Snowy weather delayed our Ewe Ewe Trunk Show a bit, but now it’s here!
We have a variety of garments on display knit in Ewe Ewe’s superwash merino yarns, Ewe So Sporty and Wooly Worsted.
From small projects, like socks, mitts and cowls, all the way up to baby blankets, shawls, and sweaters, the range of garments here reflects the multiplicity of uses for these soft, easy-care yarns.
Come by the shop this weekend to see the Ewe Ewe Trunk Show! We’ll have it on display until Tuesday, March 3rd.
I’m happy to report that our supply of Ewe So Sporty has just doubled! Ewe Ewe just came out with 10 new shades of this soft and bouncy superwash merino.
Ewe So Sporty is named for its gauge, a sport weight yarn that knits up between 5.5 and 6.5 stitches per inch, depending upon needle size and desired fabric. It’s ideal for baby and children’s things, especially because it’s easy to care for–machine wash cold, lay flat to dry.
Anne recently knit this “Sleeping Cedars” baby bunting with four skeins of Ewe So Sporty. It doesn’t have its buttons or drawstring yet, but I had to snap a photo, lest it be gifted before I had another chance to document it.
Come by the shop to see all 20 cheery shades of Ewe So Sporty, and remember it whenever your next opportunity for baby knitting should arise!
For three years now, we’ve visited Alchemy’s booth at TNNA and replenished our Alchemy stash with Silken Straw and Sanctuary. While we certainly bulked up our supply of those two yarns this year, we were also sorely tempted by two of Alchemy’s newest yarns. It’s no surprise we gave into temptation; meet Sparky and Lust.
Silken Straw is a sport-weight silk ribbon like no other, and Sparky is like Silken Straw dressed up for the opera. Both yarns feel crisp on the skein but soften up after stitching and washing; Sparky has a metallic thread wrapped around it, giving it a distinct glittery sparkle.
Lust is a fingering weight blend of merino and silk, a thinner version of Sanctuary. It’s soft and slinky, many-plied for great stitch definition, and felts well in Alchemy’s signature shibori felting designs.
Like all Alchemy yarns, Sparky and Lust play well together. Anne used one skein of each in this “Alchemy Sparky Shawlette,” which you’ll find tucked into the basket that holds Silken Straw and Sparky at the shop.
Since we unpacked our most recent Alchemy order, our favorite pastime is coming up with color combinations between the four Alchemy yarns we now stock. For the “Alchemy Sparky Shawlette,” Anne used Lust in a variegated colorway and picked a solid shade of Sparky to go with it.
For a less overtly striped shawl, you might try a lower-contrast pairing.
Consider also the “Straw Into Gold Shawl,” which is shown knit with Silken Straw, Sparky, and Lust all in one shade, a glorious pale beige called “Sand Dollar.”
We were so taken with this sample when we saw it at market that we ordered all three yarns in exactly this color.
No reason to stop there, however–Alchemy yarns beg to be grouped together in all kinds of color combinations, from muted and monochromatic to bright and surprising.
Come by the shop to play the Alchemy color game yourself, and plan a project with these unique and inspiring yarns. You’ll find a handful of knit samples in Alchemy yarns here at the shop; look for more pattern ideas on our Pinterest page. We’ve got lots of great uses for Alchemy yarns on our “Inspiring Stitches” board. See you at the shop!
We’re so excited to announce that we’ve just received a Trunk Show featuring Fibre Company yarns and patterns. The Summer Sweater collection will be on display here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop until July 20th, and we have all the yarns and patterns to make these garments your own!
The Summer Sweater collection consists of six garments knit in Fibre Company’s most warm-weather-friendly yarns, Savannah and Meadow. Each yarn is composed of both plant and animal fibers, giving the finished fabric a nice blend of elasticity and drape.
Savannah is a sport weight mix of wool, cotton, linen, and soya, and Meadow is a blend of merino, llama, linen, and silk spun into a lace/fingering weight yarn.
We have shawls made in each one of these yarns, but they are just as well suited to sweater-making, and it’s a treat to see that in person. Trunk shows like these are a unique opportunity to touch and try on for size before you cast on for a project.
