This week, the staff at WEBS is buzzing about…

One of my favorite yarn and pattern combos is the Plymouth Yarn Select DK Merino Superwash and Rebecca Danger’s Monster Chunks pattern. The yarn is super soft and comes in a lot of great colors. The Monster Chunks pattern is quick and easy, and it’s the first time I knit something so many times in a row without getting sick of the pattern.  And the Monster Chunks look great with button eyes or safety eyes! > Jackie V.

I designed this cowl, The Bramble Cowl, for my older daughter who lives in England. Even though it’s spring, it’s still cool and blustery there. She loves chunky cowls but not the weight. I couldn’t resist all the beautiful colors of Madelinetosh Vintage that we have in the store. I just kept picking up skeins and putting them together. After I knit one for my oldest daughter, my younger daughter wanted one too, then I wanted one.  I can’t quite stop knitting these.  I have yarn for at least three more in beautiful color pairings. > Amy S.

I have been on a serious cowl kick recently. This one is The Wave Cowl, made with Noro Ayatori. I have been wanting to work with this yarn for a very long time but couldn’t figure out what to make with it. Right before a long car trip I decided to buy two skeins and make something. When all else fails, knit a cowl! That seems to be my current motto. Before the trip even started I knit up a cowl that turned out to be the perfect weight for a chilly spring or summer evening. This yarn is so soft and light. Of course I had to pick up another two skeins so I had something to knit on the trip. I have another one on the needles right now! > Amy S.

Amy has some great stories to tell. You can read more about her Bramble Cowl, her Wave Cowl and more on her blog, http://ms-ellaneous.typepad.com/ms_ellaneous/

April flew by and now the sale yarns have switched over to a whole new round of yarns that you don’t want to miss.

We still have the staples Cascade 220, Cascade 220 Superwash, and Plymouth Encore on sale, so you can stock up on those.

Make sure you check out all of the yarns on sale here on our website, but here is a small selection of what you’ll find there.

Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool – Silky Wool is a staff favorite! This blend of wool, silk, and nylon has a wonderful tweedy appearance and works up into a wonderful fabric.

Classic Elite Soft Linen – A blend of baby alpaca, wool, and linen that works up into crisp, yet soft garments. Classic Elite has amazing pattern support for all of their yarns and Soft Linen is no exception. It’s perfect for cool spring and summer evenings!

Make sure you check out all of the May sale yarns today!

Kristin from our Customer Service team shared a simple, yet very useful tip with us!

When working on a sock or any knitting project on double pointed needles, there is always an extra needle leftover at the end of a row.

To keep this extra needle in place, and to keep the stitches from falling off the needles, try using your yarn to secure both ends of the needles.

1: Fold your project so the needles lay flat.

2: Then, lay your extra needle alongside the others.

3: Wrap your yarn around both ends of your double points.

This little trick will keep your extra needle together with the rest of your project, and secure it!

The Spring/Summer 2013 issue of Holla Knits was released recently and we are super excited about it here at WEBS and happy to be participating in the blog tour. Not only does it have a great selection of hip patterns that are perfect for warm weather, one of them is designed by our very own Emma Welford!

Just Beachy is knit in Valley Yarns Goshen and is a perfect layering piece for summer. Throw it on over anything. The fun colorblock detail adds a bit of contrast, but if you wanted to, you could easily knit this in just one color.

We’re giving away the yarn to knit yourself your very own Just Beachy. In the comments section, let us know what you love the most about summer. Leave your comment by Tuesday, May 7^th at 9:00EDT and we’ll announce the winner. (Please make sure to leave your email address so that we can contact you if you win.)

Check out the other stops on the blog tour:
April 16 – The Sweatshop of Love
April 17 – Canary Knits
April 18 – Yarn Hollow
April 19 – Under the Red Umbrella
April 22 – Stash, the Knit Picks Staff Blog
April 23 – Emma Welford Designs
April 24 – Pink Brutus Knits
April 25 – Rewolluzza
April 26 – Knits in Class
April 29 – WEBS Yarn Store Blog
May 1 – Masi Knits
May 3 – Unplanned Peacock

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Guest: Kathy talks with Amy about her new book: Knit to Flatter - The only instructions you’ll ever need to knit sweaters that make you look good and feel great!

Amy talks about how she began with a series of online tutorials that she called Fit to Flatter which became a wonderful class  and is now a fantastic book! Knit to Flatter teaches you how to understand that the shape of your body, and not so much your numerical measurements, has a bigger impact on what garments look best on you and how to choose the right shapes to enhance your best features.

The Stoker pattern from Knit to Flatter, featuring Valley Yarns Stockbridge.

She also reminds us that it’s OK to use a pattern you really like as a starting point, altering it to fit your shape and that yarn choice make a big difference in the final garment.

Please join us on June 6th to meet Amy, celebrate the release of the book and get your own copy signed!

Steve’s Yarn Picks

Cascade 220, Cascade 220 Superwash, and Plymouth Encore remain on sale through May 31st!

