Zen News

We knit and crochet at birthday parties, the beach, during lectures and in waiting rooms. But how do other people feel about that?

One thing is certain when it comes to the art of hand dyeing - nothing is certain. 

No matter how much you try to control each and every part of the process with precise measuring and technique, the unexpected and the natural and random laws of physics will always find a way to factor in.

The yarn is a big as a pillow, soft as a cloud, and once it's in your hands, within a couple of hours, you'll be proud! It works up almost instantly.

Super bulky yarn means super quick results!

But how do you work up our new Big Up yarn without any tools but your own hands?

Here's a few tips to get you started...

It’s the best feeling. 

You’ve received your yarn in the mail. Squishy, squishy mail. You pull it out of the package, admire it lovingly and, not long after, decide, you need to cast on. Here we go. You open up your hank and….are really are not sure what to do with it. 

You can scour Google for help, but we’re hoping to make it easier for you—and anticipate any troubleshooting you may have to do! We’re setting you up for hank winding success now and in the future.  

Intarsia (also sometimes called picture knitting) is a technique used in one of our newest patterns from the Impressionist Collection: the Faded Flare Wrap by Heidi Gustad. This technique allows you to create areas of colour in any shape in your knitting.

The Faded Flare Wrap uses vivid, contrasting colours, intarsia, and fading between colours to paint a vivid picture with yarn. If you’ve never knit intarsia before, now is the time to start! Today, we’ll share some of our favourite tutorials and tips to help you successfully master this technique. 

Does this sound familiar?

After spending hours scouring the internet or your local yarn store, you happen upon some hand dyed skeins that sparked some serious inner color cravings. 

They made you so weak in the knees, you just couldn't help but make them yours.

You left, triumphant, and wound them with love….

...only to find that staring back up at you were varying levels of color and saturation in each skein.

Now what? 

There’s no such thing as wasted time, the wise ones say. 

There is also nothing like being stuck in traffic, waiting to board a delayed flight, or being stuck on a train to make you wonder just how true that is. 

A few of our recent patterns use brioche knitting techniques to create a lofty, reversible, ribbed fabric that's oh-so-squishy. Brioche may look complicated, but it's actually quite simple - all you have to do is slip stitches to create yarnovers in one row that are then knit together with stitches in the following rows.

Many patterns use two colours of yarn, which can be easier when you’re first starting out, but you can also knit 1-colour brioche as well. 

Creating and working with yarn is such a labor of love for all of us in the fiber community.

That’s why we believe that it’s so incredibly important to employ the most environmentally-friendly practices throughout the production process, every step of the way. To us, honoring the planet that nurtures the gorgeous animals we get our fiber from, conserving the water we use to dye with, and using as little energy as possible is one of our top priorities.