Yarns at Yin Hoo - A Podcast About the Fiber Arts and Other Post Apocalyptic Skills

Episode 31: Love me some flannel

This episode includes the following segments: The Back Porch, The Front Porch, and Ever-expanding Skill Set. LISTEN The Back Porch

March 26, 20143 Min Reading

Episode 30: Hill and Dale

This week’s episode includes the following segments: The Front Porch, Ever-expanding Skill Set, A Little Bit of Learning, and Double Happiness.

March 15, 20145 Min Reading

Episode 29

This week’s episode includes the following segments: The Back Porch, The Front Porch, Gratitude Journal and Double Happiness. The Back Porch The big news since

March 8, 2014November 22, 20173 Min Reading

Episode 28

We interrupt this sweater to bring you a podcast! This episode features the following segments: Ever-expanding Skill Set, The Back Porch, and Double Happiness. Ever-expanding

February 24, 2014November 22, 20173 Min Reading

Episode 27

This episode includes the following segments: Yarn Lover at Large, Ever-expanding Skill Set, The Back Porch, and Gratitude Journal. Yarn Lover at Large Sarah (Swenstea)

February 14, 2014November 22, 20174 Min Reading

Episode 26

This episode includes the following segments: A Little Bit of Learning, Ever-expanding Skill Set, The Back Porch, and Gratitude Journal. A Little Bit of Learning

February 10, 2014November 22, 20174 Min Reading

Episode 25

This episode includes the following segments: A Little Bit of Learning, The Back Porch, and Double Happiness. A Little Bit of Learning In February, oats

February 3, 2014November 22, 20174 Min Reading

Episode 24

This week’s episode features the following segments: Yarn Lover at Large, Double Happiness, and The Front Porch. Yarn Lover at Large On Saturday, I took

January 27, 2014November 22, 20173 Min Reading

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.