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I'll be honest, I love TV. I watch it while I knit, and I thoroughly, unapologetically enjoy it. With the advent of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, the original programming from HBO and Showtime, and the fabulous British detective shows, the options for knit-worthy TV are endless. Here are my top 10 recommendations for knitworthy TV.
Well, 2018 is in the books, and I thought I would do a little review. We have a wonderful selection of free knitting patterns, and I wondered which were the most popular last year.
When I look at the top 10 downloaded free patterns from Alpaca Direct in 2018, I see a beautiful group of projects, and almost all of them accessories. That stood out to me—just one sweater and one blanket in the mix. We love our accessories, don't we?
Sometimes you want a little pretty at the end of a project, and the picot cast-off is just the ticket. It makes a lovely edging as you cast off, perfect for baby items or anything, really.
There are a few decorative cast-offs worth knowing, and Kelley demonstrated two of them, the picot cast-off and the Channel Island cast-off, on this week's Technique Tuesday on Facebook Live.
A new baby is something to be celebrated, and this coming May, shop owner Kelley is going to welcome her second granddaughter. So exciting! I don't know about you, but I still have some of my own baby clothes saved carefully in my hope chest. These include a receiving blanket and a couple of handmade dresses; they're such wonderful keepsakes.
Kelley designed a future keepsake for her new grand baby, Claire—a hat fittingly named Clair's Baby Hat. It's knit with our new luxury yarn, Bravo, a 100-percent baby alpaca yarn, so it'll be warm, cozy, and beautiful. We are so proud of this luscious yarn!
We're having a ball introducing you to our first yarn line, Coeur d'Alene Yarns. The first yarn in the line is Sasquatch, a fingering yarn hand-dyed locally in the Pacific Northwest and exclusive to Alpaca Direct!
Sasquatch is a sumptuous blend of 80% superwash Merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon. There are two types of this yarn, a tonal and a multi-color.
A few years ago I took stock of my notions bags, weeding out the things that I didn't use very often and putting together one main bag that I took with me everywhere with my current project. I filled the other bags with leftovers and put them with my stash.
Since it's been awhile, I looked through my bag again. I had most of the old favorites in there, but I needed to add a couple things that had disappeared in to the void of a project bag somewhere. Here's what's in my notions bag!
Kelley just finished a pair of Skimmer Socks by Sheila Toy Strombetzg. These are great when you don't want your socks to show very much, because they're almost invisible under your shoes. I especially love this style because I'm a clog wearer, and these come up lower on the top of the foot, so they don't show. Yay!
These and the Turkish Bed Socks are my favorite knit sock patterns to wear with clogs.
I absolutely love knitting cables. The texture they provide is unparalleled, and they pack such a punch and they're WAY easier to knit than they seem. In Kelley's Knit Club project for April 2020, the Love and Hope Shawl, has a cable running up one of the edges.
There are a few great tips for knitting cables easier, and Kelley demonstrated one of them, keeping track of rows between cable crossings, this week during Technique Tuesday.
There's nothing like a pair of handknit socks. You can use gorgeous sock yarn, choose your stitch pattern, and take them with you wherever you go. One thing I've learned over the years is how to customize socks to fit my feet, and I like a rounded toe. It's important for me because my feet are fairly straight across the toes, and a pointy toe just ends up flopping around empty.
We all have bad habits we need to change. It's hard to do, but so rewarding when we're successful! I've had my share of changing bad habits, and lately I've been working on changing some in my knitting and crochet. Here are ten that I'm working on. I went over some of these in a recent Facebook Live broadcast, but I thought I'd detail them all here.
Ready, set, go!
Short socks, or footies, as some like to call them, are great for summertime (or anytime, really) knitting. They're a small, super-portable projects, and there are so many designs to choose from.
Kelley is working on the Rose City Rollers pattern by Mara Catherine Bryner. Make them two-at-a-time like Kelley did, and you'll have a pair to wear in now time at all!
