Tag Archives: free patterns

Berroco Touche.

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Here’s another Berroco yarn that we have on sale this week: Touche.

Touche is a machine-washable, worsted weight blend of cotton and rayon. It’s soft and squishy, with a bit more elasticity than one usually expects from plant fibers, making it quite pleasant to knit with. It’s softness and easy care make it perfect for baby things, like this simple baby hat. I made it with one skein of Touche this week, and it took only a few hours. The pattern is the Super Simple Hat Calculator, a free pattern that gives instructions for a variety of sizes and gauges. This means that whatever yarn you choose can successfully become a hat with the help of the Super Simple Hat Calculator. This means that we turn to the Super Simple Hat Calculator again and again and again.

Touche and many other Berroco yarns are 25% off until Sunday the 10th, which, as I write this, is tomorrow, so come by soon to shop Week 2 of our Going-to-Market sale! Many of these Berroco yarns were quite affordable to begin with, making them irresistibly inexpensive at 25% off. Between the free pattern and the sale yarn, you could be knitting this baby hat for less than four dollars. Irresistible, no? See you at the shop!

 

Just a reminder–all sales are final on sale items; there can be no exchanges, no returns, nor will we special order. Thanks!

Berroco Pure Pima.

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Allow me to introduce you to one of the Berroco yarns we have on sale this week: Pure Pima.

Pure Pima is a dk weight cotton which comes in bright, solid colors, with 115 yards on each 50 gram ball. I’ve written here before about a lovely Norah Gaughan sweater we have at the shop made in Pure Pima, which beautifully illustrates its use in garments. Poking around on Ravelry, I found a cute free pattern from Knitty which calls for Pure Pima–a retro-styled sleeveless top called “Petrie.” What else is a dk weight cotton good for? Baby sweaters, blankets and hats, of course, as well as lightweight shawls and scarves, market bags… and dishcloths.

Yes, I took home a few fistfulls of Pure Pima over the weekend and started knitting a kitchen towel, using the classic Ballband Dishcloth pattern with a few extra pattern repeats. It’s a classic for a reason, as it turns out: free, easy to memorize, and pleasant to look at. I never thought I’d knit something that I planned to wipe my hands, dishes, and counters with, but there you have it: I’m knitting a kitchen towel and loving it.

Come by the shop to pick up some Pure Pima for your own burgeoning collection of handknit kitchenwares, or for any other project wanting dk weight cotton. Be sure to check out the other discounted Berroco yarns this week, too!

 

Just a reminder–all sales are final on sale items; there can be no exchanges, no returns, nor will we special order. Thanks!

Kochoran cowl.

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During quiet moments at the shop, when all the restocking, reordering, class-scheduling, question-answering and yarn-selling is taken care of for the moment, Anne and I often ask one another, “What hasn’t been swatched yet?” This simple cowl is what happened when the answer to that question was “Noro Kochoran,” a bulky, self-striping blend of wool, angora, and silk.

I rarely work with yarns as thick as Kochoran, so it was a pleasantly unusual to see the knitted fabric emerge so quickly. I cast on at the end of the day one Thursday and the cowl was done mid-morning on Saturday. It was a chilly day in the shop, and the insistent air-conditioning had us bundled up in many lovely (if seasonally-inappropriate) shop samples. Here Anne knits a North Arrow scarf while modeling the Kochoran cowl and the Norby hat, made up in the exquisitely soft Schulana Lambswool.

The Kochoran cowl is a simple, quick knit, and fetching in its simplicity, I think–a nice accessory to make now and store for winter gift-giving. I know a knitter who made a bunch of cowls something like this one for nearly all the women in her family last holiday season. Easy to make and well-received when given: a winning combination, don’t you think?

Works completed.

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Satisfaction, to me, is a finished knitting project. Once all the ends have been woven in and the knitted piece has been washed and blocked, I can stand back, admire my work, push aside the urge to point out whatever errors I made, and get ready for the next project. Anne and I have both recently completed samples for the shop, both of which you can see hanging proudly in the front window.

