Tag Archives: malabrigo

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!

Mason-Dixon Knitting Field Guide No. 11: Wanderlust.

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The eleventh installment of the Mason-Dixon Knitting Field Guide series is here! Let’s take a peek inside.

Ann Shayne and Kaye Gardiner’s series of Field Guides are pocket-sized booklets focused on a particular theme or knitting technique. The theme of this eleventh Field Guide is Wanderlust, interpreted by designer Wendy Bernard as a choose-your-own-adventure approach to sock knitting.

This little book is all about hitting the road with the ultimate travel project: a pair of socks. Bernard includes instructions for socks from the cuff down or from the toe up, along with a variety of stitch patterns to play with.

We have a lot of tempting sock yarns here at the shop, the likes of CoopKnits Socks Yeah!, Malabrigo Sock, Fyberspates Vivacious 4ply, Ewe Ewe Fluffy Fingering, and of course those tempting limited edition colorways from Dream in Color and Koigu.

Maybe your stash is already bursting with sock yarns you’ve picked up as souvenirs over the years – this book is just the thing to get those yarns on your needles.

Come by the shop to pick up a copy and a skein of sock yarn for your next road trip!

Hello, Malabrigo Quinteto.

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This week brought another enormous Malabrigo order to our shop, two heavy boxes bursting with vivid hand-dyed color. It was packed primarily with bags of Rios, Sock, and Washted, but we snuck in a little something new, too. Meet Quinteto!

Quinteto is a pack of five speckled colors in Mechita, Malabrigo’s fingering weight, single ply, superwash merino.

Each colorway is named for an instrument: Piano, Double Bass, Cello, Viola, and Violin, and the colors fade harmoniously from skein to skein, from light blue to fuschia, then purple, then burgundy flecked with black.

What to do with 2100 yards of soft, speckled fingering weight yarn? Joji Locatelli’s “Fading Point” is a good fit, as is Stephen West’s “Dotted Rays,” and Andrea Mowry’s “So Faded” or “So Faded Pint Sized.”

Look for Malabrigo Quinteto in our fingering weight section here at the shop!

Show and tell: for the home.

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Time for another round of show and tell! I love to take photos of finished projects when folks bring them into the shop to share with us, and to share them here on our blog. I always seem to have a backlog of photos, thanks to the many productive knitters, crocheters, and weavers who frequent our shop. Here’s a batch of show and tell featuring projects made for the home – mostly blankets!

Glen knit this “Ombre Waves Knit Blanket” as a gift for his daughter and son-in-law, using Malabrigo Rios, everyone’s favorite hand-dyed, superwash, worsted weight merino.

Petra wove the overshot table runner below using a cotton yarn in the warp and Brigg’s & Little Sport in the weft. The pattern is intricate and visually mesmerizing, even more so in the bold colors Petra chose – well done, Petra!

Peggy knit Jared Flood’s “Talon Throw” as a gift for her niece, a generous gift indeed.

Peggy used Berroco Ultra Alpaca, a soft and sturdy blend of wool and alpaca, and a staple of our worsted weight section here at the shop.

Berroco Ultra Wool is a staple of our worsted weight section, too, and another great yarn for blanket-making. Elsbeth used Ultra Wool for this striking Purl Soho “Mosaic Blanket.”

Amy knit this colorful blanket for her newest grandchild using Ewe Ewe Wooly Worsted, a squishy superwash merino. The pattern is Svetlana Gordon’s “Hexagon Kaleidoscope Patchwork Knitting,” adapted to include butterfly patches among the flowers.

Thanks to Glen, Petra, Peggy, Elsbeth, and Amy for sharing their work, and to everyone who starts their projects with a trip to the Hillsborough Yarn Shop! We can’t wait to see what you make next.

Hello, Malabrigo Washted.

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A brand new yarn from Malabrigo has arrived! Meet Washted.

