Close Knitters

September means back to school for many, back to the routine for others, and for Close Knit it means two things.  Sale time for the old yarn, and lots of new yarn!

Here’s the sale teaser-

Sale Yarn

Lots of goodies on sale- much of it summery- Origami and Seduce, both from Berroco; and Classic Elite’s Provence.  In the wooly department come check out the Big Wool, Kid Merino, and Wooly Merino.

And in the new department

Debbie Bliss

Yes, that’s the new Debbie Bliss magazine.  And it’s surrounded by some of her yarns- there’s a soft as butter aran weight Alpaca Silk, Glen, and Baby Cashmerino.  The baby cashmerino is a Debbie Bliss staple, a little lighter weight than sport, and lots of lovely colors. It will give you lots of ideas for baby items.  Come see (and feel) the sample infinity scarf knit out of the alpaca silk, light and very soft.

The sale starts Tuesday September 7, at 10 am.

And check out the new class schedule, some old favorites are back and some new things.

There are some knit items that are old favorites around here.

One is the waterfall beaded scarf-

Beaded Waterfall Scarf

Everybody loves it, and it’s a fun knit.  It’s started at the ends, with all the beads.  The beads are slipped between stitches.  As the beads taper off the ribbing takes over, until it’s just knit two, purl two, to the end of the skein.  Do it again for the other end, knit them together, and it’s a really impressive scarf.  Inge will be doing two classes to get it started, October 12 at noon, and November 16 in the evening.

The ruffles are fast and fun.  Roseanne has been going to town with them

Roseanne's ruffles

The yarn does all the work- it’s not exactly knit.  The “yarn” is a knit tape, which gets poked at the edge and pulled through.  It works up quickly and has lots of fun colors.

Kim did this one with one colorway worked two ways.  She used the purple edge of it for one skein, and the beige for the other.

Kim's Stella Scarf

And it looks great on everyone-

Red Ruffled Scarf

The full fall class schedule will be on the website soon, to register for a class please call the store.

It’s almost fall- we know that soon the humidity will be gone, and we’ll all be thinking about fall sweaters and scarves.

Fall yarns are starting to arrive

Peruvian Tweed

We’ve had Peruvian Tweed before, it’s an incredibly soft alpaca in wonderful colors.   And it’s all natural colors, no dyes used in processing.

Peruvian Tweed Colors

Stop by the store to see the Wrapigan Kim knit out of it a couple of years ago- a long shawl with sleeves.

Kim’s starting a fall sweater out of Rowans’ Felted Tweed

Felted Tweed Sweater

Lots of cables, and an interesting collar/scarf to come!

Iris is constantly knitting, often for her grandkids.  And they are lucky young ones- look at the wonderful patterns she found on the Cascade website!

Teddy Sweater

The teddy sweater is three dimensional- the bear’s snout is knit separately, and then sewn on, with a puff of fiberfill to round it out.  She changed the ears- the original pattern calls for pom poms for the ears.  The knitters who were in the store when she came in so we could monitor progress all felt that pom poms, while very cute, would not wear well.  We encouraged her to try crocheted circles instead (the foot pads for the orange elephant are crocheted circles, so a sample was at hand.) She did make crocheted circles for the ears.  They are still three dimensional, but should stand up to washing better than pom poms.

Pirate Sweater

The pirate was a special request from a grandson.  The skull and crossbones are the perfect accessory for any pre school pirate.

Iris knits for the grandkids  in Berroco’s Comfort.  It’s an acrylic and nylon blend, machine washable, very soft, and comes in lots of colors.  It’s available in sport weight, worsted weight, and bulky- great for all sorts of baby and kid afghans and clothes.   Also clothing for grown ups who will toss everything in the washer and dryer.

Regular customers to the shop watched Jen’s belly grow last spring, and have been wondering what the baby looks like.  He visited today, and is very cute.

Jonathan Seymour

He had a full tour of the shop, and appeared to be impressed by all the colors.  He really likes the Noro.  Jen said that he’s doing great at five weeks, and sleeps pretty well.  And if you’re wondering if Jen is getting any knitting done-

There’s another temporary visitor at the shop

Flo the Elephant

Flo is a Knitty pattern, and will be heading off as a baby gift soon.  Phyllis knit her out of Cascade 220, in the colors shown in the Knitty sample.  She’s a pretty easy knit, but there are some tricks to assembling her.

Should we have a class to make and assemble Flo?

There are lots of options and ideas in the store for wintry scarves.  Here are some of our favorites

Winter Scarves

Here are: Reversible Cable Scarf, Cable and Seed Stitch Scarf, Zig Zag Scarf, Single Reverse Cable Scarf, Reversible Chunky Scarf, Willow Lace, and Noro Wave.  All nice winter scarves which will look great in a lot of yarns.

Then there are the fast and fun scarves

Marshmallow and Ruffles

Marshmallow is the white one.  It consists of a row of puffs, separated by a thin strand of yarn.  You knit just the thin strand, and the puffs line up.  Very soft and cozy.