Anne used the Schulana Macaibo yarn to make Little Sister’s Dress, a sweet pattern that’s available as a free download on Ravelry. Like the baby sunhat that Anne was knitting a few weeks ago out of Schulana Tamarillo, this sample shows how differently the yarn knits up than you might have supposed, looking at it in the ball.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a brightly colored lace scarf out of SWTC’s Pure yarn, made of 100% soysilk. Pure is one of those yarns that somehow never got swatched, though we’ve had it at the shop for a few years now. I tried my hardest to stretch the yardage of a single skein and managed to get a nice narrow scarf out of just 165 yards. The pattern is Veronik Avery’s Lace Ribbon Scarf, a free pattern from Knitty. I only cast on 26 stitches, though, working two repeats of the lace pattern rather than the suggested five. Like I said: I was trying to stretch a single skein.

Yes, finishing things up is a good feeling, matched only by the excitement of casting on for something new! You can see these and plenty of other sample garments at the shop, and if you have any questions about the yarn or the pattern we used, don’t hesitate to ask. See you at the shop!

New yarns from Schulana.

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Last week, I wrote about two of the most recent knit samples at the shop. If you’ve been in the shop in the past week or so, you may already have seen two more finished samples: hats made with new yarns from Schulana.

First up is a hat I made using Schulana Lambswool, a marled tweed yarn whose fiber content is reflected in its name. The yarn is incredibly soft and light, with 110 yards on each 25 gram ball.

We thought it’s rustic look and lofty nature made Lambswool an excellent substitute for Brooklyn Tweed’s Loft yarn, so we picked Gudrun Johnston’s hat pattern for Loft, Norby. I’m pleased with the result–so pleased, in fact, that I’ve already taken home a sweater’s worth of Lambswool. I can’t wait to figure out what I’m going to do with it!

While I knit up the Lambswool, Anne was working on a top-down baby hat using Schulana Tamarillo, a machine-washable cotton tape yarn with multicolor slubs that pop out from the knitted fabric.

This little hat is a great example of why we try to have samples and swatches of every yarn we carry. It’s not always easy to envision the finished fabric just by looking at the yarn in a ball. Some yarns, like Tamarillo, will surprise you when you knit them up. The pattern, Baby Boy (Or Girl) Sun Hat, is available as a free download from Ravelry.

Finally, our third new Schulana yarn for spring is Macaibo, a self-striping cotton/viscose blend, knit sample forthcoming. Enjoy perusing these new yarns next time you’re at the shop!

Works in progress, works completed.

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Anne and I are never without a shop-sample-to-be, it seems. All our new yarns need swatching, and lately we’ve been making whole projects instead of the usual 4″x4″ swatch, the better to show off the yarn. Here’s what we’re up to lately.

We recently got a new yarn from Araucania for the spring: Lontue, a 50/50 blend of cotton and linen. It’s interesting stuff: variegated in color, thick-and-thin in texture, and very fine, but with a suggested gauge of 5 stitches per inch.

I tried it in a drop-stitch scarf, which I really cannot recommend this yarn for–boy, did it look messy! While I was ripping that out, Anne suggested trying a seed stitch. Only a few rows in, it was clear that the pattern would be completely obscured by the yarn’s color and texture. I settled on garter stitch, so that the yarn could shine, and it’s been going well since then. I’m at work on a simple garter stitch shawl, in the style of the Isager Alpaca 1 shawl.

Meanwhile, Anne has completed her Wingspan in Kauni Effektgarn, and it now hangs proudly on the wall at the shop. It’s mesmerizing, especially in person, and another great example of what a good Eucalan soak can do for what seem to be scratchy wools. How the Kauni softened with that wash!

Come by the shop and see it for yourself.

Works in progress: short row edition.

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This month, perhaps more than most, Anne’s desk at the shop has often been crowded by multiple works in progress. She has (ahem) a small handful of projects started, many of which will grow up to be shop samples, showing off particular yarns in patterns for which they are particularly well-suited. At the moment, I have only one project going at the shop, but more at home, lest you think I’m gloating. The impulse to cast on with an exciting new yarn is strong, and succumb to it we do. Here are two of the latest works in progress you’re likely to catch us stitching on in quiet moments at the shop.

Anne is working on a shawl with the wooly, self-striping Kauni yarn, knowing that Nancy’s Wiggle Wrap is not a permanent installation in the shop. When the Wiggle Wrap leaves us, we’ll need something that shows what Kauni can do, and this shawl will do that very well.

The pattern is Wingspan, available as a free download on Ravelry, and it is an excellent example of just one of the many shapes that can be accomplished using short rows.