Washted is a worsted weight, superwash merino, with 210 yards on each 100 gram skein, and it’s hand-dyed in rich variegated colors. It’s a lot like Malabrigo’s popular Rios yarn, except that Washted is single ply where Rios is plied.

The downside of single ply yarn is often discussed here at the shop, namely, that single ply yarns are the first to pill. The upside, however, is that the super soft merino wool is even softer in a single ply.

This makes Washted ideal for accessories that don’t see a lot of abrasion, like cowls, hats, and shawls. Looking through projects on Ravelry, I saw knitters using Washted for Nina Machlin Dayton’s “Civetta Cowl,” Lucia Ruiz de Aguirre’s “Patricia hat,” and Andrea Mowry’s “Nightshift” shawl, but there are so many inspiring worsted weight patterns out there – check out our “Worsted weight” Pinterest board for starters.

Look for Malabrigo Washted in the worsted weight section here at our shop, just above the Rios cubby!

Back in stock, show and tell: Malabrigo.

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Over 60 pounds of Malabrigo yarn arrived this week!

This sizable order filled and brightened our cubbies of Rasta, Rios, Mecha, Caracol, and Mechita.

Malabrigo is a beloved Uruguayan yarn company known for vibrant hand-dyed color and soft, squishy merino wool.

These pleasing qualities make their yarns some of the most popular in our shop, so we’re always seeing incredible projects made out of Malabrigo yarn. Here are a few of the latest.

Amy knit this “Rondelay” shawl with Mechita, a single-ply superwash merino wool in fingering weight.

She used one of the coveted speckled colorways, which we can hardly keep in stock – happy to have a nice selection of speckled shades in this recent order!

Margie used one of those speckled skeins of Mechita to make the “Mesh Leaf Cowl” she’s modeling here.

Malabrigo yarns also play well with others, as Linda’s “Mindfulness” shawl demonstrates. She crocheted this beauty using a semi-solid shade in Malabrigo Sock and a highly-variegated skein from Dream in Color’s Pop-Up Skein Club.

Thanks to Amy, Margie, Linda, and countless others who start their projects here at the Hillsborough Yarn Shop – we love to see what you’re working on!

Come by the shop to see our full selection of Malabrigo yarn and get your fill of these soft and colorful skeins!

Knitscene and Vogue Knitting.

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Two new magazines arrived last week, as if to say, “It’s time to knit ourselves some yellow sweaters!”

This issue of Knitscene features a tutorial on correcting lace mistakes and a bundle of brightly colored garments, like this chevron striped top in Malabrigo Mechita.

Vogue Knitting is focused, meanwhile, on cable knitting, and Meg Swansen’s column is all about caring for woolens.

Look for these and other new books and magazines on the teacart here at our shop. See you there!

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!

New colors in Malabrigo Rasta.

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Malabrigo recently released a bunch of new colors in their super bulky Rasta yarn, and with our recent winter weather, we’re especially excited to have them in stock!

Rasta is a soft, squishy, single-ply merino wool that knits up quickly on US 13 – 17 needles. Each 150 gram skein has 90 yards, which may not sound like a lot, but those 90 yards go a long way at 2 or 2.5 stitches per inch.

These delicate pastel shades are semi-solid, ideal for showing off texture patterns. Look for some project ideas in Malabrigo’s TriBeCa collection, designed especially for this new batch of colors.

Come by the shop to pick up a skein or two of Malabrigo Rasta for your last-minute holiday gift-knitting! See you there.

Back in stock: Malabrigo Sock.

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This week brought a box full of Malabrigo Sock.

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 shipment.

This soft, machine-washable merino wool is a light fingering weight, dyed in the vivid multicolor and semisolid colorways we’ve come to expect from Malabrigo. Sock is perfect not only for socks, but also shawls, scarves, lightweight sweaters, and baby things.

We’re always especially excited to see new colors in this now-classic yarn, and we have a few – come by the shop to see what’s new, and plan your next project!