Showing posts with label CEY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CEY. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Classic Elite Yarn Lovers
I started a group on Ravelry today for the lovers of CEY. Different from the only other CEY group, this group is NOT limited to Classic Elite patterns, it's open to all projects. If you love their yarns, Jill Eaton, Verde, Classic Elite, Twinkle, and St. Denis, drop by and let us know what's on your mind!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
A Surprising New Favorite
Fall 2011 and all of 2012 fashion highlight all-over texture in every garment. Gorgeous stuff if you're a knitter, to be sure. But how? Boucle yarns? Complex pattern stitches? I can be kind of predictable in my yarn preferences. I wouldn't say that I'm in a rut; I'm more diverse than that! But I don't usually go for a textured yarn, or a particularly chunky yarn. Usually.
Then, over the weekend, I started playing with Katydid, a fully organic-cotton tape yarn (conventionally dyed) from Classic Elite's Verde Collection. I had some mixed feelings at first: as beautiful as the colorways are, and as soft yet strong the yarn is, I was out of practice with tape yarns. Would I find this tape yarn, technically a bulky (though extremely light) awkward? The long and short of it is, NO! I was pleasantly surprised to see that Katydid is as easy to knit with as any simple worsted. Really! Much of the credit goes to its easy drape and smooth hand. If you haven't worked with tape yarns before, this is an ideal first choice.
Tape yarns can create rich and beautiful textures without the need for lots of fancy stitching. Soft yarns often pill and shed, but tape yarns don't, due to the way they're woven. Katydid has the best of both worlds. In the swatch below, I worked stockinette, knit-purl alternating, reverse stockinette, yarn overs, and then bobbles. None of these are difficult stitches, though I understand they may seem complex if you knit them in such close succession. The question was this: the texture is great on stockinette, but does it enhance other basic stitch work? My answer is definitely YES!
Tape yarn tips:
1. Use the recommended needle size, or larger. Smaller needles will remove the textured affect.
2. Use a dowel to hold your yarn. Like your paper towels, tape yarns are much easier to use if you work the skein from the outside with the ball on a dowel. Take a spare knitting needle and stick it into a block of styrofoam. This will keep the ball from rolling around, which can lead to excessive twisting of the yarn.
3. If you twist the yarn as you work (though the dowel thing makes this unlikely), untwist frequently. Twisted tape yarns look like standard yarns if they are very twisted during the knitting process.
4. Tape yarns are not ideal for garments with negative ease, as they tend to be much less elastic than standard yarns. If you are making a garment designed to have negative ease, consider sizing up to ensure a good fit.
5. If it isn't listed in the pattern, consider doing a cable bind off. It's a little stretchier, and will make your seams and edges behave like the rest of your garment.
I encourage you to go get some. Play with it. It's delightful. If you're unable to get your hands on Katydid locally, ask your LYS to order some. Don't want to wait? It's available online at WEBS, Yarn Barn, and many other shops. Enjoy!
Then, over the weekend, I started playing with Katydid, a fully organic-cotton tape yarn (conventionally dyed) from Classic Elite's Verde Collection. I had some mixed feelings at first: as beautiful as the colorways are, and as soft yet strong the yarn is, I was out of practice with tape yarns. Would I find this tape yarn, technically a bulky (though extremely light) awkward? The long and short of it is, NO! I was pleasantly surprised to see that Katydid is as easy to knit with as any simple worsted. Really! Much of the credit goes to its easy drape and smooth hand. If you haven't worked with tape yarns before, this is an ideal first choice.
Tape yarns can create rich and beautiful textures without the need for lots of fancy stitching. Soft yarns often pill and shed, but tape yarns don't, due to the way they're woven. Katydid has the best of both worlds. In the swatch below, I worked stockinette, knit-purl alternating, reverse stockinette, yarn overs, and then bobbles. None of these are difficult stitches, though I understand they may seem complex if you knit them in such close succession. The question was this: the texture is great on stockinette, but does it enhance other basic stitch work? My answer is definitely YES!
Tape yarn tips:
1. Use the recommended needle size, or larger. Smaller needles will remove the textured affect.
2. Use a dowel to hold your yarn. Like your paper towels, tape yarns are much easier to use if you work the skein from the outside with the ball on a dowel. Take a spare knitting needle and stick it into a block of styrofoam. This will keep the ball from rolling around, which can lead to excessive twisting of the yarn.
3. If you twist the yarn as you work (though the dowel thing makes this unlikely), untwist frequently. Twisted tape yarns look like standard yarns if they are very twisted during the knitting process.
4. Tape yarns are not ideal for garments with negative ease, as they tend to be much less elastic than standard yarns. If you are making a garment designed to have negative ease, consider sizing up to ensure a good fit.
5. If it isn't listed in the pattern, consider doing a cable bind off. It's a little stretchier, and will make your seams and edges behave like the rest of your garment.
I encourage you to go get some. Play with it. It's delightful. If you're unable to get your hands on Katydid locally, ask your LYS to order some. Don't want to wait? It's available online at WEBS, Yarn Barn, and many other shops. Enjoy!
