Shop Hop shawl

The 8th annual Shop Hop is underway! Big thanks to everyone who helped kick it off yesterday. For those of you who haven't started Hopping yet, don't worry--you still have a whole week to participate.

This year's Shop Hop pattern is a shawl pattern written in seven parts. Jenna from The Whole Nine Yarns designed this beauty especially for Shop Hop.

Our sample was knit using three solid colors of Manos del Uruguay's Serena and one multi colorway of Misti Alpaca's Hand Paint Sock (with LOTS of yarn left over).

Here's a more detailed view. Each participating shop has one part of the pattern, which will be emailed to you as a PDF when you get your passport stamped. If you don't make it to all the shops, don't worry--you'll be able to use a code to purchase the missing pieces of the pattern via Ravelry at a reduced price. (Folks who haven't participated in Shop Hop will be able to purchase the whole pattern later at full price.)

Special shout-out and huge thanks to Sarah Miller for knitting our sample. We're excited for you all to see it when you stop by. And we can't wait to see what color combinations everyone will create for their own shawls!

Dream Club: November 2013

Wow, Dream in Color has been really outdoing themselves with this season of their Dream Club. Just feast your eyes on their November installment:

Oh my....

That's Alpaca Silk Wool Lace (50% domestic wool, 25% silk, 25% alpaca). Each big, beautiful skein has a generous 640 yards and retails for $30.

Ornata shawl designed by Susanna IC

The pattern of the month (included with purchase of the yarn) is the lovely Ornata shawl. This project knits up with just one skein of the Alpaca Silk Wool Lace.

The colors on this yarn are just spectacular. They're kind of like a rainbow, but deeper and richer. Pinks, oranges, greens, blues, browns...this colorway will go with so many items in anyone's wardrobe!

As always with Dream Club yarns, this is an extremely limited edition colorway, and we only receive ten skeins. So if you like it, come and grab it while you can!

On The Needles: Wriggle Wrap in Kauni

We're mixing it up a little bit with this edition of On The Needles. Instead of showing you a staff project, we want to highlight one of our customers' works in progress!

Wriggle Wrap, designed by Sally Brandl

This is Kris's fantastic Wriggle Wrap that she's been bringing to Knitting Night on Tuesdays. It uses two colorways of Kauni Effektgarn to spectacular, well...effect. The texture is a simple feather and fan pattern that adds wonderful movement to the color changes of the two alternating Kauni skeins.

For those of you who thought Kauni was only for colorwork projects, think again! This would also look gorgeous in Zauberball, which we plan to get back in stock later this fall.

The Wriggle Wrap pattern is available here at the shop via our Ravelry sales program. Buy it from us and your purchase will count toward your Sheepish Rewards!

Creating a self fringe

Love the look of a fringed scarf but hate the tedious business of cutting a million little lengths of fringe to attach? Consider a self fringe!

It's easy to create a self fringe. This is a fringe that hangs from the side of your piece rather than the ends. Consider this shawlette (Amalthea, knit in Pima Silk Hand Paint):

At the end of this project, there are 18 stitches left. To finish it, we knit the first five stitches and then bind off the rest of the row.

Now here's the fun part. We take those five remaining stitches and...drum roll...unravel them!

Ta-da! A little blocking would relax the fringe and straighten it out a bit, but we kind of like it with this "ramen noodley" look.

Pretty cool, huh?

On The Needles: Amalthea in Pima Silk Hand Paint

This Pima Silk we got in recently was just begging to be knit into a shop sample. To refresh your memory, these are the colors we got, just to try out this lovely cotton/silk blend from Misti Alpaca:

Three of the four are dyed with subtle tone-on-tone shading, but the one on the left is a Pima Silk Hand Paint in a colorway called April Showers. How would the colors knit up? Would it stripe? We had to find out! So, Stacy's started knitting this little fringed shawlette called Amalthea, designed by Tori Gurbisz.

Wow, aren't those colors gorgeous? Mostly shades of blue, but with little shots of green, red, purple, and gold throughout.

Stacy says, "This yarn is a dream to knit with! It feels so soft and smooth in my hands, and the drape is perfect for a summery wrap like this."

Amalthea is available for download from us via the Ravelry in-store pattern program. You can get her as an individual pattern for $6.00, or as part of a larger eBook (six shawl patterns) called Myths and Fairytales for $16.50.