The mighty OFFF is September 26th and 27th at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds in Canby, Oregon.
This year’s featured craft is knitting, and the featured breed is the Pygora goat. And of course, local dyer Blue Moon Fiber Arts is a sure bet for “most crowded booth.”
Bring your tents, your wallets, and all the patchouli oil you can wear! (I kid because I love.)
Tahki Stacy Charles has announced their newest yarn, Montana. Montana is an interesting new edition to Tahki Yarns’ new eco-friendly Terra Collection yarn line.
Montana is a 100% “unprocessed wool roving in a jumbo 100g hank.” Tahki blends natural undyed sheep’s wool with low-impact dyes to create a selection of natural heathered shades. Montana’s packaging is made of recycled paper, which is printed with vegetable-based inks.
From the Littleton Independent comes word of the World’s Biggest Sock-To-Be. The gigantic WIP currently resides at A Knitted Peace, in Littleton, Colorado.
The Giant Sock is making its way around North America. It has already stopped over in Canada, Rochester NY, and Atlanta GA. On Labor Day, it will be sent to its next stop in Alaska.
According to the news story, the completed sock will be 13-14 feet long. It’s taking aim at the current world record-holding hand-knit sock, which was completed by the Sheep Farmers Association of Austria in 2005.
Anchorage Daily News knitting blogger Catherine Hollingsworth has published a great article with tips on how to win the state fair.
I have to admit, I’ve always wanted to win a blue ribbon at the state fair for some of my knitting.
Of course, the first step is to actually enter the fair in the first place. Haven’t quite gotten there yet.
Steven Wells has published a new article, taking aim at knitting during the Olympics.
With this, his third article (see also: 1st, 2nd) taking the piss out of knitters, Wells has elevated trolling to performance art. Knitters around the world are taking offense to Wells’ snipes and jabs. Although so far, said offense is largely confined to the inevitably-epic Ravelry thread.
“Pretending to take offense at the inoffensive” has long been a comedy standard [nsfw]. It’s difficult to fault Wells for continuing to hit the same note, considering how effective it’s been at exposing the knitting community as largely humorless.
The Knitting Daily website has published two wonderful tutorials for tricky sock-related techniques: the Eastern cast-on, and a stretchy bind-off, the lace (or decrease) bind-off.
Lovely!
Clothing manufacturer Icebreaker has launched a “chain of custody” style tracing program for the merino wool used in their products, called Baacode.
When you buy an item of Icebreaker clothing, you can type the special code into their search engine to find information about the sheep station from which the wool was sourced. (If you want to check it out, the Baacode site will give you a demo code.)
Between the movement towards “small yarn” and concerns over yarn’s carbon footprint, the Baacode program is a natural for the hand-knitting community. I wonder if Icebreaker would consider diverting some of its merino wool to yarn?
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Interweave Knits has put up its Fall 2008 issue preview, along with its suite of free web-only patterns. (The Sidelines Top, a generously-sized top with slimming accents, has already become a Ravelry favorite!)
Atlanta-area resident Cassie is knitting the entire first level of Super Mario Brothers in scarf form. Follow along on The Mario Scarf blog!
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On July 21st, NPR’s Marketplace aired a story about the decline of knitting, as marked by the closure of knitting stores. The blow-back has been both ferocious and predictable, from Ravelry threads to comments on the article itself.
Naturally, it’s a mistake to correlate “yarn purchase rate” with “interest in knitting.” Most knitters have more yarn than they need for the project at hand.
Buying yarn often becomes a hobby in and of itself. This eventually leads to SABLE, a state so common that it’s been given its own acronym. (“Stash Amassed Beyond Life Expectancy.” Even if the knitter stopped buying yarn today, at their average knitting rate, they would not be able to knit the entire stash before they died.)
The “knit from your stash” trend is definitely on the rise. (Let’s face it: collectively, we’ve spent too much money on yarn.) With the economy and general belt-tightening, I think it’s reasonable to predict that yarn sales will slowly decline. Call it a “market correction.”
The most baffling statement made by the Marketplace article has to be “the [knitting] fad has passed, because those still in the market for needles and yarn are buying most of their wares online.”
That doesn’t mean that the fad has passed. It… means that knitters are buying yarn online.
Do you have actual, researched stats on the success/failure/open/close rate of physical yarn stores? Send us a tip!