Ruffles is made out a self ruffling yarn.  The yarn itself is a knit tape.  To work it you poke through the edge of the tape rather than wrap it around the needle.  It makes ruffles!  The ruffly yarns come in solids with silver sparkles, and in stripes.  The one pictured above is two balls of a stripe, with a different edge, and color being worked for each ball.  These fun scarves work up quickly, which may be useful in December!

There’s  a lot of scarf knitting going on these days.  And several customers have mentioned that they plan on knitting several scarves as holiday gifts.

Here’s Kim’s latest

Noro Wave Scarf

Two skeins of Noro Kureyon.  Look at how beautifully the colors line up, nice even stripes.  An excellent choice for a gift, there are so many colors in a skein of Noro that the scarf will certainly match a winter coat!

Phyllis has a new one, too.

Willow Lace Scarf

This is willow lace, knit out of Blackstone Tweed.

And Jin came up with this

Ruffled Chunky Scarf

It uses two skeins of Sunday, a wooly blend in lots of nice colors.  Nice chunky yarn which works up quickly.

All of these are very versatile patterns- wider they would make lovely shawls or stoles.  Wider still (or maybe longer for the Wave pattern) they would even be nice afghans.  And the lacy ones are pretty straightforward knitting, with short repeats in their patterns.

All three patterns are available in the store, free with purchase of the yarn.

Socks are great little knits, they get worked on in bits and pieces, and suddenly there are socks.  And part of the joy of knitting socks is the wonderful self striping sock yarns.  You never quite know what you’re getting, so watching the color pattern evolve is fun.

Sometimes the striping pattern works into the heel shaping quite nicely, but sometimes a traditional heel flap will affect the pattern.  That was the case with this blue yarn.

Blue sock

I knit it from the top down.  As I was knitting the leg portion I realized that the stripes are so even, I didn’t want them to change as I knit the heel.  So I worked the heel using Elizabeth Zimmernan’s Thumb Trick- she used it for mittens, too.  See the white line between the blue stripes?   That’s where the heel will go.

Heelless sock

No heel yet!  How did I get into this situation?

When I reached the point on the leg where I would have started the heel, I used white yarn to knit across half of the sock.  Then I slipped the white stitches back onto the left hand needle, and knit them with the blue yarn.  And kept on knitting until I’d finished the toe.  Then I went back to the white yarn, and removed it.  This created the heelless sock above- there are live stitches around the edge of the heel space.  I put them onto needles:

Heel on Needles

The final step is to knit the heel- it’s shaped just like the toe!

Finished Socks

Nice even stripes!

More babies!

Lots of customers have been commenting on the baby boom in their lives- new grandkids, nieces, nephews, great grandkids and great nieces and nephews.  Some knit afghans to greet the new ones, some knitters prefer to knit sweaters.

Baby Sweaters

The two top sweaters are Sublime patterns,the bottom one is from Cabin Fever.  They’re all written for sport weight yarn, so work up well in a number of baby friendly (that means machine washable) yarns.

More Baby Sweaters

These are from a few different pattern sources- Sublime, Minnowknits, and Ella Rea.  More yarns to keep new parents happy- soft cottons and machine washable acrylics.  Vests are nice- you can dress up the baby but he or she will stay cooler.  The bottom vest is knit in Sweetness, our Yarn of the Month.

Not sure what size to knit? Make it a six month size, and the baby will wear it at some time in it’s first year.

Kristin came into the store a few weeks ago with a list of supplies- tape measure, scissors, yarn- the usual list of things for someone taking a knitting class or workshop.

She was headed to a two week knitting intensive at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine.  And since she had never knit before she needed some guidance.  So I told her to choose yarn that attracted her attention in terms of colors or textures.  Here’s what she chose

Kristin's Yarn

A pair of needles, a crochet hook for mistakes, and she was off to Maine for two weeks of free form knitting.

The Noro (at the top of the picture, slightly hidden) proved to be her favorite- we all love the soft texture and the colors- the shades as well as the color changes.

She did two things with her Noro

Noro and Objects

Kristin’s artwork involves lots of found objects- small plastic toys or pieces of toys.  Here they blend in a bit with the Noro colors.

Noro Mitten

She also used Noro for a mitten- knit on double points.  Pretty good for someone who had never held knitting needles. Other people in the group knit mittens and gloves too- one mitten with four thumbs, another large enough to cover the entire knitter.  It used two pounds of yarn.

There were other workshops at the same time- in baskets, metal working, book binding, and even a Buddhist making a sand painting.  Each group had to create a group project, which was auctioned at the end of the session.

Kristin won the knitter’s project

Haystack Scarf

There are knit ruffles at the ends, dyed roving, lots of texture, and an I cord edging.  Kristin of  did the Noro section on the left.

And what were the other knitters working on?

Knit Sculpture