Berroco Touche.

Here's another Berroco yarn that we have on sale this week: Touche.

Touche is a machine-washable, worsted weight blend of cotton and rayon. It's soft and squishy, with a bit more elasticity than one usually expects from plant fibers, making it quite pleasant to knit with. It's softness and easy care make it perfect for baby things, like this simple baby hat. I made it with one skein of Touche this week, and it took only a few hours. The pattern is the Super Simple Hat Calculator, a free pattern that gives instructions for a variety of sizes and gauges. This means that whatever yarn you choose can successfully become a hat with the help of the Super Simple Hat Calculator. This means that we turn to the Super Simple Hat Calculator again and again and again.

Touche and many other Berroco yarns are 25% off until Sunday the 10th, which, as I write this, is tomorrow, so come by soon to shop Week 2 of our Going-to-Market sale! Many of these Berroco yarns were quite affordable to begin with, making them irresistibly inexpensive at 25% off. Between the free pattern and the sale yarn, you could be knitting this baby hat for less than four dollars. Irresistible, no? See you at the shop!

Just a reminder--all sales are final on sale items; there can be no exchanges, no returns, nor will we special order. Thanks!

Debbie Bliss Fez.

Say hello to Fez, another of this week's discounted Debbie Bliss yarns.

Fez is an aran weight blend of merino wool and camel, which knits up at about 4.5 stitches per inch on US size 8 needles. While Anne knit a hat in Debbie Bliss Como, I picked a simple textured cowl from the Debbie Bliss Fez pattern booklet, and the color I always reach for first: gray.

I was delighted by this yarn, found it soft to the touch and easy to work with. There's plenty of cozy looking sweater patterns in the Fez booklet, and a multitude of uses for the yarn besides. Check out the yarn as well as the booklet when you're in the shop this week for our Going-to-Market sale. Curious about the other discounted Debbie Bliss yarns? Find the full list here.

Just a reminder--all sales are final on sale items; there can be no exchanges, no returns, nor will we special order. Thanks!

Debbie Bliss Como.

Allow me to introduce you to one of the Debbie Bliss yarns we'll have on sale come Tuesday: here's Como.

Debbie Bliss Como is a super-bulky blend of merino wool and cashmere. Como is a soft, squishy, single-ply yarn that comes in a nice range of solid colors, and it knits up incredibly quickly at 2.5 stitches per inch on a US size 15 needle. How quickly? In a mere 2 hours, Anne knit this hat holding Como together with Berroco Jasper.

The self-striping Jasper adds color interest, giving the hat a tweedy look. The pattern is available as a free download on Ravelry--click here to take a peek. Free pattern, discounted yarn, quick knitting... win-win-win.

Come by the shop this coming week, between Tuesday May 29th and Sunday June 3rd, to get Debbie Bliss Como at a 25% discount. If super-bulky yarns aren't your cup of tea, rest assured, there are a wide variety of Debbie Bliss yarns on sale this week--click here to see the full list. See you at the shop!


Just a reminder--all sales are final on sale items; there can be no exchanges, no returns, nor will we special order. Thanks!

Be Sweet shawl kits.

Many a visitor to the shop has been wooed by the Be Sweet shawl kits. The sample shawl and scarf that hang by the kits are feather-light and translucent, but made of a textured mohair yarn in thick, bold stripes--qualities that seem to contradict one another, and thus, entrance. It's simplicity, too, is appealing, for after all, it's just garter stitch. 

Each kit comes with a pattern and five 25 gram balls of the lace-weight Be Sweet Extra Fine Mohair yarn, enough to make one striped shawl or two striped scarves. They're neatly tucked into a Hillsborough Yarn Shop notions pouch, making them an ideal gift for a knitter.

This past week, many missing colorways were replenished, filling the basket with tempting options, making it harder to decide which one you'll take home. Come by the shop to see them all.

Hello, Ewe Ewe.

Once again, Clara Parkes inspired us with a recent Knitter's Review. She never fails to peak our interest. Sometimes it's a tool, sometimes a book--this time, it's yarn, from a new company called Ewe Ewe.

Ewe Ewe Wooly Worsted Washable is a squishy, soft yarn which is well described by its alliterative name. With 95 yards of machine-washable merino wool in each 50 gram ball, Wooly Worsted Washable is an excellent choice for accessories and baby things.

The color palette is limited but vibrant, and the pattern support makes good use of it in stripes and colorwork.

This yarn is a pleasure to knit with, with brilliant stitch definition and a springy texture. "It knits itself," Anne has often remarked since Ewe Ewe's arrival, and she should know. This baby hat was completed in less than 24 hours, with enough yarn left over to make another with the colors inverted.

