remembering kay

with heavy hearts, we are sad to announce the passing of Kay Kilbury.

kay owned The Yarn Mart for over 40 years and was a fixture at the table for much longer. countless people learned to knit and needlepoint under her watchful eye. she was passionate about needle crafts and willingly shared her knowledge and wisdom with all who wanted to learn. she remembered most everyone's name. and if she didn't remember your name, she knew what you had knitted or needlepointed.

she was an incredible cook. whether her white pimento cheese, chicken salad or Bishop's chicken, we enjoyed her food and she enjoyed serving it. she loved trying new recipes and sharing her epicureal curiosity with others.

we will miss her very much and feel so fortune to have known her.

we will honor her at the shop and will let you know the details soon.

the yarn mart girls

please share your memories about kay by commenting on this blog post. we will share them with her family.

tech tip: patternfish

PATTERNFISH.COM is a Canadian site that sells patterns from both yarn companies and independent designers. Patternfish has many web exclusive rights to sell many wonderful patterns that have been out of print for years or are only available in books. The Yarn Mart, LLC was one of first four shops in the world listed as a Patternfish Friendly Yarn Shop. This means that you can come into The Yarn Mart and purchase a pattern from Patternfish.

Patternfish can be a little tricky to navigate and the search feature could use some tweaking but it is worth the visit to see all the wonderful patterns they have for sell. Companies like Classic Elite Yarns and designers like Knitting Pure and Simple have made their patterns available exclusively to Patternfish. So if you are looking for a classic pattern, Patternfish is your best bet.

welcome cooperative press

i think most people who read this blog know that i'm a huge book nerd. i think the fancy title is bibliophile but book nerd is more appropriate for me. i love to read but i really like to collect books. much like i love to knit and needlepoint but i'm more of a yarn and canvas collector.

so having said this, i'm super excited to bring cooperative press to the yarn mart. i love their books and they are perfect for a book nerd. not only have we brought in dishcloth diva, perfect gift book, and shaping shawls, which would be great for any shawl knitter who thought they knew it all. but i have also selected a couple of the super nerdy choices like what else would madame defarge knit?: 28 more patterns & essays inspired by classic literature and needles and artiface: a refined adventure story with ingenious knitting patterns. 

next time you are in the shop, check out the cooperative press titles and indulge the book nerd in you.

working with hand dyed yarns

we are bringing a lot of hand-dyed yarns into the shop. the colors are yummy and they are all the rage right now. we have small boutique companies like madelinetosh, vice yarns, lorna's laces and dream in color but there are larger companies such as manos del uruguay and malabrigo that are considered hand-dyed.

when we place an order with these companies, the yarn is dyed for us at that time and so the yarn is from one dye lot. but the nature of the hand dyeing process make each skein of a color unique and that is one of the reasons hand dyed yarn is so pretty. knitters need to be aware of this when knitting a project that required more than 1 or 2 skeins. 

so if you love hand dyed yarn and you want to knit will it, just switch from one end of the ball to the other every few inches. or you can switch balls entirely every few inches. this allows any changes in color to spread out over the garment and not concentrate in one place. plus it makes the end result even prettier. try it the next time you pick up a hand dyed yarn to work with. i think you will see the difference.

needlepoint stockings

one of my main personal goals for market this year was to pick out needlepoint stockings for my family. we have store-bought stockings with our names on them but i want to personally needlepoint stockings for van, will and i.

after much research, i decided that i wanted to go with the dallas-needlepoint company, strictly christmas. her stockings are more expensive than most of the other brands but i love her aesthetic. they screaming the shimmer, sparkle and light of the christmas season. 

plus her collection has great boy-themed inspiration. she has a christmas tree decorated with trains and cars. she has a little boy sitting in a chair reading to his stuffed dinosaur. she has a little boy standing in front of a store window with sport equipment lining the shelves. 

so while are market in the end of june, i visited the strictly christmas booth several times - carefully looking at the offerings. i thought i knew which stocking i wanted for will but i had no idea what to chose for van and myself. and in fact i selected for will the stocking with a little boy standing in front of a  store window looking at the shelves filled with fire trucks, trains, cars - all things wheels. perfect for my little boy who loved all things wheels. 

van was also easy to pick. santa on the floor in front of a christmas tree with a train engineer's hat playing with a toy train. perfect for my big boy who loves trains.

but what about me? i'm definitely not an angel type of person. and the christmas tree stockings weren't speaking to me. i looked and looked. i asked the designer for help. i went away and came back. and there it was - a christmas tree with a little girl dancing in pointe shoes in the foreground. perfect. 

do you need to block or will a little soak work?

soak is back at the YARN mart in three favors - scentless, lacey and yuzu. and who better to teach you how to soak than the experts.

soak is ideal for raw fibers, spinning, dyeing – and for the entire fiber lifecycle. it’s also perfect for cashmere, wool, cotton and other delicate fabrics. here are some fool-proof laundry tips that will turn you into a hand-washing pro. (who knew it could be so easy?)

don’t worry about colour. gentle cleansers like soak can pull excess dye out of knitted items. so if you see dye in the water, it’s okay. it won’t harm your item. it comes out of your clothes in the machine too, you just don't see it there.

get the water out.  squeeze out as much as you can, but be gentle.  don't wring or twist it and don't lift it up and let the weight of the water stretch it out.  roll it up in a clean towel to absorb water, or if your machine has a gentle spin cycle, just spin it away.

lay it flat. place the item on a towel, reshaping as you go (for the knitting-uninitiated, this process is called blocking). lay it flat in a spot with good air circulation on all sides. flip it over so it has a chance to dry on both sides.

knitters, soak your swatches. measure your stitch count when the swatch has dried; the stitches will relax and the block will likely grow in size.

needlepoint has gone high tech!

one of the best resources for needlepoint is the needlepoint book. well now the needlepoint app is the high tech version of the needlepoint book. you can download it from the app store on your iphone or ipad (sorry i don't know about android) and you have hundreds of needlepoint stitches at your fingertips. plus the app tells you how to use and where to use them. if you love to needlepoint, check it out.