The new kid on the blog

Greetings, earthlings!

I'm Kim and I'm the newest voice on the Anzula blog- so if things go from 0-Quirky real fast, you can probably pin most of that on me. I've been a pretty huge fangirl of Anzula for about 5 years now, and have had the pleasure of traveling with Sabrina on a few cross country road trips (The delirium is REAL) so I'm pretty familiar and obsessed with Anzula's line of luxury fibers for those of us who like the super-fancy cast-on.

I started out as many of us did, by bugging my poor grandmother relentlessly to teach me how to crochet. Finally, she gave in and pacified me with a hook and teeny-tiny ball of leftovers from a baby blanket or flouncy toilet paper roll lady and I was, ahem, hooked. Well, at least for that afternoon. 8 year old attention spans, whaty'gonnado?

I picked the hobby back up in college while I worked a receptionist job that had a lot of downtime and not enough work to fill it with. Instead of sitting up front with a gossip mag I crocheted my first afghan. I tweaked it as I went, based off of this Skullholders pattern, then found historical pirate flags and mapped them out on graph paper with pencil. I didn't use much math- which accounts for the edges not really matching up and there being a pretty major difference in the gauge between the first square and the last one.

I've gotten better at gauge since this photo was taken... and photography. Yikes! Hello, bare mattress?

Crochet was my jam, I was a machine. Oh, it's Christmas? Congrats, you all are getting coasters that look like lime wedges. Hey! It's your birthday? I hope you like the taste of amigurumi cupcakes!

Then I met Sabrina while standing in line for a food truck, and got sucked out of the world of Wal-Mart yarn and down the rabbit hole of Anzula. I learned to knit in the truck with Sabrina on a trip to Ohio, she dictated what I should do next from the driver's seat and I would do it. I was successfully doing entrelac before we were out of Utah.

Entrelac on the road. And the yarn is Haiku in Poppy. How I remembered that, I'll never know.

Eventually, I moved onto another job- cause a writer's gotta write, write, write, write, write, but the surprisingly glamorous world of indie yarn has stuck with me. It's been 4 years since I worked full time at Anzula, and the growth the company has experienced has been awe inspiring. Even though I wasn't physically helping to produce the product and get it out the doors anymore, I still had this very strong sense of pride for Anzula.

Three across in the truck all the way to Portland. You gotta love what you're doing to get that snuggly with each other!

So fast forward to two Tuesdays ago- picture this. I'm actually sitting on my bed, my baby asleep for the first time in what feels 12 months and staring at my long abandoned collection of hexipuffs for my Beekeeper's Quilt. I'm thinking "Ugh, I wish I had time to actually finish projects and get some more one-on-one with my real true love- cashmere." when I get a text from Sabrina asking if I'd be interested in blogging.

Show of hands, who else has a billion jars, vases and other receptacles around their house filled with their WIP hexipuffs?

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, of course I said yes! I can only sneak in so many hours a week to knit and crochet, but writing is different! I can do that without worrying about a tiny baby pulling the needles out of my project and having to pick up stitches. There's a lot less cursing involved in holding a skein of yarn and harnessing its power to share with the world. Game-changing opportunity.

So you'll be hearing from me, hopefully frequently, and I'm excited to be able to get a toe back into the waters of the knitting scene again. Is there a topic you're interested in hearing about, a yarn you want to know more about, pattern ideas, close parallels drawn between worsted weight and your high school crush- hit me up in the comments and I'll do my best to make it happen!

xoxo!

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Short Row Knits by Carol Feller

Welcome everyone to the first stop on the Short Row Knits blog tour, kindly hosted by Anzula! Short Row Knits was published on the 15th of September and it can be purchased in both print and electronic formats, see here for purchase options.

I’m very excited to have this book published; I’m completely in love with short rows and use them in almost all my designs. This book really has been a labor of love; I started it nearly 2 years ago and I wanted to create a book that explored short rows in more depth than I’ve seen before. It moves from several different short row techniques right through to tutorials on different ways of actually using those techniques in your knitting. After all there’s not much use have the information if you don’t know where to use it!

I learn best by practicing rather than reading, so in addition to the technique sections, this book also has 20 patterns. Each pattern uses short rows in a different way. The type of short row used is detailed in each pattern and I’ve given little tips and suggestions along the way for anything that made knitting easier for me.

