I’d like to take a moment to address a very real problem in our knitting community. One I’m pretty sure we’ve all been victim to at one time or another and as we near the holiday season we should take special care. Tell me you haven’t guessed!

Selfless Knitting Syndrome, or SKS (not to be confused with SSK). I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It is after all what defines us in so many cases. I’m not even suggesting you change your ways. Being a giver of handmade things– in moderation– is a great thing! But the cycle has to end!

I had not even realized the severity of this epidemic until I recently discovered that a coworker (and long time knitter) had never once knit a thing for herself! I was flabbergasted! I was forced in this moment to turn the mirror on myself. I know that I have difficulties making time to knit for myself. All of my so-called selfish projects are lying half done in various baskets. Because, frankly, I am the only one I’m willing to put on hold.

The question remains: Why do we do this to ourselves time and again?

Is it that it’s easier to plan gifts for others than for oneself? Is it that occasions are made more special by a handmade item, and there is no shortage of special occasions? Or, simply, that we feel that constant pang to use our gifts for the common good?

I’m often blown away by the feats of fellow knitters: like the customer working on fifty sweaters in a year to give away, those organizing baby gifts and get well gifts and yearly family blessings… I am floored by our collective generosity! But isn’t it time we knit something special for ourselves? Why do I see knitters with ratty hats, holes in their gloves, and store bought sweaters, while their loved ones are covered with hand made love?

Ladies and gentlemen, we must learn to love ourselves in a hand knit way! Just say no to the endless SKS!

I think this is an occasion to buy that special skein you’ve been eyeing. It could be a knitter’s holiday of sorts, an independence day for independent knitters everywhere. You know you’re worth it! (Pictured below is an assortment of Jade Sapphire and Artyarns cashmere yarns).

And while you’re at it take a look at 101 Luxury Yarn One Skein Wonders, a classic and clever source to get the most from that one special skein indulgence!

The SKS Challenge: Liz I challenge that you are the ultimate selfless knitter. Please set down the baby sweater on your needles, (yes we know you love your niece). Add yourself to your deadlines. Knit that Lima sweater you’ve wanted to! Just do it!

Happy selfish knitting!

Cara

This seems to be the week of store projects. A whole host of finished objects are flooding the store while employees scramble to feature new yarns and patterns.

First, as promised, the Margarethe Shawl from Vintage Modern Knits in Fibre Company’s Road to China Light. Knit by Cara in Sapphire. This luxuriously soft hug is passed from employee to employee despite the weather. (modeled by Sara)

Next up is River Chullos River Star Pattern Hat knit in Cascade 220 Sport. This is a free pattern on Cascade Yarns’ website. Knit by Elisabeth in various colors. What a stunning color combo. Nice skills Elisabeth!

This sweet little summery cardigan is Cecily’s Silk Cardigan from Blue Sky Alpacas. Knit by Dolly in Blue Sky Alpaca Silk, color #141. This has been a popular one. (Modeled by Debbie)

Last, and certainly not least: Fiber Trends pattern CH-44x, Ribbons Baby Blanket. This supremely squishy baby blanket features Cascade Eco Cloud in six natural shades. Knit by Greta. I’m super excited about this one, I cannot stop petting it. Greta thanked me for letting her knit it, so I think it’s a winner! (Modeled by Greta).

 

Happy Knitting!

Cara

The staff has been over the moon about Pete, our Back of the House manager, having his first baby. On April 20^th Pete and his wife Mia were blessed with Ian. We, at WEBS, were overjoyed. We threw a little party, we showered them with gifts and the whole store seemed to just explode with baby fever.

In fact, there was so much excitement you almost didn’t notice that babies were popping up all over in our lives. Dori, longtime instructor, became a first time grandmother. Erin, another instructor adopted infant Silas with her husband (we are sooo excited for her!). Theresa, in customer service also had her first grandchild. Between customers, friends, family and drop-in ladies it’s a baby bonanza.

Not to mention that tiny little sweaters and booties are such a great stash buster and a great way to experiment with a new stitch or technique. And with summer closing in our laps don’t want to be covered with big afghans or garments, so bring on the baby knits!!

I was blown away by the talents of Theresa, and her delicate heirloom quality knits in our new Valley Yarns Charlemont. She chose to use natural colors and created an entire set, including afghan, sweater, hat and booties. This picture just can’t possibly do justice for these dear little knits. The sweater and hat are from Dale of Norway 197 taking less than one skein of Charlemont!

This set I made for my first Grandchild and my aim was to produce an heirloom set.  My first and foremost qualification for any baby items is to find a fiber that feels good in my hands.  Charlemont is perfect for that criteria.  I am planning more “Baby Jack” pieces using the kettle-dyed Charlemont.  I just cannot decide which color!

