Tag Archives: tincanknits

New colors in Berroco Ultra Wool Chunky.

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We recently got a big bundle of new colors from Berroco in yarns across their line of machine-washable wools – Ultra Wool DK, Ultra Wool (worsted weight), and Ultra Wool Chunky. Today, let’s take a look at Ultra Wool Chunky!

Berroco Ultra Wool Chunky:

  • bulky weight
  • 100% superwash wool
  • 145 yards/100g
  • $12 each

Ultra Wool Chunky is a 100% superwash wool that’s soft, sturdy, and economical, perfect for cozy garments and accessories for adults and children alike. Here are some pattern ideas:

Order online for local pickup or shipping!

New colors in Berroco Ultra Wool.

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We recently got a big bundle of new colors from Berroco in yarns across their line of machine-washable wools – Ultra Wool DK, Ultra Wool (worsted weight), and Ultra Wool Chunky. Today, I’m sharing new colors, project ideas, and color combinations in the worsted weight Ultra Wool – let’s take a look!

Berroco Ultra Wool:

  • worsted weight
  • 100% superwash wool
  • 219 yards/100g
  • $12 each

These pastels fill out the already large Ultra Wool color selection, and makes for rich color combinations.

Here are some two-color projects for worsted weight yarn:

The colors above are a snapshot of what we have on hand right now, but it changes from day to day; Berroco Ultra Wool comes in over 80 colors, which you can see on the Berroco website. If there’s a color you’d like that you don’t see in our photos here, ask us and we may be able to order it for you!

Order online for local pickup or shipping, and keep an eye out for an upcoming post on Ultra Wool Chunky!

New colors in Berroco Ultra Wool DK.

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We recently got a big bundle of new colors from Berroco in yarns across their line of machine-washable wools – Ultra Wool DK, Ultra Wool (worsted weight), and Ultra Wool Chunky. Today, I’m sharing new colors, project ideas, and color combinations in Ultra Wool DK – let’s take a look!

Berroco Ultra Wool DK:

  • DK weight
  • 100% superwash wool
  • 292 yards/100g
  • $12 each

The new colors are shown above, a pastel rainbow that creates exciting new possibilities for color combining across the whole palette.

As I investigated those possibilities, I found myself drawn to three-color combinations, thinking, as I often do, of stranded colorwork.

Here are some DK weight patterns to consider if any of these trios catches your eye:

Sweaters: 

Accessories:

When I took these photos, I had in mind that the color on the left would make a good main or background color, and the two colors at right would be contrast colors. These assignments can shift as needed, depending upon the design at hand – happy to help answer questions as you pair these colorways with patterns you love!

Order online for local pickup or shipping, and keep an eye out for upcoming posts on Ultra Wool and Ultra Wool Chunky!

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!

Hello, Winterburn DK.

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We’re delighted to announce that we now carry Baa Ram Ewe Winterburn DK!

Baa Ram Ewe is a small yarn company out of Yorkshire with a noble aim: to revitalize the textile industry in their region by sourcing, spinning, and dyeing their yarns entirely in the UK.

Winterburn DK is a 50%/50% blend of Bluefaced Leicester and Masham wools, two English longwool breeds that bring their signature bounce and luster to this yarn. It’s soft but wooly, springy with a bit of drape – an excellent choice for sweater making and accessories alike.

All twenty colors are here, begging to be combined in colorwork, if you ask me – it makes me want to pull out my copy of Tin Can Knits’ Strange Brew!

What else to make with Winterburn DK? Consider Thea Colman’s “Herbsaint” pullover, Isabell Kraemer’s “Norderney” and “Ready for Fall” pullovers, Janina Kallio’s “Flowers of Winter” shawl, or for something more whimsical, check out Ella Austin’s “Fancy Hen” and “Plum Pudding Pig.” All of those patterns were designed either with Winterburn DK or Dovestone DK, the sadly discontinued yarn that this new one was modeled after. Of course, you can also use Winterburn DK wherever DK weight wool is called for – check out our “DK weight” Pinterest board for a few ideas!

Look for Winterburn DK here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop!

Back in stock, show and tell: Malabrigo.

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Year in and year out, Malabrigo yarns are among the most popular in our shop. Sometimes it feels like we place Malabrigo orders for the shop every week, but not every week yields an order as big as our most recent – this was a sizeable restock, indeed!

Here are bags and bags of Malabrigo Sock, Mechita, Washted, Mecha, Rasta, Caracol, and Nube, waiting to be unpacked.

As usual, knitters and crocheters we know have been busy making shawls and sweaters using Malabrigo yarns – time for some show and tell!

Here is Nancy’s “Kelp Garden Sweater,” which she crocheted using Malabrigo Mechita and CoopKnits Socks Yeah! This incredible sweater won second place at the NC State Fair this year – congratulations, Nancy!

Above is another Mechita project – Anne knit Joji Locatelli’s “Storm” shawl with just one skein, in the pattern’s namesake colorway. She started and ripped out several other shawls with this speckled yarn before landing on “Storm,” which turned out to be just the right pattern, the dropped stitches showing off the painterly yarn just so. 

Below is Cindy’s “Troupe” shawl, knit with Malabrigo Dos Tierras in a playful color combination.

Pam knit this “Dog Star” pullover for her grandson using Malabrigo Rios. This is a favorite sweater pattern of mine, and Anne’s, too – we’ve each made several of these, and seen knitters around us make many more. I love Pam’s color choice, the bright “Cian” blue jumping out against the deep “Paris Night.”

