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Episode 102: Vánoční cukrovi

December 20, 2015April 10, 2016 by Sara

Happy Holidays! In this episode, I talk about gift knitting still in progress and the completion of my Suffragette cloche. This week has been a flurry of holiday activity, including baking some new-to-me recipes and some old favorites. Vánoční cukrovi is the collective term for traditional Czech Christmas cookies. It was a sugary, chocolate-y mess at Yin Hoo as I worked hard to conjure up the holiday spirit. Congratulations to summerieday and her friend knittinggeisha, who won the IG contest and a copy of Jenn Sheelen’s Faerie’s Firelight pattern.

Faerie’s Firelight by Jenn Sheelen
Victorian Yuletide and Glowflake also by Jenn Sheelen
Suffragette by Olga Buraya-Kefelian
Bushwalk Beanie by Amy van de Laar
Miranda by Josée Paquin
Pfeffernusse “pepper nuts”
Brigadeiro – a traditional Brazilian confection
Vánoční cukrovi – Czech Christmas cookies background
a blog entry and recipe for Linecké testo
The Pearl Dress by Green Bee Patterns

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.

Yarns at Yin Hoo

Episode 102: Vánoční cukrovi

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