To welcome baby Silas to Erin’s family Annie Foley (a fellow instructor) orchestrated a baby blanket made with Blue Sky Organic Cotton. Each person created a block with various stitch patterns including the tree from Barbara Walkers Third Stitch Collection. The blanket features a tree theme because the origin of Silas means “of the forest.”

As you might expect Pete received many hand knits from the staff and one lovely woven blanket made by our assistant store manager Leslie Ann. She wove this lovely piece from Valley Yarns Noho.

The baby blanket was woven… using blocks of Huck Lace in natural bordered by a variegated pastel. I wove the blanket in panels and seamed them together, then sewed satin blanket binding on the ends.

Dori designed and knit a darling set for her grandchild with a carrot theme! She used Mission Falls 136 Merino Superwash (which is currently on closeout) and applied Patricia Wagner’s overalls pattern from Chic Knits for Stylish Babies as inspiration. What ingenuity!

I’m so impressed with everyone’s supreme creativity. I don’t know about you but I’m ready to cast on!

Happy Summer Knitting!

Cara

Hi Everyone!

We had the idea to record our staff knitting, since no two of us knit the same way. We were also inspired by the great video by the folks over at Lorna’s Laces to show you what happened to the knitting once we were done.

The video features knitters of all skill levels – from our designer to those who learned 5 minutes before recording!

Check it out!

We had a great time playing with the stop-motion trek the little hat went on. Here’s a little peek behind the scenes.

We hope you have as much fun watching this video as we did creating it!

Mary

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Guest: Margaret from Green Mountain Spinnery, one of the stops on the I-91 Shop Hop. Make sure you don’t miss out on this stop in Putney, VT. It’s a unique experience because all of the yarn they sell is made at their mill in Putney. They are in their 30th year of producing yarns. You’ll also get a chance to see how the yarns are made. All of the yarns are spun in Putney and all of the fibers are grown in the United States, with the focus on New England fibers. At the shop you’ll also find great mill ends and experimental yarns, which are always fun to pick up!

Steve’s Yarn Picks

• Rowan Kidsilk Aura Closeout
• Rowan Pure Cashmere DK Closeout
• Rowan Silky Tweed
• Cascade 220 Superwash Sport
• Noro Hitsuji
• Shalimar Breathless
• Lang Jawoll Magic Degrade

• WEBS’ Blog
• Herdy Salt & Pepper Shakers

History of WEBS

Barbara’s “little lie” was that she wasn’t planning on leaving, even though she said she would. It has worked out wonderfully because she has been able to travel, design, weave, and work with our long-time weaving customers.

We’ve gone from three computers to too many to count! We’ve also gone from an informational website to one you can place orders from. No more cutting samples – we have four knitting catalogs and a couple weaving catalogs. The building has morphed quite a bit as well!

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Guest: Laura McSweeny of Creative Fibers in Windsor, CT. Laura is the creator of the Shop Hop and she chats about how she came to open her yarn shop. She focuses on changing the negatives she found while yarn shopping and turning them into positives in her shop. The have great classes, a living room with a fireplace, and offer help to customers. They’re also a big part of the community, both locally and across the globe.

Some of the yarns Creative Fibers loves and carries includes a huge selection of Koigu, and Tahki Cotton Classic in over 80 colors! They also stock Jade Sapphire Moonlight. Creative Fibers also has a twice a year retreat.

Make sure you stop by Creative Fibers on your Shop Hop, and if you can’t make it to the Shop Hop, visit Creative Fibers when you can!

Summer Classes are up!

Tina, our Education Manager chats about classes

June 23rd, The Crochet Dude will be here!

Gale Zucker will teach you how to take pictures of your fiber and projects!

We’ve got great crochet classes, knitting classes, spinning class, and weaving classes, plus fiber camp for kids!

Steve’s Yarn Picks

• Trendsetter Dune Discontinued Colors
• Queensland Collection Joey’s Baby Silk Closeout
• Queensland Collection #12 by Jenny Watson
• Noro Kirameki Closeout
• Noro Love by Jane Ellison
• Mirasol Sulka Closeout Colors
• Mirasol Book 17
• Classic Elite Inca Alpaca Discontinued Colors
• Classic Elite 9121 Wharf
• Elsebeth Lavold Silky Flamme Discontinued Colors
• Elsebeth Lavold Book 13

 

History of WEBS

Art taught Business Management at UMASS and retired in 1988 and went to work at WEBS and help it grow. One busy Saturday, Art wanted to use the restroom at the back of the house. He had to physically leave the building and go in a different door! That was the turning point for a move. There was also yarn stashed off-site, which was difficult.