Myself, I’m at work on a ruffle scarf, another pattern full of short rows, albeit much shorter short rows. These rows are sometimes only 4 stitches long, short enough that I taught myself to knit backwards to save time on turning the needles around between short rows. If the pattern looks familiar, that’s because we already have one ruffle scarf hanging in the shop, which I wrote about on the blog last May. That one was made with two yarns held together, and because of this, it’s fuzzy, dense, and warm. With Spring on its way, and Cascade’s Ultra Pima yarn unswatched, we thought a thinner cotton ruffle scarf was in order.

That’s what we’re up to, or part of what we’re up to, at any rate. What are you working on lately?

Hello, Araucania Ruca.

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This drop stitch scarf, lent to us by Amy, has been getting a lot of attention since we put it up at the shop a few weeks ago. Like Nancy’s Kauni shawl, it wont be at the shop forever, so I thought I’d document it here on the blog.

The yarn is Araucania Ruca, a dk-weight yarn made of 100% sugarcane fiber, and it’s a particularly good match for the pattern. Plant fibers like sugarcane, bamboo, and cotton all lack elasticity, giving them a tendency to stretch out of shape. For some projects, that would be a disadvantage to account for by changing needle size or even adding an elastic thread, but for a drop stitch scarf, it’s a perfect fit. The elongated stitches of the seafoam stitch pattern drape beautifully in a plant fiber.
Amy’s scarf has gotten a lot of knitters interested in the Ruca yarn, so we ordered a few new colors to give aspiring drop stitch scarf makers more options. We were disappointed to discover that Araucania no longer produces the same colorway that Amy used, but we got two similar colorways for those that want the same look. 
Take a look at the Ruca when you’re seeking a smooth, shiny plant fiber, and if you’d like to make a drop stitch scarf of your own, you can download the pattern for free on Ravelry. See you at the shop!

Cowls.

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We’re often asked if we know a good cowl pattern, or have a book of them. This request has been particularly common in the past month or so, so I thought I’d give a virtual version of my in-shop answer. A book of cowls: unfortunately, no. A good cowl pattern: here are four, and all the better because they are free.

To some, a cowl is a tube designed to fit closely around the neck, almost like a dickey. A turtleneck detached from its sweater. Here is one such cowl, in simple 2×2 ribbing, knit with the soft and slightly shiny Debbie Bliss Andes, a dk weight blend of alpaca and silk. The pattern is available at the shop–just ask for the Andes cowl.

To others, a cowl is a long loop of a scarf, designed to be wrapped around the neck twice. We have two cowls that meet this description, the first of which is available online, and the second, at the shop. Meet the Big Herringbone Cowl (above) and the Moebius Cowl (below). We used a worsted-weight merino/silk blend and a mohair/silk blend, respectively.

Somewhere between the two shapes is this newest cowl, knit from String Theory Merino DK. The Purl Ridge Cowl pattern is also available as a free pattern from the Hillsborough Yarn Shop, as of Thursday afternoon, when I bound off, wove in the ends, and immediately tried it on. Cozy.

My challenge to you: choose a color.

String Theory, as I have gushed several times in as many weeks, does incredible things with yarn and dye. My photographs don’t do it justice. Come and see the stuff with your own two eyes!

Hello, Alpaca 1.

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When Anne returned from her trip to Denmark in August, she came back with many stories and many knitting ideas. The first one that she realized was simple: a triangular garter stitch shawl in Isager Alpaca 1, a 2-ply lace-weight yarn that at the time, we had just recently ordered in a pretty little spectrum of colors. Anne had seen one like it in Marianne Isager’s shop, and was determined to recreate it as a shop sample here. It may be a simple shawl, a “nothing pattern,” as Anne often describes it, but it has been a huge hit.

The particular combination of this yarn at this gauge makes simple garter stitch look new and somehow complicated. I’ve seen seasoned knitters puzzle over the shawl, asking about the stitch pattern. The texture is truly unusual, stretchy and fuzzy and light. Sometimes I wrap it around my neck like a scarf while I’m rearranging the Alpaca 1 basket, and I must say, it tempts one.

Having nearly run out of Isager Alpaca 1 due to the beguiling nature of the garter stitch shawl, it was time for a reorder at the start of the new year. As I put out the new colors, I felt content seeing them all together again, and daydreamed a bit about which color I’d choose if I were making one myself. What would you choose?

The next time you’re in the market for a mindless knit with exquisite yarn, consider the Alpaca 1 shawl. Try it on next time you’re in the shop and see if you’re not tempted.