Tag Archives: fingering weight

All You Knit is Love.

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Another new pattern booklet featuring Isager yarns has arrived–Susie Haumann’s All You Knit is Love has landed on the teacart at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop.

All You Knit is Love is filled with simple, classic designs for babies ages 0-18 months.

Some are made with Isager yarns held singly, and some have you hold two strands together to achieve a bigger gauge.

You can look forward to a Trunk Show featuring finished garments from Haumann’s collection in November. Until then, come by the shop to see the Amimono 3 and Hanne Falkenberg Trunk Shows as well as our growing collection of Isager pattern books. See you at the shop!

Cascade 220 Fingering.

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As I alluded to in a recent post, there are many patterns floating around out there that call for fingering weight yarn, and with good reason. Fingering weight yarn often comes in 100 gram skeins, which go a long way at about 400 yards per skein, depending upon the kind and company. One 100 gram skein can usually make a shawlette, a scarf, a pair of mitts or socks–a good deal for an entire project’s worth of yarn. Fingering weight yarn is also lightweight, making it quite appropriate for our less-than-arctic North Carolinian Falls and Winters. There’s also something aesthetically pleasing about the fabric a fine yarn creates, which tends to drape more readily than its thicker cousins. There is a lot to love about fingering weight yarn, and here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop, we have a lot of fingering weight yarn to love. Here’s one more.

Cascade 220 Fingering is a very reasonably priced 2-ply yarn composed of 100% Peruvian wool; it comes in 50 gram skeins of 275 yards each. Its reasonable price is one of its major virtues; substitute it for Loft and you could knit the Stasis sweater for less than $40. Substitute it for Alpaca 2 and you could knit the Stole for less than $50.

It’s not a superwash wool, so you’ll have to hand-wash whatever lovely thing you make from it. Hand-washing can be a joyous activity, though, as I’ve written here before, so that’s hardly a drawback.

Cascade 220 Fingering’s other major virtue is its wide range of solid colors, perfect for combining in stripes or colorwork. We have 19 colors in stock with the 20th on backorder, giving you plenty to choose from as you plan your next project using fingering weight yarn.

Come by the shop to see Cascade 220 Fingering and the (many!) other fingering weight yarns we have to offer. See you there!

New colors in Swans Island Organic Merino Fingering.

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Recently, when we reordered a few sold-out colors in Swans Island’s buttery soft, naturally dyed, organically processed fingering weight merino wool, we couldn’t help but notice a few colors we’d never stocked before. Why don’t we have this yellow?, we asked each other. We should really have a darker green, don’t you think? And what about that new, limited-edition color for Fall? The delicious-sounding one? Oh yes: Sugar Maple.

So, we ordered a few new colors along with the old favorites, bringing our total number of available colors to a sweet 16. We just couldn’t help ourselves.

Come by the shop to see this expanded selection of Swans Island Organic Merino Fingering, and think about all the incredible one-, two-, or three-color shawls out there calling for fingering weight yarn. Multnomah, Rockefeller, Color Affection, I’m looking at you. Or you could make an entire sweater out of it–I did, and I couldn’t be happier.

See you at the shop!

New colors in Malabrigo Sock.

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That Malabrigo Sock is a well-loved yarn here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop should come as no surprise, given the frenzy that usually occurs when we receive a box of the stuff. It’s gotten some attention here on the blog in the past, and we’ve seen several pairs of socks made out of it during recent show-and-tells. Malabrigo’s colorways are nearly as well-loved as the yarn, and I am not alone in memorizing their evocative names. Every so often, Malabrigo gives us new colorways to memorize, and today, I have nine to share, just released for the Fall.

Ivy is hands-down my favorite new color. What’s yours?

Big, big boxes from Isager.

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This summer, we’ve marked the passing weeks in Isager orders. The more frequently we call them to reorder missing colors in Alpaca 2 for the stole, or in Highland for the Fan, the more teasing we get from the other end of the line. Recently our Isager distributor asked Anne, “What do you do with all that yarn? Are you eating it?” Our desire for Isager is a hunger, indeed. Happily, last week brought another shipment.

Hot off the presses: Hat Ladies, by Danish designer Annette Danielsen, uses many Isager yarns to create hats and other small accessories. An excellent way to get your hands on Isager yarns without investing in a sweater’s worth of yarn, or to make use of the Isager odds and ends you may have already collected.