They started looking for new places, and Art brought Barbara to 75 Service Center Rd. and her first reaction was “no way!” It was an old telephone company building that housed trucks and it needed a lot of cleaning. Where our front window and door is now was a garage door. They moved into the building in 1991.

One of the fun things about working in the store is the wonderful finished things that come in our door for show and tell! It is so great when our customers come back to show us what they did. Because on our end we are always wondering what someone will ultimately end up creating with their purchases. And, over the past week we have been thrilled to see some amazing projects that you can check out below!

 

We just love it when we see Sue heading our way.  It usually means she has created another one of her incredible needle felted masterpieces.  Sue has only been needle felting for 4 months!  Incredible!  And she free forms it!  There is no skeletal model inside these, pure needle felting!  How does she do it?  All we can say here is Amazing!  Thanks for sharing Sue!  And check out these adorable needle felting kits we have.  I have done a couple of these myself, and had a great time watching them take shape.

 

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Guest: Vicki Stiefel, co-author of 10 Secrets of the Laidback Knitter. She wrote this book with Lisa Souza and the whole premise is to help knitters experience more joy from their knitting. The authors wanted this book to be inclusive to everyone. Make sure you check it out!

Also, Vicki will be at WEBS Thursday, May 19th from 5:00pm-7:00pm. If you’re local, stop by and get your book signed.

KAL with Kirsten: Josephine Cardigan

Last show we talked about making the center back cable panel, and now that that’s done, we’re ready to pick up stitches!

Now, technically, the cable could be oriented either with the cast on edge at the neck or at the bottom hem. But I put it at the top neck so it’ll look more like the cables you’re about to do from the shoulders down. This is why you’re doing the right half of the body even though it says you’re picking up on the left edge of the cable panel. By “left edge” I mean the edge that’s at the end of a RS row. After working your last row, your yarn and needles should be poised to start working here, anyway.

When I’m picking up stitches in a bulky yarn like this, I like to go into the edge stitch instead of beyond it so you don’t have a thick seam on the WS. But you can do it whichever way you’re most comfortable. You have to pick up 50 sts in 86 rows here, which is somewhere close to 3 sts for every 4 rows, not exact, but you don’t want to have to cram sts in at the very ends, and I find that the cables can compact the rows a little more than Stockinette.

So, to pick up stitches, hold the cable panel firmly in your left hand, and with your right-hand needle, go into the selvedge stitch, from front to back, wrap your yarn like for a normal knit stitch, and draw the loop through the fabric. You’re essentially treating the edge of your cable panel like it’s a row of stitches on a needle. And if you’re still having trouble, definitely google it, there are lots of videos for you to be able to see it.

Once you’re done picking up those 50 sts, you’re going to cast on 44. How do you do that? Well, there are a few different methods you can use here, but the important thing is to use a cast on that only uses one strand of yarn, not 2 like the long-tail method. I recommend using the backwards loop cast on here, sometimes called an “e wrap” because it looks like a lower case letter ‘e’. I recommend it because it’s easy, it’s somewhat stable, it’s easy to pick up from, which you’ll be doing later, and if you look closely at your long-tail cast on, you’ll see that it’s actually the same as a backwards loop cast on with one row of knitting already built into it. So there’s some symmetry if you use it here.

Steve’s Yarn Picks

• Jade Sapphire Moonlight
• Ironstone Color Changes Closeout
• Ironstone Super Alpaca Closeout

Anniversary Sale Highlights

• Debbie Bliss Andes
• Mission Falls 1824 Wool
• Valley Yarns Valley Superwash
• Valley Pattern #161 Valley Log Cabin Blanket
• Classic Elite Soft Linen

Check out a video of Steve’s Yarn Picks!

History of WEBS

Art & Barbara purchased a large mill end lot of 1300 YPP Rayon Chenille. They then had it dyed and it became one of the first of the WEBS yarns. It was the first time they had repeatable colorways. They were also able to take advantage of mills in the US, which unfortunately, don’t exist anymore.

Barbara & Art used to drive around looking for mills and finding them by looking for water towers. Art made lots of contacts, and now that everything is more precise with computers, mill ends don’t really exist.

Next week – What happens when Art retires his “regular” job.

Also next week, we’ll be LIVE at our Tent Sale, so local customers can catch us on WHMP. The podcast version will go up later than usual.

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Guest: Susan B. Anderson, author of Spud & Chloë at the Farm and curator of the Spud & Chloë blog, Spud Speaks. If you haven’t checked out Spud & Chloë, take a look at it on our site.

KAL with Kirsten – Josephine Cardigan

Alright, so we’ve got our Northampton Bulky, we’ve swatched and we’ve found the needle size we need in order to get 3 sts to the inch in St st.