Thanks to the knitters, crocheters, and weavers who bring in their work to show us what they’ve made! You inspire and amaze us, and we can’t wait to see what you get into next.

The shop is currently closed for a Thanksgiving break, but we’ll reopen at our regular business hours on Tuesday, December 3, and look forward to seeing you soon!

New colors in Malabrigo Rios.

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Malabrigo recently released a bunch of new colors in their beloved worsted weight superwash merino, Rios. Meet the Tribeca collection!

Rios is beautifully hand-dyed in rich, memorable colors, soft and springy in the hand, and machine-washable, no less. A superwash worsted weight wool is a versatile kind of yarn, good for garments and accessories alike. We’ve seen it all in Rios over the years – sweaters for all ages, blankets large and small, hats and mitts and cowls and slipper socks and more.

These delicate pastel shades are semi-solid, ideal for showing off texture patterns. Try Tin Can Knits’ “Flax” and “Barley,” Stephen West’s “Dustland,” Joji Locatelli’s “Hipster Shawl,” and Andrea Mowry’s “Nurtured.”

With so many beautiful colors, it’s tempting to combine them, too – for colorful ideas, check out Shannon Cook’s “Bradway,” Lisa Hannes’ “Walk in the Woods,” Jennifer Steingass’s “Fern & Feather,” Andrea Mowry’s “Nightshift,” and Tin Can Knits’ “Banff.”

Come by the shop to pick up some Malabrigo Rios for your next project! See you there.

Back in stock: Malabrigo Arroyo.

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Malabrigo Arroyo is back in stock!

This sport weight superwash merino is a favorite around here, and its cubby was looking empty before this week’s shipment arrived.

Each 100 gram skein of Arroyo boasts 335 yards, enough for a scarf, cowl, shawlette, hat, tiny baby sweater, or pair of mitts. Here are a few pattern ideas, projects that knitters on Ravelry have used Arroyo for again and again:

We have two samples at the shop knit with Malabrigo Arroyo, as well – a newborn-sized “Baby Surprise Jacket,” and a “Drop Stitch Scarf.” Though the latter calls for worsted weight yarn on a US 8 needle, I made our sample with one skein of Arroyo on a US 7, casting on an extra pattern repeat to make up the difference in width.

You’ll find Malabrigo Arroyo in the sport weight section here at our shop, and check out our whole selection of Malabrigo yarns while you’re here!

Strange Brew.

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We’re delighted to have Tin Can Knits’ Strange Brew back in stock! Our first batch sold out quickly, before I even had a chance to talk about it here on the blog – today I’ll amend that. Let’s take a look at Strange Brew, a colorwork knitting book that intends to embolden knitters to design!

Tin Can Knits is the collaborative name of designers Alexa Ludeman and Emily Wessel, known for their approachable pattern-writing, and especially for designing for an extensive range of sizes. Anne and I have both knit their “Dog Star” several times, a colorwork yoke pullover knit seamlessly from the bottom up; it goes from 0-6 months up to a 63″ chest circumference – truly inclusive sizing that appears in Strange Brew, as well.

They’ve dubbed Strange Brew a “colorwork knitting adventure,” an apt description for a book bursting with the information and inspiration you need to make colorwork sweaters in 3 gauges and 25 sizes, from the top down or bottom up.

The book begins with the Strange Brew “recipe,” a blank canvas of a sweater pattern with all the numbers crunched for you – how many stitches to cast on, how and when to work the shaping, etc.

What they’ve left up to you is the colorwork patterning, though they offer lots of resources for designing and knitting it.

There are diagrams showing the differences between working top-down and bottom-up, notes on fit, pattern alignment, and swatching, and charts and motifs you can apply to the yoke, sleeves, or body of your sweater.

There are also patterns you can work from, if you’re not in the mood to design your own, that are pleasing to the eye, in fun color combinations and yarns we know and love.

Brooklyn Tweed Arbor, Shelter, and Tukuwool Fingering all make appearances in this book, and you can find all three here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop. These are genuinely some of my favorite yarns to work with, and Tin Can Knits’ cheerful, adventurous use of them totally charmed me.

Look for Strange Brew on the teacart at the shop!

Show and tell: Anne’s “Dog Stars.”

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A few months ago, Anne set a lofty goal: she would knit a sweater for each of her four grandchildren for Hanukkah. When she mentioned this in conversation at the shop, eyes would widen in disbelief – even four child-sized sweaters represent an awful lot of knitting, after all. She picked Tin Can Knits’ “Dog Star” pattern, a simple, seamless, colorwork yoke, and spent every possible moment knitting these sweet sweaters, determined to complete them in time. Anne is a woman of her word, and a determined one – when Hanukkah began on December 2nd, she was ready with four finished sweaters. Quite a feat!

For her granddaughters, Anne knit “Dog Star” with Brooklyn Tweed Arbor, using a sophisticated palette of purplish gray, eggplant, and cream. Knowing the girls might like to match as much as they like to distinguish themselves, Anne flipped the arrangement of contrast colors in the yoke: sisterly matching, yet distinct.

For her twin grandsons, Anne used Malabrigo Rios, again differentiating the sweaters by changing colors in the yoke.

Her boys love bright colors, so she used wildly variegated colorways in the stranded yoke, which, in her words, look like sprinkles against the dark blue background.

Hope you’ve met your own holiday knitting goals this season!

A reminder, the shop will be closed on Tuesday, Dec. 25 and again on Tuesday, Jan. 1. Otherwise the shop will be open at our regular hours, and we look forward to seeing you there!