We’ve been flush with Kauni inspiration of late. Anne’s Wingspan shawlette and Nancy’s Wiggle Wrap have gotten a lot of knitters thinking about Kauni, and the many uses for a self-striping yarn with a slow gradation of color. Now that you’re thinking about Kauni, here are a few colors we haven’t seen in a while, just in this week.
Interested in working with this colorful stuff? Check out the Kauni pattern binder for more ideas on how to make use of it.
Two new yarns arrived at the shop this week from Dream In Color, a Chicago-based producer of hand-dyed yarns. We’ve had their Classy yarn, a washable worsted weight wool that I’ve written about here on the blog before, as well as their fingering- and lace-weight wools, which are named Smooshy and Baby, respectively. This week, we got a Smooshy upgrade: eight colors of Smooshy With Cashmere, which boasts 400 yards and 20% cashmere content. This yarn is a real treat for the hands, a smooshier Smooshy.
A box from Malabrigo is always met with excitement on our part. The bigger the box, the more excitement, and this week’s box was a big, big box. We got a few new colors in Malabrigo Lace and a few in Arroyo, but the big excitement with the big box was all about Malabrigo Sock.
Malabrigo Sock is always a hot commodity at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop. The colors, the softness, and the long waiting period between shipments all conspire to make it disappear quickly from our shelves. It’s always a relief to have Malabrigo Sock yarn in stock, and so appealing to see all the colors together. It has me daydreaming about colorwork socks, but what else is new.
Have you used Malabrigo Sock before? I’m always curious what people are making with it–socks, scarves, shawls, sweaters, hats, baby things–because it has so many applications. Let us know what you’ve used it for and how you like it, and if you haven’t yet had the pleasure, give Malabrigo Sock a try and see what all the fuss is about!
About a month ago, I posted pictures of two of the works in progress that hang around the shop. Anne and I always have at least two samples for the shop on the needles–one on her needles and one on mine. Because the urge to talk about what we make and what we see others making is strong, we find ourselves talking about these projects at many points throughout the day. When the process is enjoyable, we’ll tell anyone who will listen about how soft the yarn is, how incredible the color. Since I last brought this conversation to the blog, two new works in progress have sprung up.
The String Theory Caper Sock yarn all but disappeared from our shelves in a matter of weeks. Not yet ready to cast on, or even settle on a project befitting this luxurious cashmere and wool blend, I held off on the skein of Caper Sock that had caught my eye. When the last skein in that colorway was sold, I pouted for a minute, then remembered that we were expecting a shipment from String Theory this week. Not only were we awaiting one backordered color each in Selku and Merino DK, but Anne had also ordered another 24 skeins of Caper Sock.
By the time we’d refilled the half-empty cubby that Caper Sock calls home, I had to hold off yet again, for there were at least four colors vying for my attention.
When my Arroyo socks are done, I might be ready to choose a color. Until then, it’s all yours, String Theory lovers. Enjoy this new selection of colors in Caper Sock!
I know I said we were elated at the arrival of Jitterbug last week–and really, we were! But that was before yesterday’s shipment from String Theory, a new yarn company for us. Yesterday, excitement erupted at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop as Anne pulled skein after skein of beautiful hand-dyed yarn out of the box, passing them around to an appreciative group of knitters who petted, hugged, and admired the new yarn with great delight. Several of them decided they couldn’t leave without a skein, and so they were here and gone before they even made it onto the shelf. Luckily, there is still plenty to show off. Have a look at what all of the fuss is about.
String Theory is a small company out of Blue Hill, Maine, a two-woman operation that has been getting a lot of attention recently. String Theory was recently profiled in Coastal Knits, a lovely pattern collection that we’re forever reordering. Clara Parkes mentioned them in a recent post on Knitter’s Review, which led me back to her Knitter’s Book of Socks, where I found patterns using both of the String Theory sock yarns we just got in.
String Theory’s Caper Sock is a luxurious fingering weight yarn, a blend of superwash merino, cashmere, and nylon. Cookie A’s pattern from Knitter’s Book of Socks, below, uses the Caper Sock yarn with lovely results.