Now it’s time to cast on that center back cable panel. Long tail cast on is recommended here because it gives a nice sturdy edge that’s easy to work with. Since you’re at the back neck here, the ribbing will eventually be picked up from the bottom of this cast on edge, which long-tail cast on can handle well if it’s made somewhat loosely. If you love provisional cast-on methods, you can do it here, but keep in mind that you’ll be working some cables as early as Row 2, so you might want to use a method that will give you a row or two of waste knitting to work with, otherwise the cables can distort the cast on edge and make it hard to see which stitches come first.

To work the cable, you’ll have to do a little bit of page flipping at first. The cable panel itself is only 24 sts wide, but you’re casting on 26. That’s because you have a one stitch at the left and right edges worked in garter stitch, which are the edges you’ll be picking up the left and right backs from later. But the other cables at the shoulders don’t need those selvedge edges, which is why they’re not in the chart. So, I show you how Rows 1 and 2 are worked to establish that it’s garter stitch, and you can take it from there, repeating Rows 1-24 of the cable chart, or the written cable directions, your pick, tacking on a little “k1″ at the beg and end of each row.

Just a note about the cable abbreviations: I had to do a bit of translation between the chart’s legend and the abbreviations used in the written pattern. The reason is because my charting software has kind of long, clunky names for cables (probably because it has to have a unique name for so many of them) and they don’t fit very well into written directions and they can be a little hard to read. But since we’re only working with a couple different cables here in this pattern, we can give them more readable, general abbreviations in the written directions. So at the top of page 2, I list what abbreviation means what.

So, we’ll be repeating these 24 rows a total of 3 times, using some of the cable techniques we talked about earlier. And if you’re new to cable charts, not sure if you get them yet, I recommend working from the written version, then comparing each row you’ve worked to the chart, to get a better sense of how it works.

Next show we’ll be talking about picking up the stitches for the sides of the cardigan, casting on in the middle of a project, and just how those sleeves come to be. So get cabling and happy knitting!

May Anniversary Sale Yarns

• Noro Kureyon
• Rowan Wool Cotton
• Rowan Summer Tweed
• Plymouth Mushishi
• Berroco Blackstone Tweed
• Valley Yarns Goshen
• Valley Yarns 2/10 Merino Tencel

Weaving Sale Yarns

• New Mill Ends – Rayon Boucle, Cotton Chenille, Rayon Chenille
• Ironstone Loop Mohair
• Valley Yarns 8/2 Tencel

History of WEBS

In 1983, Art and Barbara opened a second location on Sumner Ave. in Springfield, MA. They closed that store and bought a house in Amherst on Kellogg Ave. and renovated it then moved the store there.

Next week, the story continues with where they went once opened on Kellogg Ave.

If you come into the store during the month of May, you can donate $1 to Cooley Cares for Kids, or $5 and receive an adorable stuffed bear. (Only available in the store.)

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Guest: Julia, owner of Knit New Haven, which is part of the I-91 Shop Hop that’s coming up June 24-26. Julia describes her lovely shop in New Haven, CT. The shop has been open for about a year and a half. It is located downtown within walking distance of Yale. If you can, make sure you make the time to stop by this shop!

Check the I-91 Shop Hop out on Facebook and Ravelry, and Knit New Haven’s website.

KAL: Josephine Cardigan

The pattern can be found here.

It is started with the center back cable panel and then knit out from there.

Skills:
Cables, picking up stitches

Materials:

• Pattern 360 Josephine Cardigan
• Valley Yarns Northampton Bulky
• US 10.5 needles, or size used to get gauge
• stitch markers
• cable needle
• yarn needle
• highlighter tape

Steve’s Yarn Picks

• Pagewood Farm Chugiak
• Filatura di Crosa Superior Discontinued Colors
• S. Charles Ritratto Discontinued Colors
• Tahki Savoy Closeout
• Tahki Tango Closeout
• Tahki Dove Closeout

Last Week of the Anniversary Sale!

• Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande
• Berroco Peruvia Quick
• Regia Hand Dye Effect
• Rowan Colourscape Chunky

History of WEBS

WEBS moved to 109 Main St. in Amherst. The store was in the basement and the entrance was in the back. Our Fleece Market actually started in the parking lot of this location. It was half and half knitting and weaving yarn. Barbara always talks about how this was a small shop and she had to balance purchasing and the money coming in.

The mail order venture started at this time as well. Art would go out and negotiate for mill ends and samples of the yarns would be cut and mailed all over.

Next Week: The History of WEBS continues, Kathy chats with Susan B. Anderson, KAL continues, more yarn picks and more on the May sale.

Stop into the store to get your I-91 Shop Hop Passport and Tote.