Look at the Flicka'!

We have some fresh bling in the shop for you.

The much anticipated Flicker shipment has arrived from Berroco!  We loved the earth tones last fall, and the soft palette of colors is beautiful as well.  In addition to the natural colors, we currently have yellow, purple, and blue (aka Petipa, Pytor, and Lac, obviously).  The rest of our shipment is on the way this week.

If you have never knit with a chained yarn like this, give it a try.  The final fabric is soft, lofty, and squishy.  Sally has a simple slouchy little hat knit with one skein, and it is light as a feather.  Just ask us for the pattern when you come in for your yarn.

We also have some sparkly handmade resin buttons from M.G. Loden.  The big guys are perfect for a hat, cowl, or a one or two-button cardigan.

These little guys are a little more subtle, but still nice and sparkly.

We have restocked the Elsebeth Lavold Silky Flamme, too.  It's not sparkly, but it sure is shiny and vibrant.  The colors are so deep and pretty, and the texture of the yarn is so interesting.

Nancy used this yarn for her Chloe Cowl, which would make a lovely and relatively quick little knit.  (There was a problem with the pattern, but it's been corrected as of today.  Sorry about that.)  A friend of mine is using the gorgeous orange for the cabled capelet on the cover of knit.wear.

It's going to be stunning.  She promises to share photos when she's done.  I can't wait to see it.

We also have a nice plump supply of circular, straight, and double pointed Dreamz needles from Knitter's Pride.  The colors of the wood are really beautiful, and the cable on the circulars seems pretty flexible.  We have the circular Nova needles, too, the metal offering from Knitter's Pride.

Not sparkly at all, but still very nice, are the Pretty Cheep Bags from Blue Sky Alpacas.  These bags are the prefect size for keeping your projects clean and contained.  At just ten bucks, you might need one for each project.  These make great gifts, too, even for non-knitters.

We just received a shipment from Cascade, too, including 128 Superwash, Magnum, and 220 Superwash Sport.  The unusual and slightly addictive Kauni Effectyarn is back, too.  More on this stuff soon...and perhaps a free pattern this weekend.  See you soon!

Silky Wool has Arrived

Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool has arrived at the shop. This yarn was one of my first loves when I started knitting, and I am very pleased that we are carrying it again.
Silky Wool is a blend of silk and wool (obviously), with a little nylon for strength, but you'll never notice it. It has the slight crunch of silk, which is perfectly balanced with the all of the best qualities of the wool. It is a little bit tweedy, the colors are beautiful, and it knits up nicely in cables, lace, and anything in between.

Several years ago, I used Silky Wool to make Ene's Scarf from Scarf Style. This was actually my initial foray into lace, and it was nice to work with a DK yarn rather than jumping in with laceweight yarn on my first try. The stitch definition of the Silky Wool is very nice, and the lace blocked out perfectly. Plus, how can you not love that color?
This yarn is ideal for very wearable cardigans and pullovers, too. It would be perfect for almost any of the Pipibird designs that I wrote about in April. The very popular Goodale by Cecily Glowik MacDonald would be fabulous in this yarn, and most sizes would take only four skeins. If you are planning a sweater with Silky Wool, I do recommend blocking your swatch, as the silk content of this yarn will cause it to stretch and grow a bit.
If you haven't tried Silky Wool, stop by the shop to check out the samples. I think you'll fall in love, too.

Chloe Cowl

Nancy has another free pattern for us, as well as the helpful photo tutorial below. We just received a fresh shipment of Silky Flamme at the shop, so you have your choice of gorgeous colors for this sweet little project.

This fancy little cowl has an all over shadow cable pattern and ends with several rows of seed stitch. In this design, I have incorporated buttons which have no function aside from being cute, so no buttonholes are needed.

This is a pretty simple and straight forward knit, with some sewing at the end. Its length is easily adaptable; the longer you make it, the looser it will drape around your neck.

The yarn used is Silky Flamme by Elsebeth Lavold, a luscious bulky weight alpaca and silk blend with an organic feel and look to it.

You will need one ball of Silky Flamme, needle size US #10.5 and US #9 and a cable needle. If you wish, you can add some cute little buttons for fun!

The shadow cable pattern consists of 8 rows. Cables slanting to the left and slanting to the right create a soft curvy look. Your first 8 rows will look like this:

You will repeat those 8 rows 9 times all together or until your piece measures about 15" from cast on edge:

Now switch to the smaller needles. You can see in the picture below how much yarn you will have left to do the last part. Plenty!

Time to finish your piece with several rows of seed stitch. In the last two rows, decreases are used to make the edges curve. If everything went okay, your piece is about 16" long.

When you are finished binding off, make sure you leave a tail of approximately 45-50". With this tail you are going to sew the ends of your cowl together.

Sewing the ends together

The ends of your piece should overlap by 1"making sure the seed stitch part is on top:

Start sewing all round the edge of the seed stitch part using your darning needle. In the picture below I used a contrasting color yarn to show you along which line to sew, but of course you are going to use your long tail in the same color of your piece:

Because you are sewing in the seed stitch area, your sewing stitches will be quite invisible. So don't worry about being overly neat!

Now that you are done with sewing, you can opt to leave your piece as is or embellish with buttons! For this cowl I choose to work with 4 little filigree buttons:

You can also use just one big button on top your piece. Use your imagination and make sure to have some fun!

Silky Flamme comes in many beautiful saturated jewely colors, and I couldn't resist trying a bunch of them:

To download the pattern, click on the link below:

Chloe Cowl

Have fun knitting this pattern!

Note: A mistake (egad!) was found in the pattern, but this version has been corrected.  In row 3, there should NOT be a K3 as the first instruction inside of the *s.  Sorry for any confusion, and thank you to our knitters who found this!