Come by the shop to pet Ewe Ewe Wooly Worsted Washable, and remember it for baby- and gift-knitting. Find it on the teacart, and find Ewe Ewe patterns in our recently reorganized pattern binders.

Kochoran cowl.

During quiet moments at the shop, when all the restocking, reordering, class-scheduling, question-answering and yarn-selling is taken care of for the moment, Anne and I often ask one another, "What hasn't been swatched yet?" This simple cowl is what happened when the answer to that question was "Noro Kochoran," a bulky, self-striping blend of wool, angora, and silk.

I rarely work with yarns as thick as Kochoran, so it was pleasantly unusual to see the knitted fabric emerge so quickly. I cast on at the end of the day one Thursday and the cowl was done mid-morning on Saturday. It was a chilly day in the shop, and the insistent air-conditioning had us bundled up in many lovely (if seasonally-inappropriate) shop samples. Here Anne knits a North Arrow scarf while modeling the Kochoran cowl and the Norby hat, made up in the exquisitely soft Schulana Lambswool.

The Kochoran cowl is a simple, quick knit, and fetching in its simplicity, I think--a nice accessory to make now and store for winter gift-giving. I know a knitter who made a bunch of cowls something like this one for nearly all the women in her family last holiday season. Easy to make and well-received when given: a winning combination, don't you think?

Hello, Caper Sock.

As many of you already know, String Theory yarns move quickly around here. One week, we're tearing into a box of their hand-dyed yarn, and the next, it seems, we're studying an emptying cubby of Caper Sock, wondering how we sold out of so many colors so quickly. It gives us an excuse to give them a call and request more, of course, and with each order, we are tempted by the many colorways we haven't stocked before. Our most recent order brought the biggest variety of Caper Sock we've seen yet.

What a spectrum! I find myself selecting colors I'd normally pass over. Suddenly, I like purple, and grass green.

Those of you who subscribe to our newsletter may already know that I recently self-published a pattern using Caper Sock.

North Arrow is a two-color garter stitch scarf with a short-row triangle and chevron stripes. My version is now hanging in the shop, so you can see and touch the scrumptious, soft fabric that Caper Sock creates. With our current selection of colors, choosing a pair for North Arrow makes for a fun diversion. I'd love to see a North Arrow in any of these combinations, for example:

Or you could follow Anne's lead, and knit a North Arrow in Malabrigo Sock yarn.

We have even more Malabrigo Sock to choose from than we do Caper Sock, if you'll recall, making the color-combining into a seemingly-endless game. Come to the shop and play!

And do take a look at North Arrow on Ravelry, if you're interested. I'd love to hear what you think!

Works completed.

Satisfaction, to me, is a finished knitting project. Once all the ends have been woven in and the knitted piece has been washed and blocked, I can stand back, admire my work, push aside the urge to point out whatever errors I made, and get ready for the next project. Anne and I have both recently completed samples for the shop, both of which you can see hanging proudly in the front window.

Anne used the Schulana Macaibo yarn to make Little Sister's Dress, a sweet pattern that's available as a free download on Ravelry. Like the baby sunhat that Anne was knitting a few weeks ago out of Schulana Tamarillo, this sample shows how differently the yarn knits up than you might have supposed, looking at it in the ball.

Meanwhile, I've been working on a brightly colored lace scarf out of SWTC's Pure yarn, made of 100% soysilk. Pure is one of those yarns that somehow never got swatched, though we've had it at the shop for a few years now. I tried my hardest to stretch the yardage of a single skein and managed to get a nice narrow scarf out of just 165 yards. The pattern is Veronik Avery's Lace Ribbon Scarf, a free pattern from Knitty. I only cast on 26 stitches, though, working two repeats of the lace pattern rather than the suggested five. Like I said: I was trying to stretch a single skein.

Yes, finishing things up is a good feeling, matched only by the excitement of casting on for something new! You can see these and plenty of other sample garments at the shop, and if you have any questions about the yarn or the pattern we used, don't hesitate to ask. See you at the shop!

WollZauber Magazine.

Several weeks ago, a new magazine arrived at the shop and I neglected to blog about it. WollZauber had the misfortune of making its grand entrance on the same day as the new Schulana yarns. I photographed WollZauber, promised to get back to it, and then we got a box from String Theory, followed by a most exciting shipment from Malabrigo. Suddenly a month had passed, and all the while, WollZauber has been patiently waiting for an introduction.