“Sonora” is my favorite, a simple tee with cap sleeves that I’m sure I’d wear all the time. This collection offers a range of tees and tanks, with different color and texture patterns making each one unique.
Come by the shop before July 20th to admire the Summer Sweaters Trunk Show, try them on for size, and plan one for yourself!
We like to keep a decent supply of Kauni Effektgarn on hand, a nice selection of colors, from quiet neutrals to bold brights. There are a few particularly popular colorways, however, and one of our first TNNA tasks was to get them back in stock.
Kauni is a sport-weight, self-striping wool, unique even among its fellow self-striping yarns at the shop for its long stretches of color. Anne knit the above “Wingspan” to show off the long repeats in each color, and this short-row-shaped shawlette is a great project for highlighting Kauni. She used just one ball of color EF, which moves through shades of denim blue, mauve, green, and purple.
Rosi and I both worked on the “Kauni Color Wave Shawl” that hangs in the shop, showing another interesting use of the yarn.
Two shades of Kauni, EA and ED, are striped against one another in this garter stitch shawl. I would never have thought to put them together; Kauni can surprise you that way sometimes, entertaining you with its shifting shades as you stitch.
Perhaps the most popular Kauni colorway is EQ, a bright, bold rainbow.
Last Fall, a knitter brought in her “Spectra” scarf made in this signature shade of Kauni, and I photographed it for the blog. I love this clever use for the yarn, the way the colors frame one another in the pattern.
We’re thrilled to have these Kauni colors back in stock! Come by the shop to see them and many more, and to plan your next project. See you there!
Last Spring, we had two Knit-Alongs at the shop: first we knit up the summery “Gemini” tee, and then we made “Hexagonal Market Bags.” Halfway through March, sick of freezing rain and snow, we’ve decided we’re ready for another warm-weather Knit-Along. Inspired by the latest new yarn at the shop, Anne, Rosi and I have both cast on for the “1-Skein Zigzag Cowl,” a pattern by Heather Walpole for Ewe Ewe.
I’m knitting one in Ewe So Sporty, the sport weight superwash merino for which the pattern was written. The yarn is tightly-plied and full of elasticity, well-behaved on my Addi Turbo needles and resulting in a pleasing stretchy fabric.
Thinking Spring, Anne chose Tahki Cotton Classic for her Zigzag Cowl, a dk weight mercerized cotton. Like Ewe So Sporty, Cotton Classic has sharp stitch definition, but like all plant fibers, it lacks elasticity, which will make a lightweight, gently draping fabric. Just the thing for decorating and warming your neck on a moderately chilly day.
Rosi’s cowl is made in Mirasol Nuna, a sport weight blend of merino wool, silk, and bamboo. These fibers combine to be quite soft, a little fuzzy, and a little shiny, and make a relaxed, luxurious fabric.
I’m excited to see how these three different yarns behave in the same pattern. Want to make a “1-Skein Zigzag Cowl” of your own? Join us in this informal Knit-Along. The pattern is available at the shop in print or as a Ravelry In-Store Pattern Sale, where we’ll print a copy for you and save a digital copy to your email or Ravelry pattern library. Any sport or dk weight yarn should do; we have a nice selection of colors in Ewe So Sporty, Tahki Cotton Classic, and Mirasol Nuna, along with all manner of other yarns in those gauges. I’d love to see Zigzag Cowls in Malabrigo Arroyo, Fibre Company Savannah, Mountain Meadow Wool Cody, or String Theory Selku, to name a few. Come by the shop to see all the choices, and to see how Anne, Rosi, and I are progressing on our cowls. We’ll also be posting on the Ravelry HYS group with any lessons learned along the way, just as we did while we were making our Gemini sweaters and market bags. See you at the shop!
This past week, we welcomed a brand new yarn to the shop: Ewe So Sporty, from Ewe Ewe!
Ewe So Sporty is a sport-weight version of the popular Ewe Ewe Wooly Worsted, and both are soft and springy machine-washable merino wools with excellent stitch definition.
Along with this new sport weight yarn came a batch of new patterns written just for Ewe So Sporty. It’s a small but varied collection, showing the breadth of uses for this versatile yarn, from baby things to shawls, socks, and other accessories.
Come by the shop to see Ewe So Sporty for yourself!