Friday, May 6, 2011
Back From Classic Elite
I'm back from Massachusetts, and had a fabulous visit at Classic Elite Yarns. As you might think, it's nothing short of knitter's heaven. Wandering their halls, seeing samples, skeins, sketches, and of course lots of great people made me think I'd walked through the looking glass to the perfect wonderland.
If you haven't been, they're in Lowell, MA in the historic mill district. Their building is a treasure of a place, and huge! It's now home to dozens of artist studios, a musicians' studio and music school, a restaurant, their entire company, a yarn shop, and more. This is several city blocks' worth of interconnected real estate with an 1890's feeling. Really amazing. Their "Hub Mills" yarn shop is chock full of their yarns as well as several other very high-end brands making for shopper heaven. I particularly loved the cashmere display with 6 shelves of cubbies! I could have died happy just with the shopping.
On to the office of Betsy Perry, the President and sole owner of CEY. She is a cheerfully dynamic woman, and welcomed me warmly into her office. Her office has huge windows original to the historic building forming one wall, making for a spacious, naturally lit workspace. Well-placed industrial antiques and turn-of-the-century knitting accessories gave the otherwise efficient room a clear personality and purpose. We visited about Lowell and her company for a few minutes before getting down to work.
I showed some sketches of patterns for their recently-added Verde Collection of eco-friendly yarns, and Betsy was very supportive. We decided to work on a project together with a long ramp-up period. And then it happened.
Judy, an employee charged with trunk show and designer management responsibilities, brought in the fall color cards for Woodland and Chesapeake (limited color cards below). OMG! Woodland is a DK wool with nettles, a natural moth and bug retardant. It's soft with a slight halo, and a faintly marled color absorption. It comes in cozy, cottage-y colors that are heavenly. Chesapeake is a worsted 50/50 blend of cotton and merino in richly saturated colors with a distinct marle. With its high cotton content, it exhibits excellent stitch definition.
Chesapeake -
5903 Mephisto
5904 Scuba Blue
5912 Meyer Lemon
5920 Oxford
5925 Tokyo Rose
5938 Bracken
5948 Bronte Blue
5949 Arabian Night
5955 Shanghai Red
5957 True Blue
5979 Catawba Grape
5981 Tendril Green
5985 Mandarin Orange
5995 Rosetti Purple
5998 Metro Green
3101 Ivory
3103 Silver
3138 Bracken
3148 Prussian Blue
3150 Sunshine
3155 Carnelian Red
3175 Charcoal
3177 Ash
3185 Orange
3192 Celestial
3195 Violet
3197 Fern
It's an abundance of riches to have so many exciting yarns in wonderful colors at hand. Where to start? After some deliberation I realized I can start anywhere. It's all that good.
If you haven't been, they're in Lowell, MA in the historic mill district. Their building is a treasure of a place, and huge! It's now home to dozens of artist studios, a musicians' studio and music school, a restaurant, their entire company, a yarn shop, and more. This is several city blocks' worth of interconnected real estate with an 1890's feeling. Really amazing. Their "Hub Mills" yarn shop is chock full of their yarns as well as several other very high-end brands making for shopper heaven. I particularly loved the cashmere display with 6 shelves of cubbies! I could have died happy just with the shopping.
On to the office of Betsy Perry, the President and sole owner of CEY. She is a cheerfully dynamic woman, and welcomed me warmly into her office. Her office has huge windows original to the historic building forming one wall, making for a spacious, naturally lit workspace. Well-placed industrial antiques and turn-of-the-century knitting accessories gave the otherwise efficient room a clear personality and purpose. We visited about Lowell and her company for a few minutes before getting down to work.
I showed some sketches of patterns for their recently-added Verde Collection of eco-friendly yarns, and Betsy was very supportive. We decided to work on a project together with a long ramp-up period. And then it happened.
Judy, an employee charged with trunk show and designer management responsibilities, brought in the fall color cards for Woodland and Chesapeake (limited color cards below). OMG! Woodland is a DK wool with nettles, a natural moth and bug retardant. It's soft with a slight halo, and a faintly marled color absorption. It comes in cozy, cottage-y colors that are heavenly. Chesapeake is a worsted 50/50 blend of cotton and merino in richly saturated colors with a distinct marle. With its high cotton content, it exhibits excellent stitch definition.
Chesapeake -
5903 Mephisto
5904 Scuba Blue
5912 Meyer Lemon
5920 Oxford
5925 Tokyo Rose
5938 Bracken
5948 Bronte Blue
5949 Arabian Night
5955 Shanghai Red
5957 True Blue
5979 Catawba Grape
5981 Tendril Green
5985 Mandarin Orange
5995 Rosetti Purple
5998 Metro Green
Woodland -
3101 Ivory
3103 Silver
3138 Bracken
3148 Prussian Blue
3150 Sunshine
3155 Carnelian Red
3175 Charcoal
3177 Ash
3185 Orange
3192 Celestial
3195 Violet
3197 Fern
It's an abundance of riches to have so many exciting yarns in wonderful colors at hand. Where to start? After some deliberation I realized I can start anywhere. It's all that good.
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