Pattern Spotlight: Blackstar Cowl by Andi Smith

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I have to admit to being a huge FanGirl of Anzula yarns, and when I was designing for the book, I’d planned on creating this cowl in Dreamy, but fate had plans.

I’d found this obscure star cable that intrigued me, and was somewhat obsessed with designing something very graphic with it. I grabbed my yarns, caked, and swatched like a crazy person! I think this motif broke my record for number of swatches to make it perfect!

I was so happy with it though; sometimes, the yarn, the color, and the pattern just gel to create the perfect trifecta. This was one of those times.

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When you’re working with two colors, and a tricksy cable motif, having an uninterrupted field of purl bumps in the background can be hard to achieve. A stitch that was one color became a different color on the next round, and that differently colored purl bump became all- encompassing problem for me for longer than I care to admit!

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After much playing around, and experimentation, and frogging, fixing that issue on the round before solved was the solution, and I was crazy happy with the results.

I sat down to write the pattern, and that is when disaster struck! In my mad rush to knit-all-the-things, I’d inadvertently picked up a skein of Cricket for the cables, not Dreamy! What’s worse, is that I didn’t have another skein of Dreamy in the One Red Shoe colorway!

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I know the amazing ladies at Anzula would have sent one out to me right away, but I wanted to knit this cowl NOW! Waiting was NOT an option! Do you ever have a project like that? I know I do.

So, I broke my must use the same weight for the cables and background rules, and went with what I had.

I’m so glad I did! Using a DK for that red pop of deliciousness was such a great choice. I’m thrilled that my impatience paid off! I love how the star pops out majestically, how graphic and understated it is; how just a few cables makes such a big impact!

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If you want to knit Blackstar, you’ll find it in my new Color Cables book, (©Cooperative Press 2018), which also includes full color tutorials for all the techniques featured in the book.

Stay up to date on all things Andi:

ravelry - https://www.ravelry.com/designers/andi-smith

Pattern Spotlight: Dance of the Hours by Sara Burch

I was super excited when I heard about Anzula’s new 100% cashmere yarn, Serenity, and almost
immediately started thinking of ways to use it. When I really sat down to design this pattern, I came up with a list of different things I wanted it to have. I wanted the pattern to feature a few different techniques to keep things interesting. I wanted it to have two colors, but to not be all-over colorwork or stripes. I wanted it to use the yardage of a cowl, but look like a shawl when worn. And thus, Dance of the Hours was born.

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This cowl starts off just like a top-down triangle-shaped shawl, in garter stitch, and features simple cabling of slipped stitches to get the subtle texture in the first section. Serenity is slightly fuzzy, which makes it so incredibly soft, but the stitch definition is still gorgeous and shows off texture well.

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Once it’s joined in the round, this cowl features one of my favorite techniques: two-color slipped-stitch cabling. The delicate cables dance their way across the purled background, the two colors intertwining as one takes over from the other. Although it looks complex, the technique is actually really simple since you are only working with one color at a time. I’ve used it many times in other patterns, and it worked perfectly here as a way to transition from one color to the other. I often use this technique on a garter stitch background, but here I chose to purl the background, which allowed me to change colors every row and keep the colorwork section more compact.

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I decided to finish the cowl off with a lace border. If you know my patterns you know I don’t do a lot of lace, but for this pattern I wanted to have the strands from the cables continue into a lace section. The lace here is both somewhat architectural but also almost reminiscent of leaves, an Art Nouveau inspired combination that shows up in some of my other work.

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The end result is a deliciously soft cowl that is wonderful to wear and easy to style. And you get the joy of chosing two colors to play with from Anzula’s lovely offerings; I decided I wanted to go with a blue and grey, which is nice and neutral and would go with nearly anything I wear. This pattern would also work fabulously with bright colorways for a pop of color.

Dance of the Hours can be found on Ravelry.

You can find Serenity at these shops:
McKnittey.com - Online only
Amazing Threads - Maple Grove, MN
Bliss Yarns - Brentwood, TN
Knit One Purl Two - Rockford, IL
Knitting Store - Oceanside, NY
Knitting to Know Ewe - Newton, PA
Needle Tree - Greenville, SC
Spun - Ann Arbor, MI
Woolly & Co - Birmingham, IL and online
Yarn Garden - Charlotte, MI

We have more Serenity in the dye pots for Loops and Yarn Kandy, and more shops so check back for updates.

As always, you can place a special order at your local Anzula shop for any of our yarns, we will dye it just for you and send it to your LYS.

