Tag Archives: yarn

Q for You: How do you store your yarn?

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Q for You: How do you store your yarn?

I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but we’re talking about moving again. (Insert see-no-evil emoji.) Not cross-country — just across town. But still! It means I’m giving every single thing in the house the hairy eyeball and asking whether I really mean to own it and if it deserves to be packed up and moved. As well as imagining what our new space might look like and how this time, surely, I’ll finally get everything perfectly organized. And of course you know what I’m really talking about here is yarn.

We’ve talked around the notion of yarn storage before, and I know it’s everyone’s favorite subject. Cabinets or drawers, specialized furniture or industrial bins. All of which I love to hear about. But I also want to get to the real nitty gritty here in today’s Q, which is: How do you store your yarn? The underlying question being: What is the safest way to store yarn?

I know it should be stored in loose skeins and only wound when it’s time to use it. But like everyone I’ve got assorted yarn cakes that were wound for something that wound up not happening right away. I love seeing beautiful shelves full of full of skeins (I mean) but I can’t help wondering about dust and moths and other hazards. My stash started out in four little rubbermaid-like bins that were supposed to be my limit, but then came this giant basket (from my wedding) stuffed with various loose skeins, a few tucked into muslin bags, and multiple sweater quantities in ziploc bags. Keeping the yarn safe from pests? Or keeping the yarn from breathing? I’d love to do what’s prettiest, but I really want to do what’s best for the yarn.

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What tests your love of knitting?

Hole and Sons and the unicorn sighting of the yarn world

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Hole and Sons and the unicorn sighting of the yarn world

A lot of you remember (I know, because I get asked about it) when I posted last spring about how Instagram-famous British farmer @benjaminhole was making a yarn from the fleece of his Poll Dorset sheep, under the brand Hole & Sons Wool. Many of us eager knitters, myself included, waited and waited — and waited — for any subsequent news on the release of the yarn. Last summer there was a photo with a note that it was done and needed labels, then it would be ready. Weeks after that came another saying once the harvest was done. Seven weeks ago @kararosenlund got some. Other than that … silence. I don’t know about you, but I’d given up hope. Then one morning the week before last, I was lying in bed scrolling through Instagram and saw a comment from @thesachemfarm saying “@karentempler did you see this?” I recognized the photo instantly and knew exactly what it meant, so I literally leapt out of bed and ran for my laptop, expecting the supply would only last a minute and guessing I might already be too late. I pulled up Etsy, found it, placed a hasty order, and refreshed to a blank page. It was gone. The yarn, and for a moment even the shop. Then the shop came back, but empty. Did my order go through? And if so, what exactly did I order?

The product page at the time said only that it was 50g balls, no mention of gauge or yardage, so I had no idea what I was buying. Assuming it was tiny fingering-weight balls (given the geographic context, the look of the balls, and the relatively small price tag), I had plopped 10 grey in my cart and wondered what on earth I would do with them. For a few hours, it looked like maybe the order hadn’t gone through and it wouldn’t matter. Then came two notes from Etsy saying they had cancelled it, and more notes from Sue Hole (“Ben’s Auntie,” she said, aka @harpstone) — who I only later realized had made the announcement on Instagram, and who I hadn’t been following — that there was a problem between them and Etsy about taking payments, but that my yarn was on its way. At this point, I almost had to wonder if it was a scam — someone using the Hole family name and photos to make a fake Etsy shop — but the messages from Sue seemed genuine enough, and she wasn’t asking to be paid until the yarn arrived, seemingly understanding how fishy it all looked. So I waited again, to see if it would materialize.

Friday afternoon, my sopping-wet mailman handed me a sopping-wet plastic mailer, which I assumed was something else. When I tore it open, you can imagine how far my jaw dropped. Not only is it here, it isn’t tiny fingering-weight balls at all — it’s a sweater’s worth of dk/worsted-weight splendor. With a perfect hand-drawn label by Ariele Alasko, who totally won the talent lottery. (I mean.) And of course, I instantly began fantasizing about what it would become. Whatever it is, I will not be rushing into it! I feel so lucky (and almost guilty) to be in possession of this yarn — from sheep I follow on Instagram, ha! So it needs to be something special, and probably something very classic and British. Like a vest. Probably a vest.

Obviously the question on everyone’s lips is will there be more? Sue tells me they have another batch of fleece ready to go to the mill and it will be a couple of months before it’s yarn. I don’t know how long after that before it appears in the Etsy shop, but she’s promised to keep me posted. Meanwhile, following @harpstone is probably your best bet.

