LYS Spotlight: The Nifty Knitter

Hey friends! The Nifty Knitter's Grand Opening is this week - if you'd like help them celebrate, be sure to head over and like their Facebook page for details on cool giveaways and events!

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A few months ago, I was standing in a field at Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival, breathing in that stardust that's in the air when wool-bearing animals and enthusiastic yarn people get together, when I got a curious email in my inbox. It was from Ben Bentler, a musician and knitting enthusiast (!) who just happened to be the the owner of a new local yarn shop (!!) in Issaquah (!!!!) opening this November (!!!!!)

As you can probably tell from the exclamation points, I was a little excited about the news.

I was born and raised in and around Issaquah. It's a town on the threshold of the Cascades, where the valley is cut in two by the snake of the interstate: on one side, mountains with tree canopy so thick in places that the sun can't touch the ground; on the other, Lake Sammamish, the surface dampened by fog in the winter, and shimmering black & gold in the summer. No matter how many places I call home, Issaquah is the place that catches my heart every time I come back to it.

So it makes me incredibly happy that The Nifty Knitter is creating a new space, and a new opportunity for yarn folks to come together, in my home city! I went and visited a few weeks back, and I just wanted to share some of my thoughts and impressions with you. <3

  

When I heard that the shop was opening its doors a few weeks early of its Grand Opening, I immediately grabbed my calendar and made a plan to go check it out. And I'm so glad that I did!

As soon as I walked in the door of the shop, I felt immediately welcome. Like... if I didn't live in Seattle, I'd probably be there every morning with a backpack full of shawl projects and a gallon of coffee, being all like, let's do this!!! Ben and his team have done an amazing job, creating a bright, functional, and welcoming atmosphere in a small and thoughtfully laid-out space.

The yarn selection is awesome, and word on the street is that Ben will be adding even more great stuff to the shop's offerings in the coming weeks and months.

There's something here for everyone: from hardworking cottons and blends for baby garments, to luxurious yarns from Shibui and The Fibre Company, to eco-conscious brands like Swans Island. There's a fantastic selection of favorites and staples like Cascade, Manos del Uruguay, Dream in Color, Malabrigo, and HiKoo, for gift-knitting and selfish knitting alike; also featured is a selection of harder-to-find yarns like Baa Ram Ewe and Elemental Affects, for those of us who love colorwork and deliciously sheepy wools!

Even since my visit a few weeks ago, there's more good things coming in - most recently a shipment of Madelinetosh, a perennial favorite for its wide selection of beautiful colors.

  

The shop is a particularly lovely addition to Gilman Village, which is a prime location for knitters: close to good coffee, great restaurants, and cool little boutiques. Not only that, it's a neat historic spot, comprised of buildings from in and around old Issaquah. Because of that, many of the buildings are former homes, with all the quirks, charm, and challenges of late 19th- and early 20th- century architecture.

The Nifty Knitter embraces this character with open arms, to great effect: with a fresh coat of robins-egg blue paint, built-in fixtures that give a little nod to the historical roots of the space, and of course, tons of beautiful yarn, the shop feels like a jewelbox of color. There are wonderful personal touches as well, like a piano and a sweet little shop dog named Toby!

Overall, The Nifty Knitter excels at striking a balance of open and cozy: with large-scale displays, lots of natural light, and plenty of nooks for knitting and chatting, it's a place that will appeal to knitters of all stripes. I'm so excited to extend Ben and his team congratulations and welcome on building a beautiful new shop, and I look forward to visiting in the future!

Thanks for reading, friends - and if you're interested, I'd love for you to pop over to The Nifty Knitter Facebook page to show your support and participate in this week's Grand Opening festivities!

Love,
Cory

PS. As a final (and exciting!) note, I'll be bringing my Lupine shawl workshop to The Nifty Knitter in January 2017 - stay tuned for details!

Design Notebook: Talus Hat

  

I picked up just a few special skeins at Knit Fit this year, including this gorgeous skein of YOTH Big Sister in the colorway Oyster. I had been on the search for a light neutral dk weight for a hat design that has been kicking around my head for a bit, and this misted grey hit all the right notes.

