Category Archives: Finds

Quick Knits: Hats

by

Quick Knits: Hats patterns for gift knitting

With gift-knitting season upon us and my having a backlog of eye-popping knitting patterns I haven’t squeezed into the blog yet, I decided to do a sequence of New Favorites alternatives this week: recent killer accessory patterns that also knit up quickly and would make great gifts. Starting today with hats, the ultimate unisex gift. These patterns have enough going on that they’ll be fun to knit and make an impression, but not so much as to slow you down too much!

The particular beauty of hats — or any small-scale gift knits, really — is that it’s a chance for you to have fun rotating through different techniques while you’re at it. A definite win/win—

TOP: Tamitik by Shannon Cook shot straight to the top of my hat list when I first saw it on her Instagram* — cute, simple and bulky is a perfect gift-knit combo

MIDDLE LEFT: Diamondback Hat by Mary Jane Mucklestone was on her needles when I saw her in September and it gave me instant cast-on-itis — rhythmic 2-color stranding at worsted gauge

MIDDLE RIGHT: Adam by Rachel Atkinson is a fitted cap in DK on 8s with gorgeous knit-purl patterning

BOTTOM: Pabst Blue Ribbon by Thea Colman is a striking use of cables on a simple cap at aran gauge (see also: Wild Dandelion)

You guys, I picked these thinking “slip-stitch, colorwork, knit-purl texture, cables,” something for everyone, and didn’t realize till I saw the photos together that I unconsciously assembled a collection of diamonds! But then isn’t that the ideal motif for a gift knit?

(Disclosure: Shannon has since sent me the pattern.)

.

PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: Wearable superbulky

New kit + Towns in town + Elsewhere

by

New kit + Towns in town + Elsewhere

Hello, Friday! It’s an exciting day over at Fringe Supply Co. — we’ve got a new Stowe Bag Kit from our friends at Verb, a kit for bags so pretty that photos can’t even convey the hand-loomed khadi, naturally dyed, sashiko-stitched gorgeousness. The kit is available now in three different color/fabric combos, and we do have limited quantities of them — it would make a beautiful gift either in either kit or bag form. And it just so happens Jen at Grainline is hosting a Stowe sewalong on her blog in December!

BUT WAIT, there’s more! We’ll also have this week’s Town Bag update at 9am CT. That one’s a little tricky due to overwhelming demand, so take a second to read the notes on how it will work. And if you don’t get lucky this morning, we will have more next week! We’re doing all we can to catch up with demand, and are grateful for your patience and determination in the meantime.

We also passed the six-year mark this week, and I marked the occasion by updating our About page, if you’re new-ish here or would like to know more about the history and mission of Fringe. We’ve come a long way these past few years! And I’m so eternally grateful for your support.

Now how ’bout a little Elsewhere:

– This story of a quest to make an American flannel literally brought tears to my eyes (thank you, Sarah!)

– Conversely

– And back to awesome

– A holiday garland I can get behind

– I’m officially not alone in my love of the dickey as all-day wear

– This week in Podcasts I’d Like Time To Listen To: Thread & Ladle

– Same goes for Gretchen Rubin on Love to Sew!

– The “Wiksten Kimono Jacket” is now the “Wiksten Haori” — cheers to Jenny for undertaking that (see also: Jamie & The Jones) and to @little_kotos_closet who was instrumental in both name changes

– Do you have a charitable knitting/crochet project? You might be able to win yarn for it

– Currently loving hats with a bit of mohair mixed in: exhibit A and exhibit B

Have a cozy weekend, everyone!

.

PREVIOUSLY in Elsewhere: More comfort, more gauge range, and a spot of macramé

New Favorites: Wearable superbulky

by

New Favorites: Wearable superbulky

Here I am in the middle of winter wardrobe planning, having gone through my mood board and gap fillers and to-knit list, on the brink of putting together some outfits and carrying on with my winter, and suddenly I am 100% distracted by these chic little superbulky raglans from Tara-Lynn Morrison of Good Night, Day. I mentioned the incredibly fabulous mixed-sleeve-stripe one in the last Elsewhere, and can’t get it out of my head, and then yesterday Tara-Lynn kindly sent me her latest ebook of her Minimalist patterns, since which time I cannot stop looking at the photos seen here: three variations on a simple top-down raglan. Top to bottom, above to below, they are Moosonee Sweater (abbreviated turtleneck), Kingston Cropped Sweater (solid or mixed-stripe crewneck) and Trefann (textured yoke).