WollZauber provides pattern support for Schoppel-Wolle yarns: Zauberball, Crazy Zauberball, Zauberball Starke 6, and Lace Ball. All of the above are self-striping yarns that are unusually packaged in round balls. Many of them are great for socks, and all are fine choices for shawls and scarves. One of our customers made a Wingspan in Zauberball, in fact, and we have a beautiful Multidirectional Scarf made up in Crazy Zauberball, lent to us by another lovely knitter.

It never hurts to have more ideas for these most interesting yarns, though. Here's a peek inside WollZauber.

Find WollZauber by the Zauberball basket.

New yarns from Schulana.

Last week, I wrote about two of the most recent knit samples at the shop. If you've been in the shop in the past week or so, you may already have seen two more finished samples: hats made with new yarns from Schulana.

First up is a hat I made using Schulana Lambswool, a marled tweed yarn whose fiber content is reflected in its name. The yarn is incredibly soft and light, with 110 yards on each 25 gram ball.

We thought it's rustic look and lofty nature made Lambswool an excellent substitute for Brooklyn Tweed's Loft yarn, so we picked Gudrun Johnston's hat pattern for Loft, Norby. I'm pleased with the result--so pleased, in fact, that I've already taken home a sweater's worth of Lambswool. I can't wait to figure out what I'm going to do with it!

While I knit up the Lambswool, Anne was working on a top-down baby hat using Schulana Tamarillo, a machine-washable cotton tape yarn with multicolor slubs that pop out from the knitted fabric.

This little hat is a great example of why we try to have samples and swatches of every yarn we carry. It's not always easy to envision the finished fabric just by looking at the yarn in a ball. Some yarns, like Tamarillo, will surprise you when you knit them up. The pattern, Baby Boy (Or Girl) Sun Hat, is available as a free download from Ravelry.

Finally, our third new Schulana yarn for spring is Macaibo, a self-striping cotton/viscose blend, knit sample forthcoming. Enjoy perusing these new yarns next time you're at the shop!

Works in progress, works completed.

Anne and I are never without a shop-sample-to-be, it seems. All our new yarns need swatching, and lately we've been making whole projects instead of the usual 4"x4" swatch, the better to show off the yarn. Here's what we're up to lately.

We recently got a new yarn from Araucania for the spring: Lontue, a 50/50 blend of cotton and linen. It's interesting stuff: variegated in color, thick-and-thin in texture, and very fine, but with a suggested gauge of 5 stitches per inch.

I tried it in a drop-stitch scarf, which I really cannot recommend this yarn for--boy, did it look messy! While I was ripping that out, Anne suggested trying a seed stitch. Only a few rows in, it was clear that the pattern would be completely obscured by the yarn's color and texture. I settled on garter stitch, so that the yarn could shine, and it's been going well since then. I'm at work on a simple garter stitch shawl, in the style of the Isager Alpaca 1 shawl.

Meanwhile, Anne has completed her Wingspan in Kauni Effektgarn, and it now hangs proudly on the wall at the shop. It's mesmerizing, especially in person, and another great example of what a good Eucalan soak can do for what seem to be scratchy wools. How the Kauni softened with that wash!

Come by the shop and see it for yourself.

Works in progress: short row edition.

This month, perhaps more than most, Anne's desk at the shop has often been crowded by multiple works in progress. She has (ahem) a small handful of projects started, many of which will grow up to be shop samples, showing off particular yarns in patterns for which they are particularly well-suited. At the moment, I have only one project going at the shop, but more at home, lest you think I'm gloating. The impulse to cast on with an exciting new yarn is strong, and succumb to it we do. Here are two of the latest works in progress you're likely to catch us stitching on in quiet moments at the shop.

Anne is working on a shawl with the wooly, self-striping Kauni yarn, knowing that Nancy's Wiggle Wrap is not a permanent installation in the shop. When the Wiggle Wrap leaves us, we'll need something that shows what Kauni can do, and this shawl will do that very well.

The pattern is Wingspan, available as a free download on Ravelry, and it is an excellent example of just one of the many shapes that can be accomplished using short rows.

Myself, I'm at work on a ruffle scarf, another pattern full of short rows, albeit much shorter short rows. These rows are sometimes only 4 stitches long, short enough that I taught myself to knit backwards to save time on turning the needles around between short rows. If the pattern looks familiar, that's because we already have one ruffle scarf hanging in the shop, which I wrote about on the blog last May. That one was made with two yarns held together, and because of this, it's fuzzy, dense, and warm. With Spring on its way, and Cascade's Ultra Pima yarn unswatched, we thought a thinner cotton ruffle scarf was in order.

That's what we're up to, or part of what we're up to, at any rate. What are you working on lately?