So the other day, I pulled out my stitch dictionaries, fired up my Excel charts, and grabbed a few leftovers to swatch.

My first swatch - the blue - was in leftover Hazel Knits Lively DK, and I started off with the Christmas Trees motif from Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (page 202-03, in case you want to take a peek). The stitch pattern as I charted it was huge, the ribbing didn't flow into the pattern, and I wasn't happy with the proportions of the center tree to the little trees. But the swatch gave me enough information to see what I wanted to change.

So, I tinkered with the chart, moved the trees together, shifted the ribbing, and voila! The second swatch - the pinkish purple - was done in a bit of Anzula Cricket, and as I saw the pattern emerging, it just made sense. Which, as weird as it is, is even more gratifying than making something that looks pretty: making a thing that, when you look at it, appears to have overturned something essential and correct in our dimensional space, simply by existing. It is the greatest feeling.

And it will be a good hat, I think.

Happy Wednesday.
<3
Cory

A Yarny Weekend at Knit Fit!

   

The other weekend, I met up with my yarny friends Sooz, Ariel, and Kat at the Knit Fit market on Sunday. Along with some of my favorites on the festival circuit (Three Fates Yarns! Abstract Fiber! Yarnarchy!) and the local shops that I love (The Fiber Gallery! Tea Cozy Yarn!), there was a nice variety of independent dyers and designers, with booths and booths of beautiful yarn and yarn-related goodies. And even though I only got to stop by for a few hours towards the end of the show, it was an incredibly welcoming place to be. I've loved both of my experiences at Knit Fit, and I'm excited to see what next year's show holds!

So without further ado, here's some of my vendor highlights from the show.


Bumblebirch
Beautifully shaded colors inspired by nature

  

Portland-based Bumblebirch has been on my radar for a while now, so I was really excited to see her name on the list of vendors. The booth had weights and colors that I hadn't seen in person before - worsted and DK-weight, gently variegated floral colorways - and I had to restrain myself from taking home one of each. The colors are clearly influenced by the natural world, and gently shaded, as if viewed through fogged glass: fallen leaves, the morning sky when it's about to rain, an iris bowing on its stalk. Swoon.


YOTH
Sophisticated neutrals & deep, arboreal hues

  

I first encountered YOTH on a trip out to Tolt Yarn & Wool when they had just debuted their line of one-of-a-kind colors, and I've been watching with excitement for the last few months as they've grown and added more color to their lineup of repeatable colorways. I absolutely love their aesthetic: it's a gorgeous, distinctly Northwestern balance of practicality and worn-in beauty. And their yarn lines - DK & fingering weight merino/cashmere/nylon blends, charmingly named Big Sister and Little Brother - are wonderfully, squishably soft.


Hazel Knits
Vibrant, beautiful, color!

  

When I'm looking for a specific and flawlessly-executed color, I look to Hazel Knits first. Her color catalogue is a most magical paintbox, each shade evoking its name perfectly: Beachglass; Stick o' Butter; Vamp; Hoppy Blonde. The depth and clarity of each color practically sings, in a palette ranging from earthy neutrals, to pastels, to brights. And with an expanded range of weights - from sleek laceweight Filigree Silk, all the way up to ultra-squishy worsted Cadence - it's an exciting time to be a Hazel Knits enthusiast!


Spincycle Yarns
Handcrafted yarn, dyed and spun in Washington

  

Okay, I'm gonna be blatant here: I love Spincycle. My mom sent me two skeins of BFL Worsted for my 20th birthday - back when I was a wee knitter! - and I remember being absolutely captivated by its color and texture. I've been a fan ever since. In the last few years, Kate & Rachel have brought their signature color sense to locally dyed, small-batch millspun yarns that capture the organic color shifts and unexpected beauty of handspun, with the advantages of accessibility and quantity offered by millspun.

 

I also popped by my friend and coworker Ann's booth to say hi. As anyone who has read my poetic waxings about materials will know, I have a liiiiittle bit of a button obsession - and lucky for me, Ann brought her whole awesome collection of vintage buttons to the market! I swooped up some stunning cut glass buttons with gold leaf accents, because apparently I'm a large, girl-shaped magpie.