The world is full of people hawking superbulky sweater patterns, and they often lead to garments that appear to have swallowed the wearer. Plus who has the closet space for some of those?! But what T-L gets so right is the proportions. Yes they’re superbulky (you can knit one in a day!), but the scale of them is wearable (even in my climate!) and every detail is just right — the yoke depth vs body length and sleeve proportion … they just work. And the way she’s styled them here has my name written all over it. Cozy sweater + slippery little dress + knee-high boots is one of my all-time favorite combos, and these pics are making me not only want to knit one or two of these sweaters to wear with pants and jeans right now (it’s 31 degrees as I type), but to actually dust off some of my dresses to go with them on our seasonal dissonance days. So yes, I’m slightly rethinking my day-old Queue.

New Favorites: Wearable superbulky

PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: the Two-Point Cowl

Queue Check — November 2018

by

Queue Check — November 2018

I did that thing where I convinced myself I was going to come home from my Thanksgiving road trip with nearly finished front and back pieces for Bob’s sweater vest. (Details on the pattern and yarn here.) Instead, of course, I knitted about two inches on the drive to Atlanta, an inch on the drive back, and not a stitch while we were with my family. Too many meals to prepare, kids to fling around, dominoes games to lose. But I have, at least, done my alt-gauge math and made it into the armhole shaping on both pieces, so it’s downhill from here!

Which means it’s about time to decide what I’m casting on for myself when this is done. As you know, I’ve been deliberating. And deliberating some more. Based on the notes in my mood board post last week and an assessment of my stash — as I continue to make slow but steady progress on my cleanout — I’ve got three yarns vying for my attention.

LEFT SKEIN: While I was at Tolt a few weeks ago, I bought a skein of black Luft to swatch with for another Grete, and when I got home a box arrived from my sweet friends at Woolfolk with enough to finish the job. This one is pretty much a sure thing, so very likely the next project on my needles. All there is to think about is the mods I want to make this time, beyond what I did with my first one.

MIDDLE SKEIN: The Our Yarn I’ve been saying I want to use for a Carbeth Cardigan, amplified by my trying on Shannon’s on that same trip. Shannon’s was knitted in the soft black Quarry and it really felt like a sweater that belonged in my closet, so as confident I am that I would absolutely love it in the toffee, I’m questioning whether I’ll regret not making a replica of the sweater that felt so entirely perfect to me. Especially since I also have other ideas for the toffee.

RIGHT SKEIN: The other sweater quantity in my stash that’s crying out the loudest is the YOTH Neighbor I bought at Stitches West back in February. I really love this nubbly, heathery wool and am dying to knit it up, but I’m also being mindful about my quest for less warm sweaters, which led me back to Kram, which has been on my shortlist for three years. I’m leery of these kinds of sweaters (basically triangular garments meant to sit on a square frame), so I still regret not trying on Tank’s when I had a chance at Knitting With Company two years ago, but it looked great on her and the fact that I’ve had it in mind for so long is a good sign. I’d probably need to hold this yarn triple, and believe I have just enough to pull that off, but I’m also considering holding an ivory or lighter blue with it to brighten up the color, since this is a pretty grey blue.

And then there’s the sewing queue. Writing about my wool muscle tee the other day made me think I might want to make another with the toffee-colored wool I have in stash, which was actually woven from the same yarn above. And fueled by the winter mood board, I pulled this purple fabric off my shelf. It’s a gorgeous deep eggplant with patterning in a lighter shade of lilac, woven in Thailand. I bought it a few years ago at Craft South when they had a pop-up with a woman who buys indigenous textiles on her global travels. (I can’t remember her name or brand!) I’ve been waiting for it to tell me what it wants to be, and I’m now thinking a pretty little sleeveless top of some sort. This fabric will go with every cardigan I own (including the to-be-steeked purple lopi) as well as my army and denim shirtjackets, and a little sleeveless top is of course useful year-round. I don’t know what exactly, but I’m picturing something feminine, with maybe a little gathering or pleating at the waist? If I can find the right pattern, I might have the time next weekend, and it would be my idea of a perfect little #sewfrosting project, just in time for the holidays.

(Fringe Town Bag and Lykke needles from Fringe Supply Co.)

.

PREVIOUSLY in Queue Check: October 2018

Thanks+giving back

by

Thanks+giving back

Today is the day of giving thanks in the US, and I want you to know how grateful I am for every time you take five minutes out of your day to read this blog, every kind comment or email saying you got something of value from it, and every order anyone has ever placed at Fringe Supply Co. At the end of every quarter, I say a special kind of thank you by making a donation to Heifer International (specifically their Knitters Basket of fiber animals) and then sharing on Instagram that that’s happened, so everyone knows we’ve done that together. It’s not my money I’m donating — it’s yours, or ours, and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to pay it forward.

