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Episode 135: Fair Isle Knitting

September 11, 2016September 5, 2016 by Sara

cover135 This episode includes the following segments: The Front Porch, Ever-expanding Skill Set, and Off the Shelf. Links to the patterns and projects I mention:

Fair Isle Style by Mary Jane Mucklestone

Bressay Dress by Gudrun Johnston

Mirry-Dancers Yoked Pullover by Cheryl Burke

Mushroom Kelliemuffs by SpillyJane

Journal Cowl by Beatrice Perron Dahlen

The Front Porch

The colorwork yoke of my Bressa dress. I hold the contrasting color in my left hand, the main color in my right.

Traditional Fair Isle motifs like the ones in the Bressay dress are small, so the yarn is carried behind the work for just a few stitches at a time.

Ever-expanding Skill Set

Cook along in September by using mushrooms and using #powerpantry to share posts on social media. You can also share recipe ideas, photographs and tips on Ravelry. Click for a link to the discussion board.

Off The Shelf

Morel Mushrooms by Jane Whitledge

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 135: Fair Isle Knitting

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