Bluestocking, on the other hand, is perhaps the more interesting of the two String Theory sock yarns because of its fiber content: 80% Bluefaced Leicester wool and 20% nylon. Bluefaced Leicester is a particular breed of sheep known for its long, strong fibers, which ought to make a particularly durable pair of socks. (Care to learn more about breed-specific wools? Put Clara Parkes’ Knitter’s Book of Wool on your holiday wish list, or give it to yourself as a gift. Fascinating stuff!) It’s rare and exciting to see a yarn label that specifies the breed of sheep whose wool is inside it, with the exception of the ubiquitous Merino. I can’t wait to give Bluestocking a try, perhaps using Ann Budd’s pattern from Knitter’s Book of Socks.
The third and final kind of yarn we received from String Theory this week is their Merino DK, a name which speaks for itself. I can add little else to describe it, though I’ll mention that it’s superwash, squishy and soft, and that each 100 gram skein is packed with 280 yards. At a dk weight, that can easily take you through a hat, cowl, pair of mittens, or maybe even a scarf.
Come by the shop and we’ll be sure to show you in person all that I’ve shown you here. Forgive us if we can hardly contain our delight: we love yarn, we love knitting, and we are utterly irrepressible. See you at the shop!
You would not believe the gasps of delight that accompanied this week’s much anticipated shipment of Colinette Jitterbug. (I know I say things like that a lot–it seems that weekly, we receive boxes of gasp-inducing yarns–but I’m just reporting the facts, here. We’re an excitable bunch.) Unlike most yarns, the Jitterbug comes to us in bunches of untwisted hanks, which makes for a dramatic entrance.
After oohing and aahing over each color as it emerged from the box, Anne and I got right to work twisting up each hank.
Jitterbug, as I’ve written before, is a tightly-plied, squishy, merino yarn in fingering weight which comes to us all the way from Wales. We’ve carried primarily variegated colorways thus far, but the semisolid colorways have been so tempting that we finally, happily gave in.
I went home with a skein of Jitterbug in a golden yellow to make myself a pair of bright, wild socks. There are several other projects awaiting my attention, but it’s quite possible that I’ll put them all aside to cast on with this yarn, for which I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews.
One such rave-reviewer is Anne, who made a little something out of Jitterbug for herself earlier this year.
No big deal, just one of the most amazing sweaters we have in the shop, an exquisite design from Marianne Isager’s Japanese Inspired Knits. Come by to examine Anne’s sweater in close, glorious detail, and to snag a skein of Jitterbug for yourself.
See you at the shop!
We first welcomed Claudia Hand Painted Yarns to the Hillsborough Yarn Shop only a few months ago, but already it’s been such a hit that we decided to order more. We made up a few more kits for the Double Silk T-Shirt and Cardigan, replacing the color combinations that flew out of the shop when we first got them in stock. We also made up kits for the Warm Me Up pullover sweater, also knit with the Claudia Hand Painted Silk Lace.
For those of you who’d like to find other uses for the Silk Lace, we’re also offering that yarn separately outside of the kit. Each shining skein is 1100 yards long, so one could easily get you through a sizeable lace shawl.
The most exciting part of the most recent Claudia shipment for me, however, was this:
A handful of new colors in the Fingering yarn. Anne generously let me pick out the colors from Claudia’s tremendous selection, and as you might have predicted, I went with the semisolid colorways instead of the variegated. These colors are vivid, rich, and complement one another nicely, if I do say so myself. Any of them would make a stellar pair of Interrupted socks, no?
Come by to see these new beauties and the rest of the Claudia Hand Painted Yarns.
Recently, it became clear that we were getting low on Crock-O-Dye. Crock-O-Dye is a fingering weight yarn from Knit One Crochet Too, a variegated blend of wool, silk, and nylon. It’s meant for socks, but does just as well in a shawl, scarf, sweater, hat, or fingerless mitts… or wherever else you’d like to use fingering weight yarn. Slowly over the past half year or so, our stock went down. We ran out of the hot pink colorway, then we ran out of the sage green, then the sky blue… and then last week, suddenly we realized we had only two colors left. Time to reorder.
Anne and I recently decided that we needed more colors of Isager Tvinni (pronounced, incidentally, “tweenie.” In case you were curious), a fingering-weight merino from Denmark. We pored over the colorcard, comparing the awe-inspiring array of available colors to our small Tvinni collection, carefully selecting those colors that would play well together and reflect a wider spectrum. Today we received a box which brought these new colors, along with six more copies of Tutto a Mano. I was forced to reorganize the Isager island, petting each yarn and sorting them by color. It’s a hard job, you know, but someone has to do it.
Take a look at our updated Tvinni collection, and see if you’re not inspired to knit it right up.