• Berroco Ultra Alpaca
• Lang Jawoll Magic Degrade – perfect for the Wingspan pattern
• Classic Elite Soft Linen
• Classic Elite Fresco
• Grignasco Loden
• Rowan Fine Lace
• James C. Brett Marble Chunky
• Debbie Bliss Rialto DK
• Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool
• Noro Kama
• Filatura di Crosa Nirvana
• Louet Gems Fingereing
• Valley 5/2 and 10/2 Cotton
• Valley Yarns 20/2  Silk
• Collingwood Rug Wool

• Symfonie Deluxe needle set 
• Nova Special needle set
• Dreamz Chunky needle set

The annual Tent Sale on May 18th and 19th.

The Third Annual I-91 Shop Hop is happening June 27-30th.

The New England Weavers Seminar (NEWS) is happening July 11-14, on the Smith College campus.

 

Have you had the chance to pick up the yarns you wanted in our April Anniversary Sale? If you haven’t, there are only a few days left!

Plymouth Encore, Cascade 220, and Cascade 220 Superwash will still be on sale in May, but everything else will go back to regular price.

If you’re looking for an easy-care yarn, Berroco Vintage is a great one to stock up on. It is super soft and it washes and wears very well, plus it comes in some fantastic colors.

Classic Elite Magnolia is a beautiful blend of wool and silk that has a lovely heathered look thanks to the blending of the two fiber contents. You’ll also find great pattern support from Classic Elite in their pattern books and in free patterns on their website. This yarn would be great to make gifts out of.

Looking for a little bit of sparkle and color? S. Charles Ritratto is an excellent option. This yarn has several great PDF patterns available to purchase as well as a couple of free patterns. There’s even a free pattern for a scarf on a rigid heddle loom that uses Ritratto and a few other S. Charles yarns.

What was your favorite April sale yarn?

If you’d like a sneak peek of what’s on sale in May, Steve mentions a few in this week’s episode of Ready, Set, Knit! that goes up tomorrow morning. To see everything, you’ll have to wait until May 1st when it’s posted on our website.

Marion works in the store and is an incredible knitter. She shares with us her story of how she got her inspiration to knit stripes in a collection of projects.

Many of us use the wonderful hand-painted yarns to give color to garments. However, I have always loved to knit stripes. I think of it as painting with yarn and it can be fun. There are many patterns written with stripes as an element, but you can stripe any plain pattern with a little planning.

I have a walk-in cedar closet that has allowed me to save many of the knitted garments made over the years. One favorite is a red, tan and grey striped sweater I made my son over 30 years ago. When he asked me to knit a light weight sweater for him, I thought of that as an inspiration.

To make my son’s striped sweater, I used Valley Pattern B1, which is a basic pull-over in different weights. I was making the DK weight and it gave me the approximate amount of yarn needed. I knew I wanted it to have red as the main color and then selected grey, gold, black and tan to match his earlier sweater. Cascade 220 Sport had the perfect shades and was the weight yarn I wanted. It is difficult to judge the amount when buying yarn for striped garments because not all colors will be used equally. To make this sweater I only needed one skein of each color (other than red).

When you knit stripes you can form a repeating pattern (8 rows color A, 2 rows color B, 3 rows color C and then repeat order) or you can change colors randomly which I did in his sweater to give it a contemporary look.

I had no set sequence but planned to put the red between each color change. I carried the yarn loosely up the side when the color was going to be used 2-4 rows later. If as in the case of the red it was not needed until 15 or more rows later, I ended it and then reintroduced it. I tried to keep the colors evenly balanced as I worked up. The black and light tan were strong colors and I used them carefully.

You can be creative when you select your colors. Unless you are knitting a garment using left over yarn, select no more than 3-5 colors or you can use shades of one color. A great resource to help combine colors is Gail Callahan’s Color Grid.

In the past I have made a few sweaters that totally use left overs. I put all the colors together and just stripe away. I really do feel like I am painting. There can be different textures and some weight variation.

Since my 11 year old granddaughter Roley was going inherit my son’s original sweater, I wanted to make a companion for three-year old Beatrice. The pattern is also a basic one made from Ann Budd’s Book of Sweater Patterns. The book allows you to make a sweater for any size and weight of yarn. (Ann Budd will be teaching here at WEBS this summer. Don’t miss out on your chance to take a class with her!) The yarn is Plymouth Dream Baby. I decided to make the stripes in a repeating order with red as the main color. I used a slip stitch with the yellow and black to combine them. I reminds me of a bee’s stripe. Beatrice is used to that theme for her. She loves the sweater. It was a fun project and went quickly.

Finally, I wanted to knit something for Paula, my daughter-in-law and I saw the Henning Cowl by Megan Goodacre in Interweave’s 2012 Holiday Issue. I modified it to be smaller but still used the stripe pattern set up.

I am happy with all the garments and can’t wait to make another striped project.

What are your feelings on striped projects? Some love them, others do not. Do you have a favorite striped project?

