Tag Archives: cowl

Fall Preview

Look What's Coming Soon (and other news)

Fall 2013 Preview

As you know, I attended The National Needlearts Association convention in Columbus, Ohio back in mid-June.  With it being my first time attending and I attended alone, I was overwhelmed by all the exciting new things.  Of course, I couldn't help but keep in mind new things, especially things that you may not find in the other yarn stores in the Milwaukee area, but I also gravitated towards things that caught my eye (including designers I admire).

Nevertheless, I did walk away from the convention with some exciting orders placed for brand new yarn and kits for the upcoming fall season.  All things that would provide for excellent class projects and inspirational fall/winter knitting.  So here's a few things you can expect to see on your fall class roster:

If you'd like to sign up in advance for any of the classes below, contact me at info@midwestyarn.com for more details (and selecting kit colors).

- The Color Wave Shawl, featuring Kauni Effektgarn (100% wool, sport weight). Class price $40, plus cost of kit, coming later this fall (class dates to be determined).

Copyright RYN


- The Block Party Eternity Scarf, featuring fingering weight yarns from Knit One/Crochet Too.  A great pattern to learn a good provisional cast-on and mosaic knitting (beginner level color work which allows you to work one color at a time per row...it's almost magical).  

Class price $55 (4 classes), plus cost of kit.  
Sundays, 12pm - 2 pm
September 22, 29, October 6, 13

 Contact me ASAP as the kits are set to arrive September, so I will need to know if more will need to be ordered prior to that.

Copyright Knit One, Crochet Too

- Sea Lettuce Shawl.  The sample for this is already on display in the shop, mainly because I couldn't put this gorgeous yarn down.  Featuring Crock 'o Dye fingering weight yarn from Knit One, Crochet Too.  

Learn striping color work, drop stitches (on purpose), and how to read lace charts.  More of an intermediate/advanced class, so must have basic knitting skills like casting on, working in garter stitch (knit all rows) and binding off.


Class price $55 (4 classes), plus cost of kit.  
Saturdays, 12pm - 2 pm
September 28, October 5, 12, 19



More classes are to be listed soon...


Midwest Yarn's Makeover
We've also updated our shop to make room for more yarn and give it more of a boutique atmosphere.  With that change, we are also upgrading the website to be more user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing.  Do bear with me as those changes are being made, I want to make sure that it is easier in the future to run sales online and even make the online customer rewards program an automatic process, rather than run manually on my end.

Other news
Unfortunately, due to the lack of interest and no pre-orders made, we will not be adding spinning wheels and accessories to our inventory until further notice. I do urge our customers to continue to support Midwest Yarn's growth by participating in yarn and supply pre-orders.  Remember, we are a smaller shop and big risks like bringing in new yarn lines and other products must be worthwhile in order for us to make it and continue serving the Milwaukee area. 

 A big thank you to those who take advantage of special ordering yarn from the companies we have accounts with.  We may not have room for everything, but we still make sure you can get what you need as quickly as possible.  If you don't see what you're looking for, ask to take a look at our catalogs.  Most custom orders arrive within a week, because our suppliers are awesome!  Don't worry, you customers are awesome too and I live to make you happy by providing yarny goodness.

Lastly, we'll be closed Friday and Saturday the third week in August to go mobile.  That's right I'll be running a booth at the Mid-Ohio Fiber Fair in Newark, Ohio (just outside of Columbus), selling not only the wonderful yarns we have in the shop, but also OMG's hand dyed yarn, hand dyed fiber, and hand spun yarn.  My patterns will also be available for purchase as well.  

Until next time!

Unbalanced Knitting Mojo

thelongsock
The Long Sock continues apace. I have turned the heel and am on the home stretch as far knitting goes, which is impressive, as I have only been working on this sock here and there over the last few weeks. I am inclined to say that I will probably pick up another pair of socks before I cast on the second sock of this pair, but I also know I shouldn’t. I have started to notice that I am very fickle when it comes to finishing projects. If I let it languish on my needles for more than six weeks without touching it, I am rather apt to just rip it out and cast on something new. That might be why I usually have little more than a sweater, a sock, and a shawl on the needles at all time. They are all different enough to be engaging, but still something I want to finish, so I have a knitting balance going on.

