Slowly but surely...
And don't call me Shirley!
You know, this business amazes me every day. We just got in
our fall order of Manos del Uruguay, and it's absolutely gorgeous.
Manos del Uruguay Wool
I'm known around the shop for working with color, and I've
just got to say that this stuff is out of this world. Their colors are
always amazing, and if you're familiar with their palette, you'll notice
the two new shades... the bright acid green solid in the top left corner
and the coordinating multi in the top right. They definitely weren't what
I would have expected from Manos, but they're certainly brilliant.
As for my knitting, most of my recent work has been
associated with classes that I'm teaching this summer. I've done tons
of swatching for my Sock Options class where I go over several
techniques of use to sock knitters from using circulars to knit one
or more socks at a time to heel and toe options to various ways of getting
started and finishing off. I've also been developing a pattern for the
toddler coat that I posted photos of recently for a class I've dubbed
DIY Victory Coat for the V-shaped construction and the ease of
varying the size to suit your intended wearer.
Later this summer, I'll be doing an intarsia class, and I'm
really looking forward to working through the SWAK Intarsia Workshop
book in preparation for that class, but I've also just placed orders for
some intarsia patterns and yarn that I'll be working on for
shop models later this fall.
I'm doing the and the
Karma Throw (left)
Bloomfield Throw (right).
In the meantime, I'm finishing up the pattern and model
for my Traditional Fair Isle Techniques class that I'm teaching
in July. The pattern is ThreadyBear, and those of you who've
been around for a while will remember that I actually started writing
this pattern while we were still in the old Indiana shop.
Body of
ThreadyBear Teddy Bear Fair Isle
with two more panels
before the shoulders.
Personally, this is the one I'm most excited about at the
moment. As I said, I started the pattern over a year ago in Indiana,
and I used it as the class project in my
Intro to Fair Isle
class there. There were too many colors in the original, though, at
least for such a small project for beginners to the technique, and
I broke up some of the dual color changes that confounded some of my
folks back then. It's been nice working on this little guy, though,
because it's been like having those folks with me again. Hi, Margaret!
Hi, Monica! Hi, Mary and Pat and Melissa and everybody else that
acted as my guinea pigs for that class. What a hoot! You can see
pics of some of their accomplishments in my
archives.
It's a fun class, and I'm really looking forward to working
through the project with a class again, but if you're not in the area,
you may want to bounce over to Yahoo! Groups where we're about to start
test-knitting and finalizing the ThreadyBear project for learning Fair
Isle knitting at a distance.
So that's what's up. Other than that, I'm still tearing the shop
apart and putting it back together again to make room for yet more new stuff
coming in.
The front counter is now in the middle of the front of the store facing the
front door so that you're not forced to walk all the way around the far side
of the counter or stumble through our mail station (which, I might add, is
now completely out of the public space and behind the counter).
Official Olympic Norweigian Ski Sweaters and Ingeborg.
Our big wall of
DiVé at the black tables (our standard classroom
and technical help area). That's a huge wall of
Lana Grossa behind there.
Cha-cha-Land includes Trendsetter, Kertzer, Crystal Palace,
Ironstone, and several others.
So now what? Oh, there's always more coming in the back, so I'm sure
it will all shift around again soon. *sigh*
Much love, folks.
-Matt.
P. S. By the way, check out our new patterns from Trish of
Bloomin' Knitiot.
posted by Matt at