Stay up to date on all things Sara Burch:

Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/designers/sara-huntington-burch

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dinosaraknits

Website: http://dinosaraknits.saraburch.com

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Pattern Spotlight: Tinos Cowl by Hilary Smith Callis

I’m sure I’m not the only one who experiences this, but I find that pieces I’ve knit carry with them all of sights, sounds, and emotions surrounding the time when I did the knitting. A cabled cardigan puts me back on my couch in San Francisco watching a Harry Potter marathon during a rainy weekend; a lacy cashmere shawl knit while on vacation at a foggy central coast beach will always make me feel a little chilly; the pink silk scarf I worked on in the hospital after my son was born will always take me back to the bliss and exhaustion of new parenthood. It’s as if memories are knit together with the yarn into each stitch, and one look or one touch transports me right back to that moment in time. My newest design, the Tinos Cowl, which was knit with and inspired by Anzula’s fabulous new yarn, Serenity, carries with it some particularly poignant memories that inspired its name, and I’d love to share them with you today.

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The Tinos Cowl.

Tinos is a cowl designed to mimic the look of a little asymmetrical shawl wrapped around the neck – it’s a shape I’ve played with before, and it’s one of my favorites. In Tinos, two skeins of Serenity alternate in a stripe pattern that appears pixelated and textured due to the use of slipped stitches. Tinos is knit flat with increases and decreases creating its shape, then is seamed up the back. It’s simple and quick and I can tell you that it is absolutely glorious having that cashmere draped around your neck. You can read a bit more about the Tinos Cowl and download it on Ravelry here.

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Tinos Cowl, from the back.

I designed Tinos last spring and, in the middle of the knitting of it, my dear Grams, the grandmother who patiently taught me how to knit when I was a child, passed away. This amazing woman was almost 94 years old and had lived in her own home, knitting, gardening, active in her community, calling the shots on her life, until a mere two weeks before her passing, when a stroke rendered her unable to care for herself on her own. No loss of a loved one is ever easy, but there was solace in Grams’ rich and adventurous life, her deep faith, her sound mind, and absence of suffering; the tragedy was that she couldn’t live forever.

Originally I wanted to name the cowl after her…but since I had already paid homage to her with a pattern name, Betty was out. But a glance back at the name of the yarn that inspired the pattern – Serenity – transported my mind to a peaceful little Greek island that I got to visit with Grams in the summer of 1996. I was 15 at the time, when my mom, my cousin, Grams, and I went on an adventure through Greece that culminated in a stay on the island of Tinos. This trip was hilarious and eye-opening and supremely memorable – the history, the food, the cute boys in the village square, beaches, fake nose rings, naked statues, Nescafé frappe, multi-generational cat-calls, the fact that Grams could strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone, and the time she felt compelled to give our Athenian taxi driver an in-depth description of public transit in the San Francisco Bay Area. Suffice it to say – that trip was one of the best experiences of my life, and Grams is right in the center of it.

Grams, being awesome, in Tinos, Greece.

Grams was the closest person to me that I have lost, and I miss her terribly. But over these past months, within this mixture of sadness in missing her and joy in remembering the amazing person she was, I do what makes me feel closest to her: I knit. Each stitch (formed Continental-style, just like she taught me) feels like a little tiny part of her legacy, a little part of her living on. And in those first days of losing her, the Tinos Cowl is where that energy, and that legacy, was directed. The pain, the joy, the memory of her, they were all knit directly into those slipped stitches and stripes. And the Tinos Cowl will carry those feelings for me forever.

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You can find Serenity at these shops:
McKnittey.com - Online only
Amazing Threads - Maple Grove, MN
Bliss Yarns - Brentwood, TN
Knit One Purl Two - Rockford, IL
Knitting Store - Oceanside, NY
Knitting to Know Ewe - Newton, PA
Needle Tree - Greenville, SC
Spun - Ann Arbor, MI
Woolly & Co - Birmingham, IL and online
Yarn Garden - Charlotte, MI

We have more Serenity in the dye pots for Loops and Yarn Kandy, and more shops so check back for updates.

As always, you can place a special order at your local Anzula shop for any of our yarns, we will dye it just for you and send it to your LYS.

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Stay up to date on all things Hilary:

website - http://www.theyarniad.com/
Ravelry - https://www.ravelry.com/designers/hilary-smith-callis
Rav Group - https://www.ravelry.com/groups/the-yarniads-symposium
Twitter - https://twitter.com/theyarniad?lang=en
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/Bjxr0R4HW_6/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=i9gw4iqul4bz