Danielsen, like Marianne Isager herself, often uses two strands of yarn held together to create different gauges, textures, and color combinations. Many patterns in Danielsen’s Hat Ladies call for the lace weight Alpaca 1 to be held together with another fingering weight Isager yarn–either Highland, or Tvinni, both of which we have in more colors than ever before.

Also hot off the presses: No. 11, No. 12, No. 13…, an answer to last year’s No. 1, No. 2, No. 3… Both of these books collect knit and crochet patterns by a group of like-minded Danish designers, all of whom use Isager yarns.

 Find these two new booklets on the teacart, surrounded by the latest books, and ask us where to find whichever Isager yarn you’re seeking. With all these new patterns and new colors in stock, it’s a good time to be plotting an Isager project.

Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Sock Yarn.

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Back in June, I was moving some armful of yarn from here to there when I discovered a lonesome skein of Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Sock Yarn. Once, we had many skeins of the stuff, all living together in a basket. While its friends went home in the hands of knitters and crocheters to become pairs of socks and mitts, scarves or shawls, this particular skein was left alone. It was a little dusty, having been forgotten in some nook or cranny for however long, but none the worse for wear. I held it up and called to Anne, “What should I do with this?” Sensitive as she is to lonesome skeins, Anne brushed it off, purchased it herself, and began knitting a pair of socks with it.

The more she knit, the more we wondered why we didn’t stock the yarn anymore. Composed of 50% alpaca, 30% merino, 10% silk, and 10% nylon for durability, the fabric it created was cuddly, yet sturdy, and the colors were rich and compelling. “Maybe we’ll visit Misti Alpaca at market,” Anne said, “and get some more of this.” A couple of months have passed, and Anne has completed sock #1, cast on for #2, and Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Sock Yarn is back on our shelves.

Come by the shop to admire sock#1 and consider Misti Alpaca for your next project.

More new colors from String Theory.

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String Theory Hand Dyed Yarns are a Hillsborough Yarn Shop favorite. After being closed for reorganization, we reopened the shop with new colors in three String Theory yarns: Caper Sock, Bluestocking, and Merino DK.

You can find them all in the second room of the shop. Caper Sock and Bluestocking share a basket in the Fingering Weight section, and Merino DK hangs on a yarn tree in the DK Weight corner. See you there!

An Isager shipment. Part 2.

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Alpaca 2 wasn’t the only yarn in the latest Isager shipment. We also stocked up on Alpaca 1, a lace weight yarn made of 100% alpaca which is spun in Peru. We now have 20 colors available, the most we’ve carried so far.

We also expanded our selection of Isager Highland, a fingering weight yarn made of 100% lambswool and spun in Scotland. Highland and Alpaca 1 are used together in Marianne Isager’s Fan sweater from Japanese Inspired Knits, making a soft and lightweight fabric. Anne is teaching an upcoming class on the Fan, and though that class is full, we do keep the book in stock if you’d like to try it yourself. Or perhaps you’ll try using Highland and Alpaca 1 held together in some other project–it’s such fun pairing these colors up, and imagining what they’ll look like as one.

Come by the shop to admire these and other Isager yarns, and consider them for your next project. As Anne and many other knitters can attest, you’ll quickly become an Isager addict.

An Isager shipment. Part 1.

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As I’ve written here before, Theresa Gaffey’s Stole from the book Wearwithall has been a popular project at the shop lately. Gaffey’s design is beautiful in its simplicity, allowing knitters to relax and let the exquisite yarn do the talking.

The yarn is Isager Alpaca 2, a fingering weight blend of merino wool and alpaca. Only two weeks into our inventory sale, we were completely sold out of Wearwithall and very nearly sold out of Alpaca 2. I’m happy to announce that both are now back in stock. To all who were interested in making the Stole your next project: come and get it!

You can find Wearwithall and Isager Alpaca 2 in the Fingering Weight section of the shop in the second room. See you there!

More show and tell.

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Here are two more finished projects whose lives began as yarn from the Hillsborough Yarn Shop.

Kathy brought in her completed Wingspan made with a single skein of Schoppel-Wolle Crazy Zauberball, a self-striping fingering-weight yarn. Like Anne’s Wingspan made in Kauni, the color changes in the Zauberball highlight the unusual construction of this shawlette.

Carrie Anne brought in a cowl she made that used just one skein of the luscious, soft-as-cashmere Malabrigo Finito. It’s always great to see what the yarn becomes when it grows up into a finished piece, and to see projects that make the most of a single skein. Thanks for the show and tell, ladies!