Last week, we unpacked a very large box of yarn from Schoppel-Wolle, a German company perhaps best known for their self-striping sock yarn, Zauberball.
Zauberball is a fingering weight yarn that slowly changes from one color to the next several yards at a time, so that whatever you’re knitting or crocheting with it comes out striped.
It’s sturdy for a single-ply yarn, thanks to its fiber content: a blend of superwash wool and nylon that is perfect for making socks. A quick Ravelry search for Zauberball reveals that it’s good for more than socks, though–so many Zauberballs have grown up into shawls and scarves like “Wingspan,” “Citron,” “Spectra,” and “Elise.”
Crazy Zauberball is a 2-ply version of the same thing, giving the finished fabric a marled look.
Zauberball Starke 6 is a thicker version of Crazy Zauberball–same superwash fiber content, same stripes, but in sport weight. You may have seen our “Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf” made up in Zauberball Starke 6, and that short-row shaped scarf is a great way to show off the yarn’s stripes; also consider Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “Baby Surprise Jacket,” or “Wurm,” a cute (and free) hat pattern.
We also got a brand new yarn from Schoppel-Wolle, another patterning sock yarn called Das Paar. Das Paar solves one of the problems of self-patterning or self-striping yarn, which is that it has kind of a mind of its own. One can’t easily have perfectly matched stripes on a pair of socks, fingerless mitts, or sleeves, without winding and rewinding the yarn to get to just the right point in the color sequence. Many knitters don’t find this problematic at all, and make peace with fraternal twin socks. For those who want a perfectly matched pair, Das Paar is wound into two 50 g skeins that start at the same point in the color sequence. Come by the shop to check it out, along with all the other Zauberball yarns!
A new lace shawl now decorates the walls at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop: “Kindling,” by Kate Gagnon Osborn, knit with three skeins of Fibre Company Savannah.
If you’ve visited the shop on a Sunday recently, you may well have seen Rosi stitching on this shawl. Once the knitting was done, she passed it on to me so I could try my hand at blocking it with blocking wires–a new skill for me.
Using a Knitter’s Pride Lace Blocking Kit and some online tutorials, blocking the “Kindling” shawl was easier than I thought it might be.
It’s always amazing to me how the fabric changes with a good soak, and this is particularly true for lace patterns. When they first come off the needles, they look rumpled and bumpy, but after blocking, the eyelets open up and the lace pattern can really shine. It was satisfying to see, even though I hadn’t knit the thing myself.
Fibre Company Savannah is a sport weight blend of 50% wool, 20% cotton, 15% linen, and 15% soya, which gives it the elasticity of wool and the lightness of plant fibers–a perfect spring and summer yarn.
Come by the shop to admire Rosi’s handiwork and see our “Kindling” sample for yourself. You’ll find Savannah in the sport weight section, and the pattern is always available as a Ravelry In-Store Pattern Sale–we’ll print it out for you and save a digital copy in your email or Ravelry pattern library. Hope to see you there soon!
Most yarns from Maine hand-dyers String Theory are dyed to order, so it was with a couple months of anticipation that we excitedly unpacked a big box full of Selku this past week.
Selku is a sport weight, 3-ply blend of 50% silk and 50% merino wool. The silk content makes it slinky and shiny, while the wool brings elasticity. Together, they make a gently draping fabric with excellent stitch definition that is well suited to accessories, scarves, shawls, and sweaters. It particularly shines in lacy openwork patterns–perhaps you’ve seen the sample slouchy hat in Selku at the shop, or glimpsed Rosi’s “Sampler Tabard” on the blog.
We’ve also seen Selku knit up into a “Vitamin D” sweater and a “Sonetto” shawl, among other projects. There’s one other shawl pattern we’ve had our eye on for some time that calls for String Theory Selku: “Sundry,” by Jennifer Dassau. “Sundry” is a garter- and slip-stitch shawl that calls for one skein each in two colors–an excellent opportunity to play the color-combining game.
Above are “Pewter” and “Alexandrite,” the colors shown in the pattern sample. I couldn’t stop there, of course. Here are several more combinations that appealed to my eye–I can’t wait to see what other knitters come up with, too!
Come by the shop to bask in Selku’s glow, and pick a pair of colors for your own “Sundry” shawl. See you there!
