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Episode 14

November 5, 2013April 14, 2017 by Sara

This episode includes: The Back Porch, The Front Porch, On the Screen, and Prize & Contest Announcements.

The Back Porch

I’ve completed several projects, including two Pom Pom It! hats by Stephen West. This is a great project for using small amounts of worsted yarn. The pom pom topper pulls the whole hat together and makes it look wintery. I experimented with different yarns in the pompoms.

I also blocked the 22 Little Clouds shawlette by Martina Behm. Before blocking, this shawl didn’t look like anything much. I took it off the needles and it rolled up like a tube. Gasp! But blocking worked wonders. The colors of Frolicking Feet DK are soft and lovely without belonging to the pastel family.

The Front Porch

I’m really enjoying the knitting on Ikarus by Simone Eich of Wollwerk designs. It’s an asymmetrical shawl with a garter stitch center section and two stockinette sections with two different borders. The shawl reaches out to one side, which gives it the appearance of a wing. Schoppel-wolle gradient is a single-ply yarn that’s a pleasure to work with.

Prize & Contest Announcements

Congratulations to Sherry McKinnon and SallyfromIdaho, who were selected as winners in the Teacher Tribute Challenge. And thank you to everyone who participated in Yarns at Yin Hoo’s first contest.

Our November contest is called Side Dish. This contest will take place on the Yarns at Yin Hoo discussion board on Ravelry. Please join the group in order to participate. Tell me about your favorite side dish for the harvest table. Recipes and links to recipes are welcome! This contest will run for the month of November. The randomly-selected winner will receive a skein of yarn from Beesybee Fibers in the Cactus Bloom colorway.

2 thoughts on “Episode 14”

Andee says:

November 6, 2013 at 6:42 pm

I’m working on socks for all my the people on my gift list. We’ll see come Christmas time how far I’ve gotten.
Laura Brownlee says:

November 6, 2013 at 12:45 am

I enjoy hearing about the wildlife that inhabits your neck of the woods in this episode, along with the goings-on on the back and front porches. Your current projects look great!

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Episode 14

2 thoughts on “Episode 14”

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