Yarn of the Week for 11/6/08

Fresco from Classic Elite yarns has arrived.

Fresco is a delightful blend of 60% wool, 30% baby alpaca, 10% angora. It has the right amount of fuzz and stitch deification to make your projects pop! The suggested gauge is 6½ sts/inch on US 5 needles. We have several beautiful colors in stock:

Fresco is the yarn called for in the beautiful Fresco Fair Isle Mitts featured in Interweave Knits Fall 08 issue – perfect for a holiday gift! Check out the pictures here:

http://www.interweaveknits.com/galleries/bonus/fall-2008/Fresco-Fair-Isle-Mitts.asp

Yarn of the Week 9-23-08

Each week we look around the store and decide on a yarn that we would like to highlight for the blog. We could blog for decades before we ran out of different yarns discuss! This week’s yarn we love is Lana D’Oro from Cascade Yarns.

This Peruvian made yarn is 50% Wool and 50% Superfine Alpaca. A wool and alpaca blend is ideal because the alpaca makes the yarn feel very soft while the wool keeps the alpaca from stretching out with wear. This is truly one of those yarns that you must feel to understand how soft it is.

Lana D’Oro is a light worsted weight yarn with 110 yards* and comes in 80 beautiful colors. This yarn would be great for a garment, scarf, or hat

Lana D’Oro Free Pattern Alert! As seen in Knitter’s Fall 2008!
http://www.cascadeyarns.com/patternsFree/W204_LanaDoro.pdf


*NOTE: Cultured Purls purchased this yarn when it was packaged with 110 yards, however as you will notice from the website, it is now packaged at 219 yards.

Yarn of the Week 9-16-08

This week’s yarn of the week is Aurora 8 by Karabella Yarns. Aurora 8 is a worsted weight yarn that knits up at 4.5 stitches per inch. It is made of 100% extrafine merino wool and has excellent stitch definition. This yarn comes in over 100 colors, more than any other extrafine merino on the market; you would be hard pressed to find a color that you or Aurora 8 didn’t look good in. Here are some of the colors that we carry here at the store:

Worsted weight yarns work so well for sweaters, hats, and just about any other garment. We have a beautiful sweater sample worked up at the store in Aurora 8 in one of Karabella’s beautiful fashion forward designs.



If you haven’t yet knit a sweater from 100% wool yarn because you remember the itchy sweaters of your childhood – this yarn will blow you away!

Come on down to the store to check it out!

Happy Knitting!

Yarn of the Week 9-11-08

Yarn of the Week

This week’s yarn of the week is Cascade’s sock yarn Heritage and Heritage Paints. This is one of the most popular sock yarns we stock here at the store, and our customers knit a lot of socks! The Heritage yarn is springy without splitting as you knit it. It has a smooth feel and comes in over 30 gorgeous colors, both solid and variegated.

Heritage is made up of 75% Superwash Merino Wool and 25% Nylon. Superwash Wool is perfect for socks and is amazingly soft. The Nylon is added to the wool to keep the integrity of the garment. Many people used to knit a strand of Nylon along with their wool for socks so that the sock wouldn’t wear out with continued use. Now many sock yarns are a wool and nylon mix so you don’t have to knit with two strands of yarn.

The gauge for this yarn is fingering 7-8 stitches per inch on a US 2-3, though they also knit up quite well on a US 1. Remember to swatch for your gauge when knitting socks so they don’t turn out way too big or too small.

The yardage for this yarn is an amazing 437 yards, and you will not believe the low price for this yarn; come into the store to check it out!

Look for upcoming articles about knitting socks, one of our favorite projects!

Also as a bonus for today’s article, be sure to take a look at the fiber and gauge search on Cascade Yarn’s website. It’s very helpful when looking to make a particular project with Cascade’s amazing product range!

Yarn of the Week 6/5/08

This week’s yarn of the week is Blue Sky Alpaca’s Alpaca Silk. This yarn is a blend of 50% Alpaca and 50% silk and has amazing drape and luxurious feel. It knits up at a sport weight gauge of 5-6 stitches per inch on a US 3-5 needle. The coloways for this yarn are stunning and Blue Sky has come out with some beautiful new colors for spring. We have many of the colors in stock here at the store and are more than willing to order any colors that we don’t currently carry.