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Overall, I had a great time running around, taking pictures, and talking with friends, dyers, and designers! If you're out of state - or local and didn't get a chance to come - and interested in checking out a wonderful selection of independent dyers and makers, I highly recommend that you check out the Vendor page. And maybe you can come next year! (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

A huge thank you to every vendor who graciously allowed me to take photos and chat, and to all the coordinators and volunteers who make this great event happen!

Happy Monday!
<3
Cory

A Yarny Weekend at Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival: Part 3 - Vendor Highlights!

Last but definitely not least, I wanted to share some of my vendor highlights from OFFF! There were so many great vendors that it would be impossible to write about them all, so here's a small collection of my favorites.

  

Woolgatherings - Hand-painted and dyed roving in a wide variety of fiber blends.

I'm still a novice spinner, and walking into this booth was like walking into the most wonderful sweet shop: color and texture everywhere, neatly portioned and displayed beautifully. I was especially inspired by the shaded alpaca/silk blends, which had a black base overdyed in different hues: color that evoked beetle wings; the shimmers across an oil slick; the color of a crow's wing.

  

Three Fates Yarn - Yarn and spinning fibers, hand-dyed in gorgeous, saturated colors.

I found out about Three Fates Yarns on Ravelry a while back, and was intrigued by her beautiful, jewel-like colors. So it was doubly awesome that I not only got to squish some in person last year at Knit Fit, I also had the chance to meet Stephania - who, as it turns out, is a fellow Obie and friend of Ariel's!

We caught up again at OFFF, where she let me run loose and take a million pictures of her beautiful yarn and roving. I am in deep, obsessive love with her color sense; crystal-clear, sophisticated, and bright, every braid and skein practically sang with color. I'll definitely be visiting her booth again at the our upcoming local fiber festival, Knit Fit.

(The vendor list for that event, by the way, looks amazing. If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend checking it out.)

  

Sunset Fibers - Handpainted spinning fiber in soft shades and bold colors alike.

I loved the way the braids at this booth were all hung in a row, gently swaying in the wind, in a glorious, squishy cascade of color. Each braid felt as though it had its own story: lush autumnal tones spoke of the turning season; bright greens and purples echoed lime popsicles and super-soaker fights; blurred neons made me want to put on my roller skates. I loved that although they were all so different, there was an overall sense of cohesion between all of the colorways.

  

Shaggy Bear Farms - Fiber farm specializing in farm-to-needle yarns and fibers.

Note: Although Shaggy Bear's website is under construction, their yarn is available at Northwest Wools, a lovely little shop in southwest Portland. (If you stop by, please tell the owner, Jackie, hello - she was so welcoming to our little group!)

This was one of the first booths I went into, drawn in by the subtly variegated and super soft yarns hanging on the outer walls. They had a wide range of fibers and yarns from an impressive 25 different types of wool-bearing animals! The wool/silk blends in particular were absolutely beautiful. The colors were luminous and complex, evoking the highlight and shadow of a whole object: alpine flower, rusted door, tortoise.

  

New Hue Handspuns - Spinning fiber and handspun yarns - particularly laceweight!

I have a deep and abiding love for handspun yarn, which started almost six years ago when my mom sent me two skeins of Spincycle for my birthday. Since then, I've grown to love handspun of all weights and types, but have found it particularly difficult to find handspun laceweight yarn - one of my favorite weights to knit with.

So imagine my delight when I came across New Hue Handspuns, and she had not just one skein, but a whole variety of colors of handspun laceweight! Swoon. Each skein was finely spun, reading as one color from a distance, but slightly shaded in its plies upon closer inspection. There was also beautiful hand-painted fiber and heavier weights of handspun, all of which shared the same earthy, delicate colors and lovely texture so clearly shaped by someone's hands.

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A huge thank you to all of the vendors, designers, and yarn people who were gracious enough to chat with me and allow me to take photos for this series. I had an amazing time at the event, and it was really fun to write these posts about the community I love so much!

And thanks to you, readers, for following along with my adventures at OFFF. I hope to see you there next year!

<3
Cory

A Yarny Weekend at Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival

Part 1: Animals!
Part 2: Yarn People!