Single-flock souvenirs

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Single-flock souvenirs

I’m not sure I’ve ever really written about this, but I’ve spent considerable time in the wine world. Between living where we lived (including a few years right in Napa) and having a cousin who’s a small-batch winemaker, we’ve spent a significant amount of time in vineyards and cellars, literally working harvest many years and drinking the fruits of our labor, among other things. So I find myself pretty routinely drawing comparisons, in my mind, between yarn and wine. I’m oversimplifying here to keep this brief, but in wine you basically have a continuum that ranges from stuff like Charles Shaw (aka “Two Buck Chuck”) — a dude who buys up everyone else’s leftover juice and dumps it together in a tank — to “single-vineyard wines.” In between are brands that buy specific quantities of known fruit from known growers, winemakers that contract with growers to grow fruit to their exacting specifications, and wineries that grow their own fruit on their own property. With Estate and single-vineyard wines, you know exactly who grew it on what exact plot of land. (Plus there’s all the blending of varietals and whatnot.) There are equivalents for all of that in yarn, which starts with farmers all around the globe selling their fleece to be graded, sorted, blended and resold for assorted purposes — from mattress stuffing to yarn for hand-knitters. The big yarn brands buy fiber through brokers. One might not care at all about breed or origin, only that it meets a certain micron count (the way fiber is graded for softness); another might be specifically looking for merino or alpaca or whatever, in addition to the grade. Then you have yarns such as, for instance, Brooklyn Tweed, where they can tell you not only that the fleece comes from Targee-Columbia sheep but that those sheep live in Johnson County, Wyoming. Or Woolfolk, which is built around a specific Patagonian merino. And so on. My very favorite yarns are undyed (sheep colored) and minimally processed (sheep scented/textured), but the ultimate are what I call “single-flock yarns,” and I was lucky to bring two of them home from my trip to Tolt.

If you happened to read the article I wrote about Tolt for Knitscene, you already know about Snoqualmie Valley Yarn. Anna approached some neighboring farmers who raise BFL–Clun Forest sheep, and together they produced 400 skeins of rustic, undyed, bouncy yarn — “farm to needle” — three of which are now mine. My friend Lori asked Anna for other local yarns, and when Anna walked up to us with an armload of options, I grabbed one of them right out from under Lori’s nose. (Sorry!! Geez, I’m such an asshole sometimes.) As you can see from the handwritten label, it’s 200 yards of “Longwool Lamb” from Abundant Earth Fiber on Whidbey Island. It’s soft and fluffy and one of my favorite sheep colors, that nearly-black brown. Some other lucky person had made off with the rest of it before I got there, so this one precious skein is all I have. But what treasures.

The one other place I was dying to visit while I was in Seattle was Drygoods Design, which did not disappoint, and the one thing I was hoping they would have is the freshly minted Linden Sweatshirt pattern from Grainline Studio (love that Jen Beeman), which they did. So those are my know-your-source souvenirs from a thoroughly lovely trip.

Single-flock souvenirs

Color of the Year: Orchid vs Thistle

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Brooklyn Tweed Thistle: Color of the Year

Pantone has announced their Color of the Year for 2014 — they’re calling it (gag alert!) Radiant Orchid. It’s a tricky color, let’s be honest. I’m a big believer in the right shade of lilac-ish purple (it looks nice on me, as the Color Me Beautiful lady told me all those years ago) but it’s so easy for it to be cloying. The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the announcement, though, was Brooklyn Tweed‘s “Thistle,” which is perfect. The tweed gives it a little bit of necessary roughness, messes it up just enough. (When you think about it, the names are funny — if I’m at the flower stand, I will reach right past the orchids and grab the thistle any day of the week.) It’s been under consideration for my Trillium cardigan, if I ever get to it. Charcoal, ivory or Thistle, and most likely the latter. It’ll look marvelous with my camo pants.

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My new true love

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My new true love: Tundra from Fibre Company

My knitting time this week has been scant but immeasurably pleasurable. I’m working on a new pattern and got this skein of Tundra from The Fibre Company to swatch with, thinking it might be the perfect yarn for the design, and holy alpaca is it wonderful stuff. And I did do my little bit of cable surgery last Sunday, which means the long-suffering cardigan is ready for my attention again. So I’ll be making time for both projects this weekend, if all goes well. (I know, monogamy, whut?)

THREE NOTES:

1) I felt bad about pointing you to Rebekka Seale’s tasty Camellia Fiber Company while she happened to be low on skeins. But she mentioned in a message to me that she’s got new yarn going up today, so check back over there.

2) Angela Hickman followed up on my remark last week about not knowing what #CaribouKnits is all about. She pointed me to the source, and it’s a pretty awesome project, so take a look at that too, please. And I apologize for being inadvertently flip about it. More power to Kay Gardiner for having contributed miles of tweets to the cause at this point, and being wildly entertaining in the process.

