FO: Salt Creek Hat & Loop for Black Wolf Ranch

  

In the two years since I started working on indie.knits full time, I've been lucky to connect and work with some awesome local and American-made yarn companies - and among my favorite folks to work with are Black Wolf Ranch, a brand that features luxury alpaca blends in luminous colors influenced by the Montana landscape.

Last year, I knit up a Nusa cowl sample, and later, designed the Jardiniere shawl, using their gorgeous yarns. And this past February at Madrona Fiber Arts, I was delighted to see my designs featured in their booth both as individual patterns and thoughtfully chosen kits.

While I was there, I got to catch up with Wendy and her lovely team - and when she asked if I would be available to knit up samples of my Salt Creek Hat & Loop for them, out of two different dreamy silk-blend yarns, I was like um, yes please!

 

Salt Creek Hat

This was the first design that I ever released for sale on Ravelry, so it holds a special place in my heart! I revamped the pattern in 2014, and ever since, I've been so happy to see it keep getting love. The simple cable and twisted stitch details add knitterly interest, while the garter stitch gives it a bit of textured smoosh. And the crown decreases are pretty neat, if I do say so myself!

I knit up the sample in Black Wolf Ranch Rustic Wool, a 70/30 BFL/tussah silk blend, in the colorway Tuscan Sun, which is a beautiful shade of green-scented yellow - like a ripening lemon, or a splash of fresh olive oil. The BFL adds structure and crispness to the fabric, which lets the silk content sing the lead, as the color shimmers and glows from within.

For more details, you can check out my project page here.

 

Salt Creek Loop

This pattern came a little later, when I was inspired to try the same textural details of the Salt Creek Hat in a soft, drapey alpaca yarn. I worked on the pattern on a trip to Iceland in 2012, and I have distinct memories of blocking the sample in our rental laundry room during a bout of insomnia: the cement floor and hum of the dryer, the smell of soap and sulfur lingering in the air like a strange, cozy dream.

I knit up this sample in Black Wolf Ranch Spirit Alpaca & Tussah, a 70/30 alpaca/tussah silk blend, in the colorway Cenote', a deep, complex blue-green - just like the pools of clear, cavernous blue of its namesake. In this yarn, the sinuous quality of the alpaca combines with the luster of the silk to create a fabric with amazing drape and shine - like the yarn version of silk crepe-back satin.

For more details, you can check out my project page here.

One of my favorite things about working as an independent designer is the opportunity to partner with folks who share my love of color, local and independently-produced yarns, and strong, supportive community - and by all of those counts, Black Wolf Ranch has been a total pleasure to work with. If you ever get the opportunity to stop by their booth at a fiber festival or show, I do hope you'll say hello!

In the meantime, if you're interested in their lovely yarns, you can shop online here.

(And a few of my patterns are available as kits as well, which is pretty awesome!)

Thanks again to Wendy, Amanda, and the rest of the Black Wolf Ranch team for their support, and for letting me play with their pretty, pretty yarns!

And thank you for reading, friends. Happy Thursday!

<3

Cory

A little orange sweater...

I've been knitting for about three years, and even though I'd like to say that I've been able to rise to every challenge that sticks and string have thrown at me, that's not quite true. I have friends whose first projects were entrelac and lace, and have only moved onto cables, colorwork, and design. I've managed to tackle all but two of those things that I consider on my list of challenging knit techniques. I've done Fair Isle, cables, steeking, lace, socks, and sweaters. But now that I've fallen so completely in love with every single facet of knitting, I feel as though it's time for me to try a little designing.

Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved to combine challenging colors. My mother would send me to preschool some mornings wearing a pink floral skirt, kelly green tights, and a red shirt - and all because I demanded that I dress myself. My dad took to calling me Sneech in my teens, due to the stripy rainbow socks that I wore beneath long, hippie-styled skirts, huge black plaid pants, or even jeans and my ubiquitous gray Oberlin sweatshirt*. I've changed my dress sense a little bit since then, but I still love loud colors as accents. Orange, in particular, is a favorite. I have a puffy, knee-length orange winter coat that I fell in love with in a Lands' End catalog when I was seventeen and bought for the long, snowy winters of Ohio. This coat has been loved to death. Buttons are missing, and the cuffs are gray with dirt. I got the coat in the mail the day that I had to leave Oberlin after two of my friends died in a murder. I wore it on the train, napped in it, and went for late-night grocery runs in it. Girls would stop me in the aisles and tell me what a great color it was. So I have a special fondness for both the coat and the color... and luckily, I happen to have a skein of handspun, hand-dyed baby alpaca in almost the same shade, that I bought at the San Juan County Fair the summer after my senior year of high school. This yarn has stuck around with me for two years, and I think that I've finally found something to do with it.

I think I'm going to keep it simple, with details in the picot trim and ribbon right under the bust. I like the idea of the dark purple ribbon clashing/contrasting with the (ridiculously violent) orange of the sweater. I want the sweater to be fitted, but to have enough ease to fit a button-up shirt or camisole underneath it. I haven't figured out how to attach a picot trim to the neckline of the sweater, or how exactly to plan the math in order to make the ribbing fit my 29-inch ribcage, and, two inches later, my 37-inch bust. I'm thinking that short rows might be in order. But I'm excited to swatch for this project. I really hope that I can finish it before school starts, so that I can show it to my knitting students this fall!

*I've been an Oberlin fan since I was fifteen, after walking around campus in the middle of spring during my sophomore year of high school. I bought a sweatshirt and entertained a dream of actually getting in, but I knew realistically that I had very little chance of getting accepted at such a great school. Happily for me, I was wrong!

II. In Which Our Hero Goes to Applebee's

The other day, I went to dinner with a bunch of my friends. We went to Applebee's, which is about a 20 minute drive from town, because the Olive Garden had a wait time of an hour and a half and we were on a time-crunch. Still, it was a Saturday night, so we ended up waiting for our table for almost an hour. My friend Ondrea and I both brought our knitting, and we sat on a metal bench outside the restaurant with our friend Will sandwiched between us, both muttering and knitting. (Ondrea is working on a teal baby sweater; I'm working on the Interlocking Balloons scarf for my lab partner, who is from California and has no scarves to speak of.) While we were sitting there, a woman walked out with her family, stepped off the curb, saw us both knitting, stopped and looked dumbfounded. She said something like, "Wow. It's not every day that you see two women knitting outside an Applebee's." Then she laughed awkwardly, got into her car, and drove away.

It's funny that knitting has become so much a part of my life that I get confused when people tell me that they have never seen anyone knit before. I'm perfectly willing to answer questions, and I have no problems with knitting in public, but it is interesting that the first two things that come out of a person's mouth in response to my cabled scarf are, "WOW. What are you doing?" and, upon learning what I am doing, "WOW. Will you knit me a scarf?"

And I do occasionally knit people scarves - the projects that rekindled my addiction when I was sixteen were four basketweave scarves that I knitted for my ex, two old friends, and one of my (still) closest friends. And then there's the interlocking balloons scarf, which I am knitting for my Californian lab partner, a little because he asked for a scarf, but mostly because I've been eyeing the DK-weight charcoal alpaca yarn at Smith's for over a month.

(Seriously, I'm going to marry this yarn someday and we will make lots of cabled scarf babies and a couple of fingerless mittens and a sweater, and we'll sit around drinking hot chocolate that has peppermint teabags thrown in for some broke-ass-college-student flavor.)

Sometimes I wonder if I actually do like to knit, or if I just like to think about knitting - but then I rediscover a beautiful yarn in my stash and realize that - oh, my gosh, I can turn it into that little surplice camisole from Knitting Lingerie Style! - and then, from cast-on to endless, mindless rows of stockinette, I am addicted, planning every exam and homework session and dinner around When I Will Get To Knit Next. Sometimes it goes in cycles, but after a long day of studying and class and frustration, a couple of rows is exactly what I want and need before I go to bed.

Speaking of which, I have been putting off calculus homework for over an hour.

It's a shame how classes cut into my knitting time.