yarns

my ultimate local yarn

As all fibrephiles, I love hand-dyed yarns for their nuanced or vivid colors, variation of tones, softness, for all in short, and especially those from Malabrigo or Madelinetosh.
But I should say that the Americas are far away from France!
In my real life, we eat “local” and French as much as possible (we’re a member of community supported agriculture association) and for a while now, I try to apply this principle to yarn purchase preferring European yarns.
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designs

Spring Thaw Tam pattern is available!

I’m pleased to announce that my Spring Thaw Tam is available at last, here on my site, or on Ravelry.

As her big sister Spring Thaw mitts, the tam is worked in Broken seed stitch with alpaca and variegated yarn, and it just evokes plants which appear when the snow begins to thaw.
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tutorials

modified Icelandic BO

Recently, I needed to find a bind-off which could match German Twisted Cast On. I love using this CO for borders in ribbing because it’s easy to do – it’s a variation of a long-tail CO, which is most familiar to me -, and it gives a reversible and sturdy edge perfect for hard-wearing items (if you don’t know this technique, see this link). But the strength of this CO is, above all, its elasticity.
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making-of

Spring Thaw Tam

Just after designing my Spring Thaw Mitts, I wanted to have matching items and began to knit a little tam.
As you probably know, Broken seed stitch my mitts feature is characterized by an alternation of knit-purl rows and purl-knit rows like the classical Seed stitch. For my mitts, I’d found a solution for increases that doesn’t disturb this pattern, but with a tam, I had to rack my brains this time for crown decreases!
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making-of

Reverse stockinette stripes study

I’m fond of stripes. Most of my wardrobe consists of striped t-shirts and pullovers and I’ve knitted lots of striped garments so far.
When I was planning to make a gift cardigan for the baby of friends of ours, I naturally wanted it striped, but to give a twist to the design, I decided to use Reverse stockinette st.
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tutorials

The most jogless stripes

Yeah, the title is oxymoronic, but that is what I discovered through my work.

I love stripes and don’t like seaming. I naturally looked for techniques to work stripes in the round seamlessly. I came across the TECHknitter’s post on the stuff, but after several trials, I gave up knitting stripes in the round…
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tutorials

Japanese W&T

As promised at the end of the last post, here’s a tutorial of a new? short-row technique – a mix of W&T and Japanese method.

On RS (from RS to WS), as with W&T method, you knit to the turn-back point, slip one stitch, and bring your working yarn in front. I usually replace wrapped sts onto LN before turning work, this is more secure.
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