Tag Archives: norah gaughan

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! 

Making No. 7: Desert.

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Happy to announce that the latest issue of Making is in!

Desert landscapes are the theme of this issue, which features projects for making of all kinds – quilting, embroidery, sewing, weaving, macrame, cooking, needle felting, and, yes, knitting!

I spotted plenty of familiar names in the knitting department – designers like Bristol Ivy, Susan B. Anderson, Norah Gaughan, Helga Isager, and others contributed to this issue.

Beautifully photographed and lovingly produced, Making is a treat of a publication.

Look for it on the teacart here at the shop, surrounded by the best in new books and magazines for makers. See you there!

Pom Pom Quarterly: Winter 2018.

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The Winter 2018 issue of Pom Pom Quarterly has arrived here at the shop!

Pom Pom is a beautifully designed magazine, carefully put together by writers and editors who clearly love printed matter as much as they love knitwear. This issue is guest edited by none other than Norah Gaughan, who was also featured in the most recent Mason-Dixon Knitting Field Guide. Fans of Norah Gaughan have a lot to be excited about this season!

“The knits in this issue are imagined for the modern heroine,” write the Pom Pom editors, and the designs do evoke strength and drama. They are also highly embellished, whether with whimsical tassels, graphic colorwork, bold cables, bobbles, or gathers.

Many of the designer names in this issue are familiar, the likes of Joji Locatelli, Caitlin Hunter, Andrea Rangel, and Veronik Avery, whose contribution is knit with one of our favorite yarns, Brooklyn Tweed Arbor.

Anna Maltz’s column is always a thought provoking, interesting read, focusing this time on notions of tradition and historicity in knitting. She rightly points out that “Tradition is not inherently good,” and asks instead that we celebrate the ever-evolving nature of our craft, and the talented people that continue to contribute to it with new designs, techniques, and technology.

Come by the shop to get a closer look at this striking issue of Pom Pom!

Mason-Dixon Knitting Field Guide No. 9: Revolution.

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The ninth installment of the Mason-Dixon Knitting Field Guide series is here! Let’s take a peek inside.

Ann Shayne and Kaye Gardiner’s series of Field Guides are pocket-sized booklets focused on a particular theme or knitting technique. Revolution in all its forms was the inspiration behind the four cabled designs in this edition, and the featured designer with revolution in mind is Norah Gaughan.

Known for her intricate cable designs and innovative garment construction, Norah Gaughan is a knitwear designer at the top of her game. Three of the four cable patterns in this collection are interchangeable with one another, so you can yoke of the pullover above for the yoke of the cardigan or capelet, matching your favorite cable with the garment you want to make.

Look for the Mason-Dixon Knitting Field Guide No. 9 on our teacart, with the latest books and magazines. We still have some copies of a few of the older MDK Field Guides, too – come by the shop to complete your collection!

Brooklyn Tweed Trunk Show: Winter 18.

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We’re excited to have a new Trunk Show decorating our walls. Come by the shop before October 14 to see the Brooklyn Tweed Winter 18 collection!

The Brooklyn Tweed design team is prolific, and creates new pattern collections several times a year. Each one is met with excitement here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop; Anne and I often scroll through the lookbook together on launch day, pointing out sweaters we’d love to make.

We’ve been especially looking forward to seeing Norah Gaughan’s “Geiger” cardigan, shown on the right in Kettle black. It caught Amy’s eye as soon as the collection was published in January, and she’s cooking up a class on this intricate cabled cardigan for Spring 2019. Let us know if you’re interested in such a class, and we’ll be sure to notify you when more details are available!

For me, Gudrun Johnston’s “Kirigami” and Julie Hoover’s “Nolan” are the stars of this show, patterns I’ve been looking forward to seeing. Both of these, like “Geiger,” are knit with Brooklyn Tweed Arbor, an ideal yarn for showing off texture patterns. Anne and I both took a shine to Jared Flood’s “Freja,” a quick short-sleeved knit in Quarry. Which are your favorites?

Seeing these garments close up and in person is one of the great joys of a Trunk Show. Another joy is trying them on for size, making sure you like the fit and feel before you invest in a big project. We like to add one more joy: a 10% discount on purchases of the featured BT yarns during the trunk show!

Come by the shop to see this breathtaking collection for yourself, and plan your next project in Brooklyn Tweed yarns at 10% off! See you there.

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

Vogue Knitting.

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Another magazine showed up this week with a mustard yellow sweater on the cover – must mean fall is coming! Let’s take a look inside the latest issue of Vogue Knitting.

The intricate textured yoke turtleneck on the cover was designed by Norah Gaughan for Kelbourne Woolens Andorra, a sport weight wool and mohair blend.

Paging through this issue, I spotted another sweater in a familiar yarn – Malabrigo Dos Tierras, a DK weight blend of merino wool and alpaca.

Along with the cozy fall sweaters, you’ll find good reading material, including an article on the history of knit stockings and the development of steel knitting needles for making them.

Look for Vogue Knitting on the teacart here at the shop, where the latest books and magazines are gathered!

Show and tell: Shelter sweaters.

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The extra cold weather we’ve had lately has brought out some incredible knitwear! Almost everyone who comes through our doors these days is bundled in handmade woolens. As a result, I have quite a pile of show and tell photos to share, and sifting through it, a few themes have emerged. For today’s post, that theme is sweaters knit with Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, a yarn I consider perfectly suited to sweater-making.

