I will be visiting The Knitting Boutique this summer. The store entered my radar when I wandered into their amazing booth at an East Coast fiber event a couple of years ago. They had unique products, and even for fiber folk, were unusually friendly and fun to be around. That is saying something! They invited me to teach in their store sometime, and now we have a date. I will be participating in their “Famous Knitters” series, teaching on Aug. 8 and 9th, 2015.
Knitting Boutique created the Boutique Yarn line of beautiful fibers and colors created in the US. They partner with Sweitzer Mill farms in Pennsylvania, and the yarns are named for rivers in Maryland. As I named all of the projects in “Annetarsia Knits” for places that I love in my home state of Oregon, I completely relate to this, and love that they are honoring their state in this way.
The classes are not scheduled until August, which means that I have time to knit class samples from their yarn! The classes I am teaching are “Annetarsia: Be the Boss of your Intarsia”, and “Argyle Socks”. I knit the 3 bags for the “Be the Boss” class with the Anacostia Worsted. I have to tell you that the experience of knitting with this yarn was fantastic. It is an exceptionally bouncy, soft worsted weight yarn. I absolutely fell in love with it. The argyle socks are knit with the Anacostia fingering weight, which is also lovely. They send me three colors, and I couldn’t decide which colorway to use, so I made 3 socks, all with different main colors! The socks are knit directly from the class pattern, and the white one is not finished (no duplicate stitch, no seaming) so you can see what it looks like, fresh off the needles.
I re-knit class samples quite often, as they get lost and wear out. It keeps the classes fresh for me. Knitting them in this yarn was a great experience!
“Be the Boss of your Intarsia” samples. L to R: Flat stockinette, garter stitch, ITR (zipper closure)
Argyle socks class samples, Knitting Boutique Anacostia Fingering
I also ordered a sweaters worth of Sassafrass worsted, to make a sweater that I can wear when I visit the Boutique. I am using the same basic design taught in “Be the Boss”, so that any student who takes the class can knit this sweater if they would like to. Here are the yarn butterflies set out to become the back of the sweater. My color inspiration was “garden at dusk”, and I think this will be cozy, soothing and very pretty!