Lately, my knitting has been so unbalanced it isn’t even funny. I was knitting a shawl, that I have just decided to rip out, which I set aside to start on Christmas knitting. I messed up the first part a bit and then I didn’t find the eratta for the beginning of the second chart until after I had started it, and of course my stitches were off. I could rip it out and start it over—or I could rip it out and start a different shawl all together, which sounds infinitely more appealing currently.

My sweater knitting is going great. I spent the first 10 days of 2013 knitting the Abigail Cardi. It is done except for the collar. I blocked it a few days ago, and was going to work on a Cowl Swap I’m doing on ravelry while it dried.

Well, my abigail cardigan has been dried and waiting for a collar for at least a week now, and I am only about half way through the cowl.

bffcowl2

And I think it’s really cute! (despite my horribly lazy photos)

bffcowl

It’s the BFF Cowl from Knitty. I think the swap is totally fun, but my word the knitting is monotonous. (And I do realize that I just knit an XL cardigan in stockinette stitch out of sock yarn.) I think I have trouble knitting anything that’s rectangular. Even if it does make a really fun stitch pattern. This is why I will likely never design scarves–and cowls only if they can be knit in the round–because let me tell you, this is the slowest 13 inches I think I have ever knit–and I have 13 more!

I am telling myself, that if I can power through, I can pick out a new shawl and I can finish my sweater and I can start some new socks, and everything will be right with the world.

And in a few weeks, I will get my very own cushy, cocoons stitch cowl from the swap–and that will be very happy indeed. Will I knit the other half? I think I am not going to answer that question right now.

Working On: Funchal Moebius

I’ve been working on this since last year– November 20, 2011– but things have ground to a stop.

This pattern, Kate Davies’ Funchal Moebius, is graphic, striking, and a simple knit. Since it was released last year during Wovember, I decided that I’d use my own fingering-weight handspun to make it– the gold is some Corriedale that came with my spinning wheel, and the white is Tunis from Infinity Farm in Cedar Grove, NC (I wrote about going fishing there, a few years ago).

However, therein lies the problem: I’ve done 4 pattern repeats out of 14, and I’ve run out of the Corriedale yarn. I sure can’t buy anything like it.

I’ve got plenty of roving, luckily, but it’ll be a challenge to replicate yarn I spun 2 years ago. We’ll see how it goes.


Designed: Egbertine Cowl & Hat

I’ve talked a bit about how very proud I am of the work that I did with Pamela Wynne on the Juniper Moon Farm Herriot collection, but also I wanted to take the time to talk here about the genesis of my designs. It’s fun to tell a story.

After swapping our inspiration photos and outlining how we wanted to organize the collection, we decided to go ahead and make our sketches. It’s incredibly nerve-wracking, let me tell you, to casually send over a sketch (or seven) to someone whose work I admire as much as I do Pam’s. Especially since my fashion illustration (ahem) leaves a little to be desired (Truly. Susan was giving a trunk show out West, and the shop owner said something like, “Wow, if we’d seen from her sketches that these garments would look this good, we’d have been even more excited about the Herriot collection!” So, well, maybe I’m not anything as blunt as a bad drawer, but I’m certainly an inexact visual communicator.).


So, there’s that.

(I learned wisp-hands, by the way, from the illustrations for the terribly-embarrassing-moments section of Seventeen– illustrated girls without fingers were always, you know, walking into the boys’ locker room or dropping tampons in public or something.)

So, that turned into the Egbertine Hat. You can see that I scrapped the tassels, as well as the two-color garter st border. Why complicate matters?

I didn’t know whether to be proud about the fact that I wasn’t the only one with ombré beanies on the brain this summer. I can’t really be sad about being outshone by BT Fall. I mean, goodness gracious.

juniper moon farm herriot

photo © Caro Sheridan

The Egbertine Cowl is one of my favorite pieces in the collection. It’s simple, attractive, as easy to knit as it gets, pleasantly weighty, and the softest thing in the world. But the best part is that it’s a honest-to-goodness pantoum.

BAM.

The pattern runs from black to white and back around, continually recontextualizing each of the ten colors in relation to the others. The interactions of color are subtler (but therefore, to me, more exciting) because we’re working with a specifically limited color palette– only natural shades. These ten colors and their gorgeous interplay will show up again, in Margaret.

juniper moon farm herriot

photo © Caro Sheridan

Until then, enjoy, y’all, and deeply ponder how wonderful it is that a longish cowl is also a visual representation of a poetic form.