Gorgeous colorwork knitting is all over Ravelry these days. From intricate Fair Isle projects to simple stripes, it's easy to fall in love with color.
I thought I'd take a walk though the patterns we offer and find my top five. I also have a great stranded-knitting tip for you: how to get even floats!
Blocking is the last step in knitting a project, and it's where you can literally wash away problems. There are three types of blocking most normally used—wet blocking, steam blocking, and spray blocking—and I'm going to describe all three for you.
Kelley has almost finished her darling version of Susan Hickson's Candy Bear. She featured it on two episodes of Technique Tuesday, and it is the cutest.
This week, Kelley demonstrated picking up stitches to attach the bear's head to her body. She used this method instead of seaming the head to the body.
There seem to be a million choices for binding off knitting, and I almost always gravitate to the "regular" bind-off, passing one stitch over another. But sometimes you just want something with more pep, and the picot bind-off fits the bill!
This bind-off is pretty and versatile—you can change the look to fit the project and your mood. Kelley's here to teach you how to work two versions of this bind-off.
Handknit gloves are so special, and Kelley has whipped up a great free pattern for an easy pair, knit from our exclusive Bravo yarn. These gloves are soft and luxurious but also very practical. Alpaca is warm and light, so these gloves will be light as air.
One of the challenges of knitting gloves is avoiding the holes that inevitably appear between the fingers, usually because enough stitches weren't picked up or they were picked up too loosely. Kelley has solved that problem!
Sometimes you just need an easy project to work on, and Kelley's new free pattern, the Simple Ribbed Hat, is the perfect cast-on for times like these.
We debuted this pattern on a recent Technique Tuesday on Facebook Live, and Kelley used it to demonstrated how to fix a few common mistakes knitters make all the time (even a pro-level knitter like Kelley!).
You'll learn how to fix dropped stitches, turn purls into knits, and fix incorrectly oriented stitches.
Have you heard of Izzy Dolls? They're darling little toys that are included in aid packages, and are sometimes a child's first toy. Designer Esther Braithwaite has developed many patterns for Izzy Dolls, sometimes called Comfort Dolls, and they're available free in her Ravelry store.
Kelley fell in love with them and decided to feature Izzy Dolls on her weekly Facebook Live broadcast, Technique Tuesday.
Shop owner Kelley's favorite fiber is alpaca. It's one of the warmest fibers to work with, and so soft—why wouldn't you want it for your baby?
Kelley has developed a free alpaca baby hat, Claire's Baby Hat, and she's following up with a pair of baby socks, Claire's Baby Boot Socks. (If you're wondering who Claire is, she's Kelley and Jim's second granddaughter, due in May.)
Learn how to work a German short-row heel and the Icelandic bind-off!
I just finished repairing a baby blanket that had a hole in it. The owner was anxious to get it back, so it was a rush job. Oh, and the owner of the blanket is 14 years old! Isn't that great? It shows how important these blankies can be for children of all ages.
Shop owners Kelley and Jim are expecting their second grandchild, and Kelley has baby blankets on her mind. I thought I'd share a few options for those of you who need a shower gift or are expecting a baby of your own.
Our shop owner Kelley recently finished Ambah O'Brien's Adventurer Cowl, and during our weekly Technique Tuesday broadcasts on Facebook Live, she demonstrated a few techniques used in the project.
This project is really gorgeous, no matter if you choose a bunch of mini-skeins to work with, or just two colors like Kelley did.
And with so many techniques to practice, it's a great pattern for stretching your skills. Ambah wrote the Adventurer Cowl for advanced beginners and beyond, and if you're a beginning chart reader, the pattern includes both written and charted instructions for the lace.
Kelley just finished knitting the Shift Cowl by Andrea Mowry, and she's fallen in love with mosaic knitting.
While it sounds complicated or fiddly—mosaics are made up of little pieces of glass, after all—mosaic knitting is super easy. Seriously, you end up with a beautiful colorwork project, but you're only using one color in each row.