We have several patterns available for this beautiful yarn, two for knitting, the Silk Shrug and the Ribbon Shell as well as for crochet, the Lace Up Shell. All three patterns are perfect for summer knitting. The two shells are great for when the weather is warm, don’t let the alpaca blend scare you away, these tops are not too warm for our summers here in Western Washington especially in an air-conditioned office! The Silk Shrug would be perfect to wear over a strappy dress in the cooler evening or if you are headed on a vacation this summer would dress up any outfit in a snap. For another look at a pattern featuring Alpaca Silk yarn, check out the beautiful Henley Perfected pattern by Connie Chang Chinchio in Interweave Knits Winter 2007.

To highlight Blue Sky Alpaca yarns this month we have models of the silk shrug and the lace up shell patterns featuring the Alpaca Silk yarn as well as others in the Blue Sky line in the store until the end of June! Come check them out and see how beautifully Blue Sky Yarns knit up.

Yarn of the Week for 5/27/08

This week’s yarn is Tahki Yarn’s Sky. Sky is % 100 biofil cotton. Biofil is organic cotton yarn that is grown with no generic alteration, no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers or defoliants and is dyed using an eco-friendly low-impact process. Sky is part of the Terra collection by Tahki Yarns all of which are eco-friendly yarns. Many people are using eco friendly yarns as a way of promoting a “green” lifestyle. If you are interested in being more eco-friendly in your life, this is a great yarn for you.

Sky is a worsted weight cotton with 92 yards per ball and would be perfect for a summer sweater, shell or child’s garment. It is incredibly soft and comes in seven beautiful colors, all of which we have in stock at the store.

We have a lovely sample of how this yarn behaves when knit up at the store, a lacy vest made from Sky in color #3 Cherry blossom which shows off the yarn’s great stitch definition and crisp look. It looks great over the black strappy dress at the store but would also look good with jeans over a white t-shirt or tank top. It’s a very versatile piece. The vest is from the Terra Collection by Tahki Yarns Spring/Summer 2008 Collection.

Come check it out for yourself!

Yarn of the week 5/20/08

This week’s yarn of the week is Classic Elite’s Soft Linen. This beautiful yarn is made up of 30% Baby Alpaca, 35% Wool, and 35% Linen.

Never worked with linen before? Soft Linen is a great introduction into knitting with linen fibers. Linen is strong, 2-3 times stronger than cotton. It has very little elasticity so it will not stretch. Adding wool and alpaca to the linen makes the fiber more elastic while the linen gives the fabric durability. The linen will get softer and softer the more it is washed making any garment made from this yarn very special. The mix of linen and wool is an especially good idea for knitting garments that work with our ever changeable weather here in the Pacific Northwest. The linen is able to breathe and keep your temperature down while the wool keeps you warm.

Clara over at Knitter’s Review highlighted the Soft Linen a few months ago and loved the yarn; check out what she has to say.

We are well stocked in seven of the rich colors this yarn is available in. This is one yarn you must see for yourself in the store; you will not be disappointed!

Welcome!

Welcome to the new Cultured Purls Blog! We have been receiving so many new yarns as well as new books and needles this spring, we wanted to find a way to keep our customers updated as often as possible. We hope to use this blog to let you know about new yarns that have come into the store, answer your burning knitting questions and highlight some of the wonderful knitting being done by our customers and staff too!


Tuesdays will be Cultured Yarn of the week. We will highlight a new yarn we have received or a yarn that we may have received earlier in the season that we think is fantastic!


Thursdays will be Cultured Question of the week. We get so many questions both in the store and by e-mail that are smart and well thought-out and we want to share the answers. We will answer questions about yarn, technique, knit-glish (the language of knitting), and any of your other burning questions pertaining to the store, Gilman Village, Issaquah, and the world of knitting in general!


Saturdays will be the Purl of the week. This post will be about a new book that's come into the store, maybe a new website to check out, exciting news in the store or even customer FO's (finished objects)!


We are looking forward to sharing with you! Please feel free to ask questions in the comments area or just say hi! You can also send pictures of your knitting to our e-mail info@cultured-purls.com with blog in the subject line.