiosity, or if you’d like to see a special combination just for you! We’re happy to help you plan your next project, and can ship your order or hold it here at the shop for local pickup.

Shibui Haven + Malabrigo Caprino.

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As soon as we saw Shibui Haven, another DK weight merino/cashmere blend came to mind – Malabrigo Caprino. Though these yarns have gauge, fiber content, yardage, and texture in common, they have such different looks simply because of how they’re dyed.

Malabrigo Caprino:

  • DK weight
  • hand-dyed, variegated, speckled, and semi-solid colorways
  • 80% merino, 20% cashmere
  • 159 yards/50 g
  • $18 each

I’m intrigued by the contrast between Shibui’s austere solids and Malabrigo’s wild hand-dyed shades, and I think they’d play beautifully together.

Here are a few pattern ideas for Haven and Caprino:

Eager to get these squishy cashmere yarns into your hands and onto your needles? Order online for local pickup or shipping!

Sporty + Arroyo + The Shift.

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Ewe Ewe Sporty is back in stock! This sport weight superwash merino has been popular lately, especially for Heather Walpole’s free “Temperature Tee,” so we’re pleased to have refreshed our supply.

Ewe Ewe Sporty:

  • sport weight
  • solid colors
  • 100% superwash merino
  • 145 yards/50 grams
  • $10 each

Sporty is a good fit for Andrea Mowry’s “The Shift,” a cousin of her popular “Nightshift” shawl. “The Shift” is smaller in gauge and in scale, and while it looks like a triangular shawl wrapped around the neck, it’s actually a cowl, which many find easier to wear. You’ll need 200 yards each in three colors, and while there are plenty of tempting combinations in Sporty, I couldn’t resist adding some Malabrigo Arroyo to the mix. These two yarns match in terms of gauge and fiber content, and they bring out the best in one another – here are a few color combinations for “The Shift” cowl!

Malabrigo Arroyo:

  • sport weight
  • hand-dyed, speckled and variegated colorways
  • 100% superwash merino
  • 335 yards/100 g
  • $18.60 each

Order online if one of these colorways sparks your curiosity, or if you’d like to see a special combination just for you! We’re happy to help you plan your next project, and can ship your order or hold it here at the shop for local pickup. Thanks for all your support through our temporary closure!

Join us for a Dapple KAL!

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Brooklyn Tweed’s newest yarn, Dapple, has captured our imagination.

Sample skeins acquired in advance of the launch allowed Anne to get it right on her needles, casting on for Gudrun Johnston’s “Kirigami” pullover in Honeycrisp.

Not wanting to miss out on this fun, I’ve decided to cast on with Dapple, too, and selected Anchor and Natural for a “Pātikitiki Hat,” by Francoise Danoy. I can’t wait to see how the striking geometric colorwork comes out in this simple, high contrast combination!

We’re excited to announce an informal Dapple knit-along! How to participate? Simply embark on a project of your choosing with Brooklyn Tweed Dapple, and stitch at your own pace. There will be no deadline, just the camaraderie of working with the same yarn at the same time. Anne and I are here to answer questions as you select your pattern, colors, and needles, and will post our progress along the way.

Anne has already made great strides on her “Kirigami,” and we are both having fun watching it come together. This is a bit of a departure for her in terms of color, which is to say, it’s bold and bright instead of subdued and neutral. She sorted the skeins by value before casting on, making a gradient from light to dark. “Kirigami” is worked in the round from the bottom up, so she cast on the sleeves and body with the darkest skeins, making the sweater lightest at the textured yoke.

What else to knit with Dapple? It substitutes well for BT Arbor, for which there are a great many patterns available, but we’ve come up with all kinds of other projects for Dapple besides. Here are some ideas!

Garments:

Accessories:

Cast on with us this week, or next week, or whenever suits you – knit along at your own pace, and use the hashtag #HYSDappleKAL to share your progress on Instagram!

Rios + Nightshift!

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Malabrigo Rios is back in stock! We received this colorful bundle today after a long delay and couldn’t be happier to see it.

Malabrigo Rios is a hand-dyed, worsted weight, superwash merino wool, and it’s one of the most popular yarns at our shop. Each 100 g skein has 210 yards and costs $15.40, and its versatility means we’ve seen it used for sweaters, hats, shawls, socks, capes, blankets, cowls, scarves, mittens, and more. Recently, Andrea Mowry’s “Nightshift” has been a popular use for Rios, so I thought I’d make up some “Nightshift” colorways!

I named these five combinations with the concept of “shifting” in mind, thinking of the way the colors change as they interact with one another, but also thinking more abstractly about change itself.

Order online if one of these colorways sparks your curiosity, or if you’d like to see a special combination just for you! We’re happy to help you plan your next project, and can ship your order or hold it here at the shop for local pickup. Thanks for all your support through our temporary closure!

52 Weeks of Socks.

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Update: We are totally sold out of 52 Weeks of Socks, and Laine has no more copies to sell to us. Good luck on your search!

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We are delighted to announce that we finally have some copies of Laine’s new book, 52 Weeks of Socks!

This is our second batch, actually – the first came and went quickly, every copy spoken for before we could even breathe word of its arrival. This 256 page tome includes 52 patterns for knitting socks and slippers, an astonishingly large collection, and a beautiful one. You can see them all on Ravelry, a virtual way to browse the book; the list of designers is impressive, including Joji Locatelli, Isabell Kraemer, Rachel Coopey, Andrea Mowry, and Caitlin Hunter.

Laine no longer produces their popular knitting and lifestyle magazine, having shifted their focus to book making, but their reputation for pleasing designs and tantalizing photography remains. 52 Weeks of Socks is heavy with inspiring patterns using a variety of techniques, but it is also a beautiful object unto itself.