Lets take a look at the hat I designed for Anzula’s yarn; Limon. This hat uses Anzula’s Cricket yarn in color Avocado. This yarn has got a nice tight twist which is great for knitting hats as it can be knit nice and firmly. To keep the fabric firm the hat is also knit using a tight gauge on size 4 (3.5mm) needles. This gives you the structure you need for a hat and will help reduce stretching on the brim so it’ll keep fitting your head.

Limon is a side-to-side hat that uses Japanese short rows to create the generous beret shaping. When knitting a hat from side-to-side you are working a wedge shape that tapers at the crown and repeating it over and over again. If the stitch pattern at the brim doesn’t pull in then you will create a beanie shape but if you have a vertically compressed pattern at the brim you create a beret shape. That is what happens with Limon, the brim uses a slipstitch pattern that is very dense vertically which means that for the same number of rows the brim is much smaller than the body of the hat. I love the full beret shape this creates, its very flattering to wear.

I opted to use Japanese short rows for the brim. You are working many short rows one after the other and by using a series of Japanese short rows with the yarn loop held on a single strip of waste yarn it becomes very fast and intuitive to work. The hat begins with a provisional cast-on and when all of the wedges for your size are finished you end by grafting the live stitches at the end of your work with the provisional cast-on stitches at the very beginning.

Have you seen the great Cricket colors that you can knit your Limon in?

Anzula is offering a giveaway of Cricket yarn and a copy of the book. Leave a comment on the blog and let us know what color Cricket yarn you’ll knit your Limon in! Anzula will use a random number generator and announce the winner on September 25th below and on Facebook. Shipping to US and Canada only.

If you want to keep following along on our blog tour, the next stop is on September 21st with Knitspot.

And the winner is....

Well, we picked two winners. We just couldn't help ourselves. We had 32 participants, duplicate comments were not counted and used the random number generator at Random.org.

Congratulations to Bonnie and Susan!

Winner #1, Bonnie, drawn at 11:39 am, wins 2 skeins of Cricket in a colorway of her choice and a copy of Short Row Knits.

Winner #2, Susan, drawn at 11:42, wins 2 skeins of Cricket in a colorway of her choice.

Winners, please send us a message with your colorway choice by using our Contact Us form.

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Review: The Sexy Knitter's Tool Tin

We were thrilled when Sarah Wilson, The Sexy Knitter, invited us to have our yarns and spinning fibers featured on her tool tins. She generously sent us sample tins so we could try them out for ourselves.

I promptly chose my favorite and tossed it into my knitting bag. I've been carrying it around for just over a week and am pleased to say that the image is still securely adhered to the top and doesn't show any scratches. I also appreciated that the lid stays closed while in my bag and is still easy to open.

Here's what's inside:

Tape Measure
Scissors
5 Stitch Markers
Cable Needle
Double-Ended Crochet Hook (2 sizes)
3 Sewing Needles
Stitch Holder

Everything fits easily and there is even a magnet at the top of the lid to hold the needles in place, which I love. The whole thing is the size of an Altoids tin, so it even fits well in my sock sized project bags.

The tape measure is 60 in/150 cm, which is plenty for my size 18 body, but just barely long enough to measure my husband's chest. It definitely suffices for travel use.

Tiny scissors are tiny. They should make it through just about any security check. They handled all my trimming needs for the week and even though they are pretty tiny, I didn't have any trouble with them.

Can I tell you how much I adore these stitch markers? They are seriously cute, light weight, and more durable than you would expect. I tried to squish one. I probably could have, but it was much more difficult than I expected. I usually prefer the loopy style stitch markers, but I was pretty happy with these.

My favorite thing was the double-ended crochet hook. I crochet as well, so at home I always have hooks around, but not when I'm on the go. My project right now is garter stitch, so having this little beauty in my bag made a couple of dropped stitches much less of a headache.

Sarah has a special offer just for Anzula readers to make them an even better deal. Through September 1st, the code FriendsofAnzula is good for 20% off a purchase of $25.00 or more (wholesale listings and monthly collection excluded). Click here to visit The Sexy Knitter Etsy Shop. The tins are also available for wholesale, resale license not required, more information is available here.

Overall, I think The Sexy Knitter Tool Tins are a great buy. Everything you need in a tiny little box. So grab a project, your tool tin, and hit the road!

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