One of the most challenging aspects of a project is selecting the colors. It can be difficult to tell which colors “go” well together. Frequently, I spend hours knitting only to discover I don’t really like how those colors I chose came together in the end. In today’s post, J shows us how we can select colors easily by using black and white photographs. He recently knit the Color Affection Shawl, so we asked him to share what he learned.

“Affection for Contrasting Colors or What Do You See in Shades of Gray?”

Every now and again as fiber artists we are tasked with choosing colors. The Kangaroo Dyer’s Color Grid is a great tool for picking colors and we make use of it regularly. For the purpose of this color exercise, we’re going to focus on the properties of color in relation to one another, specifically contrast and we’ll use the broad color palette of  Cascade 220 as an example. (And not just because it’s less than $6 a skein for the rest of April and May, but it is!)

Step One – Grab a skein of each of the colors you are considering (2 or more)
Step Two – Take a picture
Step Three – Make it black and white.
That’s it, three steps! Repeat as necessary with different color choices to your heart’s content.

When viewing your skeins in black and white, if two colors are close in their representation of gray, there will be little, to no, contrast. If the skeins can be distinguished in their representation of gray – TA-DA contrast! Below are some examples that will help illustrate this concept.

Group A: White #8505, Cotton Candy #9478, and Magenta #7803. Notice that the black and white photo shows white, gray, and black. We can see strong contrast between the skeins in both images. This means the colors won’t get lost when used together, and each will stand out in its own way.

Group B: Black #8555, Peacock #2447, and Purple Jewel Heather #7811. See what happens in the black and white version? These skeins show as three similar shades of gray -not good for showing off any of these colors. They don’t look terrible together, but they have similar tone so each gets lost in the other.

To compare these first two groups, with Group A you could stand far away and easily tell the differences in color – great contrast. In Group B the difference is so minimal that none of them take a prominent place – great if you want colors to blend, not so great if you want contrast.

Group C: Christmas Red #8895, Silver Grey #8401, and Blue Hawaii #9421. When viewed as black and white, two of these are similar, but the third stands out –  great for when you want a single color to pop. The light gray and aqua are similar in tone to each other leaving the red to take a more prominent place in your project.

Group D: Christmas Red #8895, Charcoal Grey #8400, and Blue Hawaii #9421. See how just changing the shade of gray makes a difference? It now stands in stronger contrast to the other two, helping to highlight the aqua, while still having more brightness than the red.

It should be noted that “true color” is difficult to represent on a computer screen, so this is just a guideline as color will  vary relative to your settings, the manufacturer of your screen, and the effects of the light that surrounds your screen. This is why sometimes the “color you thought you saw”, looks different when the skein is in front of you. (I love Franklin Habit’s yarn-shaming tumblr because it helps us to laugh at just this sort of thing.)

Do you like making multi-colored projects? How do you pick your colors?

April is a big transitional month here in New England. We’re moving from Winter, through mud season and into Spring!  It can also be be a big transitional time in terms of project choice. Big projects tend to give way to ones that are smaller and more portable.

This is the perfect time of year to start work on a larger project made from smaller parts or to experiment with something small and fun.

Square motifs, like Granny squares, are the perfect vehicle to use up leftover bits of yarn from previous projects or pair them up with other square motifs to practice new stitches and pull them all together into a blanket. Here you can see my Summer Squares Blanket using Valley Yarns Berkshire Bulky and 13 different square motifs from Jan Eaton’s wonderful book 200 Crochet Blocks.

For quick easy ways to join granny squares as you go check out Kathy’s favorite join here and mine here.

Motifs are also a great way to spiff up your summer jewelry selection. Choose a few motifs and a finer cotton thread yarn and make earrings or a pendant.

These motifs are from another great book by Edie Eckman: Beyond the Square.

And sometimes you just need a quirky little gift,  motifs can make great picture frames!

What’s your favorite use of motifs?

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Guest: Kathy talks with Carol Alexander, editor of Crochet World and Crochet! magazine.

Carol talks about her path from designer to editor of 2 major Crochet magazines and the insights she gained during that journey into the inner workings of bringing a magazine full of great patterns and useful knowledge to market, as well as how many people and just how much time it takes to do so.

They also discuss the resurgence of Tunisian crochet, the best yarns to crochet with and why knitters should try crochet.

Steve’s Yarn Picks

New Yarns

• Online Supersocke Ocean Color
• New Colors of Northampton!
• New Colors of Amherst!
• New Colors of Charlemont!

• Cascade Ecologoical Wool
• Classic Elite Crestone
• Euro Yarns Tinseltown
• Universal Yarns Classic Shades
• Valley Yarns 60/2 Silk

Don’t forget about the Tent Sale on May 18th and 19th. There will be some great grab bags as well as some Noro on sale, we’re cleaning out the warehouse, folks!

The Third Annual I-91 Shop Hop is happening June 27-30th.

The New England Weavers Seminar (NEWS) is happening July 11-14, on the Smith College campus.