The book is $47, and while we’re closed to foot-traffic, it’s only available via mail-order. Shipping for this weighty hardcover is $15, but there’s definitely room in the box for a couple of skeins of sock yarn, if you’d like to make the most of it!

We have limited copies of 52 Weeks of Socks available, and Laine has announced that this was their fourth and final printing of the book, so get in touch soon if you’d like to order it from us!

Nightshift.

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The knitters and crocheters who populate our shop are a diverse bunch, with all kinds of projects on their hands – any given week could find us suggesting yarns for striped shawls, intarsia cowls, granny square blankets, and all kinds of sweaters. When someone asks “What’s popular?” or “What’s everyone making around here?” I usually don’t know where to begin. Every once in a while, however, a particular pattern seems to appear on everyone’s needles.

Right now, that popular pattern is Andrea Mowry’s “Nightshift.” This triangular shawl is decorated with bands of a simple slip stitch pattern, the background and foreground colors changing every so often. It’s trimmed with an attached i-cord edging, then finished off with a clever striped i-cord bind off.

I made one with Malabrigo Caprino, selecting a variety of dark, medium, and light colors. It was fun to watch how they interacted with one another, sometimes popping out in high contrast, other times receding when the color values were close.

Joanne and Sue have “Nightshifts” going in Caprino, too – I love seeing the variety that’s possible even when these knitters were choosing from the same small selection of colors!

Emily recently finished her “Nightshift,” also made with Caprino, and models it here, though she plans to gift it to a friend in need.

We’ve also had folks reach for worsted weight yarns to make “Nightshifts,” a natural choice since that’s what the pattern calls for. Nancy and Pam both used Malabrigo Rios for their shawls, below:

Andrea Mowry has more than one “Shift” pattern, of course – below is Toya’s “Shiftalong” hat in progress, and the next item on her to-knit list is “The Shift” cowl. She’s using Malabrigo Arroyo and Caprino for both projects, combining semi-solids with speckles.

I can’t wait to see these projects complete, and all the other “Nightshifts” I know are underway out there. Happy stitching to all of you, and special thanks to those who shared their projects on the blog today!

Show and tell: Brooklyn Tweed Arbor.

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Time for another round of show and tell! We love to see what you all are making with yarn from our shop, and when I’m able, I take pictures so that I can share those projects here on the blog. Looking over my current collection of show and tell photos, I spotted a bunch in Brooklyn Tweed Arbor, which is currently 10% off as it’s featured in our BT Sample of the Month. With its sophisticated colors and superb stitch definition, Arbor is worth celebrating – here are a few great ways to use it!

Last year, Amy taught a couple of classes on Norah Gaughan’s “Geiger,” an intricately cabled and tailored cardigan knit with Arbor. Above is Amy in her completed garment, a perfect fit!

Leslie, Jane, and Linda also used Arbor for their own “Geiger” cardigans – bravo to all on completing these impressive sweaters!

Nancy also taught a sweater class featuring Arbor last year – above is her lovely “Newhaven” gansey, from Beth Brown-Reinsel’s classic Knitting Ganseys.

Above is April in her “#14 Arbor Cardigan,” another striking cabled cardigan designed by Norah Gaughan. She had some Arbor leftover and made the “Brioche Knots” hat below.

Emily recently made this pint-sized version of Andrea Mowry’s “Weekender” sweater for her daughter, taking advantage of Arbor’s smaller gauge to get the perfect fit.

Thanks to Amy, Leslie, Jane, Linda, Nancy, April, and Emily for sharing their Arbor projects with us, and thanks to everyone who starts their project with a trip to our shop! We can’t wait to see what comes off your needles next. If these talented knitters have inspired you, place an order during April to get Brooklyn Tweed Arbor at 10% off!

A reminder: all sales are final on discounted yarn. There can be no returns or exchanges. Thanks! 

The Weekender KAL: show and tell.

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Back in April 2019, Anne and I embarked on an informal knit-along, knitting Andrea Mowry’s “The Weekender” sweater and inviting anyone and everyone to join us. We were delighted that so many folks were inspired to make the sweater, each bringing their own style and taste to this simple design, each knitting at their own pace. Some finished right away and then had to wait patiently for sweater weather to arrive, others signed up for Amy’s Weekender class to have her guidance as they knit along through the fall and winter. Many are still knitting, and we’re looking forward to seeing their sweaters in use this winter or next. As far as I’m concerned, our KAL has no end-date, so consider this round of Weekender KAL show and tell the first of many!

Michele was the first to finish. She knit her “Weekender” with Debbie Bliss Luxury Tweed she picked up on sale a few years ago, putting that sweater quantity to good use.

Here’s Debbie in her “Weekender,” knit with Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in Snowbound, BT’s softest gray. Something about the reverse stockinette seems to let the heathered colorway shine – flecks of dark gray and black pop out from the overall light color, giving a simple stitch pattern more interest.

Anne and I had our own “Weekenders” on display at the shop all through the fall, and in fact, hers is still hanging – I was excited to wear mine and brought it home last month! Anne’s is on the left, knit with Shelter in Soot, and mine is on the right, knit with Kelbourne Woolens Scout in Sunflower Heather.

Amy is well into teaching a handful of classes on “The Weekender,” and so finished hers in a productive flurry of preparation for teaching. She used Shelter in the marled Caraway color, a good match for this design, with its plain texture and simple shape. She also modified the neckline for a turtleneck, and opted to knit the entire body in the round and steek the armhole openings – very clever!

Many thanks to Michele, Debbie, and Amy for sharing their sweaters and knitting along with us! We know there are many other Weekenders in various stages of completion out there in our HYS knitting community – let us know how it’s going, we can’t wait to see you all in your sweaters!