Phew! It’s been a super busy couple of weeks since I got back from Vogue Knitting Live in New York but I am determined to share my yarn haul with you since I know many were not able to attend in person and might be interested in some of these yarns!
First stop at VKL NY: Fuse Fibers studio. This is a small, three-year-old company. I'm addicted to the vintage-inspired colorways but they sell out really fast. My favorite of the colorways is “The Natural Language of Flowers”, the light skeins pictured above, but even though I made a beeline for the booth, all but two of the Merino dk skeins were gone. When I cradled the two left in my hands, I could hear disappointed groans from the shoppers behind me. In order to achieve enough yardage for the shawl I had planned, I purchased a similar, but darker skein in the colorway, Cherry Tree, which you can see at the right in the photo. These do remind me exactly of cherry blossoms, which should be blooming in a few months! I'll knit my shawl then to celebrate the coming of spring.
Another hand dyer with a distinct color palette is Lolabean. Adella's super-saturated colors really pop. I eyed a bunch of her red, pink and yellow yarns, thinking of future gifts for friends who are flattered by brilliant colors. It is not always easy to find saturated and bright colors that are also tasteful and I really feel that Lolabean yarns has perfected that combination. I purchased this apricot-colored skein because it just called to me so much and I think would look amazing in combination with navy. My friend Stephanie is a big fan of Adelle's, the founder of lolabean, so we kept popping by her booth.
The other booth I raced for when the VKL market opened was Cat Sandwich yarns. I have been wanting to purchase one of their pins for years and I love the anime-like colors that the dyer combines together so provocatively.
I feel these colors shouldn’t go together but they do and they draw the eye like the costume of an anime superheroine. My niece is a fan of anime so I’m thinking of knitting her a pair of socks out of this yarn someday.
After having tried out the skeins I had sampled at VKL New York three years ago, I honed in on one amazing, super-soft yarn—the Pascuali Naturale Tibetan. It is 70% merino, 30% yak, grown in Tibet then milled by Pascuali, which is a company that tries to support natural and sustainable farmers/herders. I had knitted the one natural skein of this yarn I had purchased together with some angora into a Little Hearts Cowl[over the Christmas holiday.
The cowl pattern is by Martin Storey but I altered it a bit. Every other stripe you see different colored "big hearts" (me) holding hands with little hearts (my students). As you can see, I was missing them over the holiday. The Pascuali filati naturale Tibetan was soooo soft and luscious that I HAD to buy more of that yarn. I decided to save my one “sweater” yarn purchase for this. The Pascuali booth staff informed me the yarn is such a top seller that they only brought five skeins in each color, and so I scooped up the only lot in blue. This yarn is so scrumptious that I keep humming and hawing over which design is worthy of it and that is holding me back from casting it on just yet.
As I've mentioned before, the huge advantage of a marketplace filled with hand-dyed yarn vendors is that you can find exactly the color of yarn you need. I have really been wanting to knit a shawl in deep green colors and I found my answer in the Green Dragon colorway of Periwinkle Sheep’s Merino Yak fingering weight yarn. I purchased all 3 skeins to knit a Wonky Starfish by Stephen West. I feel compelled to cast on one of his shawls almost immediately, before the hypnotic trance of creativity he lulled me into during his workshop lasts! Then again, I wonder if the green I purchased is the right shade of green for the starfish. The light green in the pattern photo does remind me more of a real starfish while this seems more like a forest green so maybe I should knit a more botanical design with this yarn instead. What do you think?
I have quite a few finished knits that have piled up while I was working up a storm and one of my favorites is this simple, vintage-style bolero designed by Andi Satterlund, called Hortencia. I'm wearing it with my Hollyburn skirt, which is also retro-inspired:
The cardigan has a top-down construction with a deep, short-row collar and the pattern is easy to follow. I used the Biches et Buches gros lambswool I’d picked up at Stitches West last year. I first saw the yarn at the Edinburgh Yarn festival and admired it two years earlier. I always love supporting natural yarns and family-owned mills. The mill for this yarn is in Scotland, in spite of the French name. It is a gorgeous, squishy yarn filled with lanoline and it was really enjoyable to knit with. Well, it’s taken me two weeks to get this post and photos together. I’m now sometimes working til 10pm and it's starting to wear me down so I had to stay home from a few appointments this evening as I was feeling quite dizzy. Work life balance is important and I'm trying to get back to that somehow.