Yarn Gallery Blog

Yippee!  It’s sweater weather! I love this time of year, when all those sweaters that I grumpily washed last spring and put to bed for the summer come back out, all soft and warm and fluffy, and just what we need to walk the dogs, run our errands, get to work, or rake the leaves.  I’m all in love with them again…

…and still absolutely love looking at sweaters in the stores.  I don’t buy them anymore, of course (enough is enough, really!) but I love to look at them and touch them and see what’s new in styles.  Longer sweaters that you can belt, if you have that kind of body, are back after a very long hiatus.  Wrap sweaters are still in style

, which is good after we all made those wonderful top-down wrap sweaters last year.  And I’ve seen a lot of coat sweaters in stores – not just in knitting magazines, placed by the yarn companies in the hopes that you will buy tons of yarn to make them.  Usually the coats designed by the yarn companies are coated in cables and lots of rib, so they take up even more yarn!  Not that they can’t be beautiful, of course, and well worth knitting, but I always smile a little when I see something like that in Knit N Style or some other knitting magazine – huge, lots of texture, and done in a yarn that the company can’t give away. Check this beauty out:

Don’t you want to drop everything and knit it up?

By the way, much to our distress, the free Garter Stitch Jacket pattern that many of you are making has several errors in stitch count.  If you follow the instructions, you won’t go wrong, but if you try to achieve the stated stitch counts for the sleeve segments, you’ll get into a tither (which is a combination of dither and tizzy, and is not a good place to go.)  Please e-mail me or give me a call at the store, and I’ll mail you a new copy, with sincere apologies.

The shop has been busy, busy, busy…Thank You!   I come home pleasantly tired, and after finishing paperwork and eating dinner, I don’t get a lot of knitting done.  I finished one more Roman Stripe scarf in beautiful bulky self-striping Murano:

I have 2 sweaters in progress, first the top-down cardy in brushed cashmere/silk Superior:

Feels like a cloud.  Then my “Trish” sweater of the year (in which I stay in my comfort zone, both knitting and style-wise), a soft and smooth turtleneck with a little stitchwork in wool and silk Palace from Berroco.  It’s dark brown even though my flash makes it look like gray.  (There’s a beautiful gray in Palace, too!)

Now to show you some really great finished projects.

Lauren Turgeon knit this very cute little dress for her daughter. She’ll have to grow into it, Lauren says, but no fear – they always do!

Chris Dreazen, who can do anything with fiber, crocheted this great little capelet – I think I was out running around, so I don’t know what yarn or pattern she used – but isn’t it pretty?

Rochelle Mann designed another outstanding sweater using a teeny metallic strand held together with Panda Silk for a dressy fabric.  Here’s a sleeve detail, in a pretty lace stitch:

and here’s the sweater flat:

and here is Rochelle modeling the skirt and sweater ensemble:

Mary Ellen Raneiri has been making a bevy of beautiful Christmas stockings.  Here are two completed stockings:

Okay, that’s it for this week!  Keep bringing in those great projects – we all love to see them!

One last photo, of Jackson fast asleep and SNORING in his favorite position, and Geordie, as usual, just putting up with the situation, whatever it may be…

See you soon!

Trish