Here’s Marcy in her “Grow” sweater by Norah Gaughan, from Hannah Thiessen’s recent book, Slow Knitting. Made with Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in the playful Tartan colorway, Marcy calls it her January sweater, the warm-but-not-heavy garment that will see her through this chilly month. The construction of this sweater is more intriguing than this photo lets on, with diagonal side seams wrapping from the narrow back piece to the wider front – an interesting knit, no doubt!

Grace’s recently-completed “Tinder” is knit with Shelter in Almanac, a rich blue. This Jared Flood design features an all-over knit/purl texture pattern, straightforward to execute and satisfying to see.

She wore it into the shop just after finishing it, and kindly let me photograph it while our ballwinder prepared her next sweater’s worth – a knitter after my own heart, following one sweater directly with another.

Leslie is another serial sweater-knitter; above is her latest, Michele Wang’s “Bedford” pullover knit in Snowbound, Shelter’s lightest gray. Like “Tinder,” “Bedford” is all about a simple repeated texture pattern, though this one has a bit of a cable twist. It’s a cozy sweatshirt of a sweater, the kind of garment one wouldn’t mind wearing day after day.

This little tincanknits “Flax” was knit by Emily for a new baby in her family, and Shelter in Faded Quilt was the perfect shade of blue gray. I haven’t knit as many baby sweaters as some, but “Flax” is one I made for my nephew, and I often recommend it. I love the rustic look of Emily’s in Shelter!

 

I, too, have knit a sweater with Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, and here I am wearing it. This is Bristol Ivy’s “Second Grace,” a pullover in my favorite sweater genre: bottom-up, colorwork, circular yoke. I labored over the selection of seven colors, wanting to branch out from my usual blue or gray and stymied by the abundance of amazing colors in the Shelter palette. Ultimately I landed on Cast Iron for the main color, and Long Johns, Cinnabar, Tallow, Almanac, Tartan, and Snowbound for contrast colors. I’m so pleased with this garment – you will likely see me wearing it a lot, and it may not be long before I knit another sweater in Shelter.

A warm thanks to all of you who bring your finished projects in to share with us, we are so inspired by what you make and we can’t wait to see what’s next!

Making No. 3: Dots.

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Happy to announce that the latest issue of Making is in! Let’s take a look inside No. 3, whose theme is dots.

Making is a bi-annual magazine for knitters and crocheters, yes, but also for embroiderers, sewists, bakers, felters, dyers, quilters – all manner of makers.

Since yarn is our focus here at the shop, I’ll come right out and say that the showstopper of this issue for me is Norah Gaughan’s contribution, a breathtaking cabled shrug knit in Brooklyn Tweed Arbor.

Besides that, there are plenty of other inspiring designs in this issue of Making, from garments to accessories to home goods.

Beautifully photographed and lovingly produced, Making is a treat of a publication. Look for it on the teacart here at the shop, surrounded by the best in new books and magazines for makers like us. See you there!

Vogue Knitting.

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The latest issue of Vogue Knitting is here!

Look inside this issue of Vogue for summer knitting patterns and inspiration, and especially for lace garments.

This issue also includes features on the revitalization of the UK wool industry and the knitting tradition of Sanquhar, Scotland, a region famous for its intricate colorwork mittens.

Meg Swansen shares one Sanquhar-inspired cowl, and another makes good use of Fibre Company Canopy Fingering.

The show-stopper of this issue comes from none other than Norah Gaughan, and if you’ve seen her most recent book, you wont be surprised to see that it’s absolutely covered in beautiful cables.

We were especially excited to see that it’s made with Brooklyn Tweed Arbor, a springy Targhee wool with excellent stitch definition. Look for it in our DK weight section here at the shop, and look for Vogue Knitting on the teacart with the latest publications!

Norah Gaughan’s Knitted Cable Sourcebook.

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Here is a book you have probably seen already, one that you may even own already, for we’ve sold out and reordered it many times since its initial publication last October. It was selling quickly enough that I waited to buy my own copy until our supply steadied, so though I’ve admired it for months, I’ve only recently sat down and spent time with this beautiful book. Here’s Norah Gaughan’s Knitted Cable Sourcebook, a compendium of cable stitch patterns, garments, and wisdom.

In this book, designer Norah Gaughan introduces over 150 cable stitch patterns with both written and charted instructions, all of which are lovingly photographed by the talented Jared Flood. The book itself is a thing of beauty, but beautiful as it is, the contents of this tome are the star, no matter the packaging.

Gaughan has devised a Stockinette Stitch Equivalent for each of these motifs, a way of saying how many stockinette stitches it would take to make the same width as the cable in question. This allows you to substitute one cable for another with ease, and also to add cables to a plain garment without letting the naturally-smaller gauge of cable patterns mess with the overall size of the piece. Gaughan clearly describes this system and how to use it towards the beginning of the book, where she also lays out hints for chart-reading, yarn choice, symbols and terminology. Don’t miss the troubleshooting section either, from which Karen Templer of Fringe Association pulled a real gem.

There are patterns for cabled garments, too, if design isn’t your thing. From pullovers and cardigans to ponchos and skirts, Gaughan has put her cable patterns to good and interesting use. In short, if you are at all interested in cable knitting or design, you should take a look at Norah Gaughan’s Knitted Cable Sourcebook. Find it on the teacart here at the shop!