3) I was asked whether Rhinebeck attendees who aren’t on Instagram could tweet with the #rhinebeck4fringe hashtag to enter the Rhinebeck Sweater contest, and the answer is YES. I’ve added that to the original post. Thanks so much to everyone who’s helped get the word out so far! Here’s hoping for photos.

Happy weekend, everyone. I may not always ask, but I always want to hear about what you’re working on…

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Blog Crush: Rebekka Seale

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Avocado-dyed yarn from Camellia Fiber Co photo by Rebekka Seale

Sorry, poor neglected Blog Crush! Between the loss of Google Reader (which I’m still trying to adjust to), the increasingly glacial performance of my ancient iPad (whose only job anymore is to deliver me to blogs) and being sick for most of a month (and thus behind on everything), my blog reading has been patchy lately. Regardless, it’s been a long time since I fell into a new-to-me blog and didn’t want to come out, but it happened to me on Saturday with the blog of Rebekka Seale.

I stumbled across her on Instagram when Beth Kirby noted under a picture of herself that her hat had been knitted by @rebekkaseale. I knew the name was slightly familiar, and the beautiful yarn shots in her Instagram feed were definitely familiar, but I couldn’t think why. Then I opened up her blog, began reading, and realized I had seen an interview with her recently at One Sheepish Girl [UPDATE: no longer online]. The marigold-dyed yarn had prompted me to click through to her webshop, Camellia Fiber Company, and all I remember thinking when presented with those seductive yarn photos is “Close the tab, Karen. CLOSE THE TAB!” Which I guess explains why I didn’t get as far as her blog at the time.

Seale is an artist, illustrator and house portraitist, living in Nashville, whose blog has been a delectable journal of food and gardening and illustrations and portraits — one exquisite photo after another — and I’d have been happy to find it for all that. But over the summer she began dyeing yarn. And since then, and the launch of the webshop, yarn appears to have taken over her life — and may just be taking over her gorgeous blog.

[UPDATE JAN ’14: Rebekka has officially moved her blog and shifted her focus. Update your bookmarks or feedreaders to http://camelliafibercompany.com/ ]

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ICYMI for this week, harking back to last week’s post about the simplicity of cable knitting, is Knit the Look: Jemma Baines’ big black cable beanie.

And one other quick note: You can now find the Fringe Supply Co. stitch markers at Knit Purl in Portland OR. Or, see the Stockists page to find a shop near you!

Anna Dianich is living my dream life

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Instagram photos by Anna Dianich of Tolt Yarn and Wool

Before I say anything, take 10 seconds and watch this. (Whistling …)

Right?

Sometime last year, I found myself following a perfect stranger named Anna Dianich on Pinterest. Not sure how we came to be following each other, but she had a board called My Yarn Store, where she repinned all sorts of yarn store images that looked, cumulatively, very much like my dream yarn store, so one day I asked her if she was just dreaming or actually making this store. Fast forward a year or so, and Anna has become an Internet chum* of mine and I’ve been enjoying watching her life and store evolve on Instagram, which she joined a few months ago. (I also had the pleasure of meeting her, much too briefly, in June.)

It turns out she’s living the dream: life on a farm in the adorably named Carnation, Washington; handsome contractor husband, who built the house; sheep and other assorted farm animals; four adorable kids. (Ok, so kids don’t factor into my dream — none for me, thanks — but man are hers cute. I mean.) (To be honest, that sheep video gives me the sort of feelings I imagine baby pictures give other women.) (No wait, that didn’t sound right …) Annnnd, of course, the perfect yarn store in progress. I asked her on Wednesday how she got to this point, and this is my attempt at a very short summation:

Raised in Hawaii, she became a photographer after studying at the Art Institute of Seattle. (That explains why she wins at Instagram.) As did her husband. Learned to knit, inherited her grandmother’s spinning wheel, decided she must have sheep, moved to the farm. Like you do. Kids and donkey arrived along the way. As for the store, I’ll give it to you in her words:

The fall of our first year in the new house my older girls started an outdoor education program at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, and through that school I made some amazing friends. These ladies I met were all crafty and we began to meet at each other’s homes on Thursday nights to knit, sew, and laugh and cry. We were and still are the Crafty Aunties! This amazing community of mamas, makers, crafters has been a huge inspiration for me and is probably the main reason that I decided to open Tolt Yarn and Wool. Our little valley is in need of not only a yarn store but a place to gather and create and be near other crafters and makers. I want to build a community because I know how much it means to me, and I want to bring that to others.

All of this to say that if you aren’t following @toltyarnandwool on Instagram, you really should be.

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*Chum and customer — when I asked her about the store on Pinterest, Fringe Supply Co. didn’t even exist yet. Now I can’t wait to see the totes hanging in her completed shop this fall.