As you also hopefully know, we’ve done assorted other kinds of fundraisers over the years, and today I’m simply making an extra donation and asking you to consider doing the same. There have been so many devastating catastrophes here in the US in the past couple of years — flood victims we lose track of a week later when another hurricane or forest fire hits. So in the hopes that it may help those affected by Hurricane Michael and others, as well as the tragic fires currently destroying California, I’ve sent a sizable donation to the Red Cross Disaster Relief fund.

I know this is a complicated holiday, but if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s gratitude. I hope you have a happy and reflective day, wherever you may be.

(Plates and mug by our friends at Handmade Studio TN. Pie from Dozen Bakery Nashville, which you should definitely visit if you’re ever in town. All bags, pouch and yarn, of course, are from Fringe Supply Co. Photo by Hannah Messinger — see the Winter Lookbook for more. Yay for local biz ladies!)

.

Elsewhere: More comfort, more gauge range, and a spot of macramé

by

Elsewhere: More comfort, more gauge range, and a spot of macramé

Friday! I’m so excited to have a real weekend, you guys, I can’t even tell you. (Cue the guitar: “Ooh, got the yarn / I’m gonna do some knitting”)

First things first: There is a hotly anticipated batch of the new Town Bag hitting the webshop this morning at 9am CT, and we also have the new MDK Field Guide: Revolution, featuring four interchangeable cable designs by none other than Norah Gaughan. AND! we now have the Lykke DPNs in standalone packs! So if you just need a set of 1s or 6s or whatever your heart desires, you can finally have that! If the bags are gone before you get there, please note that we will have more! We’re working as fast as we can to get stores restocked and keeping a small stack for ourselves each week, and I’ll keep restock dates and times listed on the page until we reach a point where we’ve gotten out in front of demand. Thank you so much for all the love for this latest brainchild.

And with that, Elsewhere:

– Speaking of a bold stripe … (ref)

– The last bit of this really gets me: “I always have some small portable project that I can take with me to use as my ‘waiting’ time. This avoids me heading to my phone for my dose of dopamine (which does me no good) and instead offers me a way of including more comfort in my day.” (photo top)

– These anonymous antique Chinese textile collages are so beautiful and are giving me an overwhelming urge to get back to my Log Cabin Mitts exploration … (via Jen)

– This Jillian Moreno piece for MDK on why some yarns can stand to be knitted at a range of gauges is one of the best things I’ve ever read about knitting. (Did I tell you guys how many different gauges I successfully knitted Germantown in when swatching it for the Anna Vest? So fascinating when you meet a yarn like that)

– Were I in London, I’d be going straight to the Anni Albers show at the Tate

– Annual charity hat-drive time: Tiny Hats for Tiny Babies and Christmas at Sea. (Any excuse to make that 1898 Hat, so much fun.) What are others you’re a fan of? Share a link below

– My longstanding desire to make pojagi curtains for my bedroom just went into overdrive (See also)

– Amazing (photo bottom left)

– And ummm, I might need to add “make macramé feathers” to my weekend list (via) (photo bottom right)

Actually, I’m not allowed to knit (or macramé, for that matter) until I make a further dent in my sewing room/closet cleanup, which is solidly in the “worse before it gets better” phase. But then: Ooh yeah, knitting. I hope you have a peaceful weekend!

.

PREVIOUSLY: New pattern, new muse, and Elsewhere

Nice trick: The statement stripe

by

Nice trick: The statement stripe

Here’s the thing about knitting (or sewing) your own clothes: You have the opportunity throw in any sort of details and accents you like, when you like, whether it’s a subtle finishing detail like a folded neckband or a pronounced design feature like elbow patches. In the past 24 hours, I’ve run across two different sweaters (top and bottom left) that reminded me of a third (bottom right), all of which employ an incredibly simple but wildly effective trick: a bold stripe of randomness that makes an otherwise simple sweater memorable. At the top is the new kit from Wool and the Gang, the Little Honey Pot Jumper, which poses a wide stripe of rust stockinette against a field of persimmon seed stitch. The origins of the bottom left image are unknown to me (it’s floating around the Internet without context; I happened to see it most recently here), and bottom right is the Chloé Resort 2013 sweater I fawned over back in 2012., both of which use a wide red stripe to make an impact. I particularly love that they all employ a change in texture as well as color, and how bold the size of the stripe is. This goes hand in hand with what I love so much about basic patterns — they’re excellent canvases for pulling fun tricks like this out of the bag and making any garment your own.

.