My friends at Roost had these amazing vintage type set trays used to house type set for printing presses.  I instantly fell in love and creative juices started churning.  Fresh off my burst of color in creating the latest shop display, I created this!

It was a blast to create, finding colors around the shop, looking for bits and bobs to add depth and interest.

Hope this bit of color inspires you in either your knitting or crochet or to use yarn in other ways to create are or objects of interest around your home.  This is on display right now in the front window if you’re local and walking by.  Soon it will have a place of honor on the wall.

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Anyone want to try something inspired by this poem?

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This weekend we spent a bit of time up at our family’s new vacation home in New Hampshire on Bow lake.  It’s a beautiful spot.  This weekend I didn’t get any knitting done, because much of the time was spent working on various projects, but I did show my mom the sights around the lake.

On the far side of the lake from our family’s house is a woman who lives in a beautiful old farm house edged with the stone walls that are so prevalent around the lake. She has the most beautiful organic vegetable gardens in the summer and a wonderful flock of sheep!

You can just make out the lake through the trees behind these little lovelies.  I am going to have to try to make friends with this women during our future visits!

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Have you guys heard about this new game for the Nintendo Wii, Kirby’s Epic Yarn?  Interesting to see yarn enter the video gaming worlds as a super cool visual element.

That’s Kirby “made” of yarn.

Kirby and the “yarn” in action in the game.

I’m not a gamer myself, but I’ve been known to play the Wii with my niece and nephew a few times.  I’m hoping they’ll have this game when we visit over Thanksgiving.

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We’re scaring up a little Halloween inspiration for you today! Check out this AMAZING knit work from Ben Cuevas called “Transcending the Material” exhibited at the Wassaic Project Summer Music and Arts Festival.

Isn’t this installation amazing!

Truly amazing! This is where we find inspiration today. Where are you finding it?

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As you know, we LOVE Blue Sky Alpaca around these parts.  Blue Sky is one of the few remaining companies that send along color cards with short snip-its of each color so we can get an accurate sense of each color in each yarn.

Blue Sky recently sent along these beautiful new boxes full of new color cards.  Since space is always at a premium, we decided it was out with the old cards and in with the new ones.  Well waste not want not.  Michele, one of our fiber consultants, set out to figure out what these little bits of yarn could become.  Check it out!

Michele was just brilliant here.  She used each short piece of yarn “spit splicing” them together to form one long chain of multicolored yarn.  Another brilliant move here was that she used the bulkiest yarn on big needles at the brim of the hat and then slowly moved down yarn gauge and needle size to shape the hat without having to decrease a stitch until the very end!

This is one of the softest coziest hats.  This hat is not only great inspiration on how to leverage different weights of yarn in one garment and leverage the gauge to help in shaping, BUT it’s also a beautiful study in the Blue Sky Alpaca yarn line.  Not only is each yarn wonderful on it’s own but they work so beautifully together.

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It’s the Witch City and we’re in full swing.  Get spooky with us!

Halloween in Salem is whole season from October first through the big day.

We think it’s time to knit a spell around these parts.  How about you?

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One of the things I pride myself on is my eco-sensibility.  In our house we recycle every bit we can, we use eco friendly cleaners, buy locally, eat organic and we try to uphold the same principles in the shop. We use eco-friendly cleaners, we try to carry as many eco-friendly yarns as possible and we also compost our shredded paper.

Now you can get involved too.  I’ve caught wind that folks are also composting their yarn scraps! Makes sense right? It’s natural, it’s biodegradable, why not?!

Cut up the scraps before putting them in.  It helps to speed up the biodegrading process and doesn’t get tangled when you have to turn it. Make sure you only put in natural fibers like cottons and wools.

PS: If you have open-topped container in the backyard–the birds will take the scraps to build their nests.  You’ll see bits of yarns in the trees.

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As if we devoted sock knitters didn’t already have an obsession with socks, the world of fashion has finally come over to our side.

I don’t know about you, but in my travels most encounters with “store bought”  socks have largely been around novelty socks and much harder to find beautiful socks, knee socks, fashion socks, those that look great with a skirt or a pair of boots.

Socks are popping up all over the runways this season.  Great news for hand knitters.  I think we’ll find greater inspiration as we seek to knit up little gems. This season will see some amazing returning sock yarns like Zauberball and lovely new ones that will make you weak in the knees.

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Continuing with our trend of interviewing designers that we love and inspire us, we set out to talk to Olga Buraya-Kefelian, the designer behind the fabulous book Ori Ami Knits. Check out our interview and a peak inside the book below!

Many of us in the shop have loved Habu Textile for so long, followed your designs on Ravelry, and are super excited about the publication of your new book Ori Ami Knits, which features some Habu yarns.  For those that are not familiar, can you give a little background on yourself?

Gladly, Courtney. My name is Olga Buraya-Kefelian and I am a knitwear designer born and raised in Belarus, who have been living, knitting, publishing and self-publishing my designs for almost 5 years now. As of this spring, I am also a co-author of a self-published title along with a talented photographer and graphic designer Vanessa Yap-Einbund and a contributor designer Kirsten Johnstone  - named Ori Ami Knits: Fiber geometry. A collection of innovative versatile designs of womens wear using alternative fibers of Habu Textiles.

What draws you to the Habu Textiles as a line to design with?

Habu textiles have been in American market for a decade now, in recent years with knitting making such huge comeback and many of us adopting it as a lifestyle. With a great  choice of conventional fibers at hand I became drawn to unconventional. For several years I have studied the fibers and their behavior and  it made me wonder how much more is out there available to a knitter and what amazing garments those fibers can produce. I got a feeling yarns from Habu Textiles gave me of wider range for creativity, one may feel that these fibers are expandable, array of exotic and unique in combination with natural gives you a choice for creating your own yarn that would suit the project perfectly. So depending on what you envision for the fabric in the final garment to do, can be easily achieved with Habu textiles yarns.

Can you tell readers a bit about the book and how it came to be? You also have a unique publishing model via digital subscriptions.  Can you talk a little about that?

For a while now, I have been approached by various publishing houses regarding working together. I have gave it a reasonable amount of thought and have had colleagues who shared their experience and feeling about it. Idea for self-publishing was lingering, but having noticed fellow knitwear designer friends taking a chance like Ysolda Teague, me and Vanessa have decided to do some extensive research. We chose things that were important for a customer and for production and at the same time satisfy our goals. I truly believe that publishing houses and editors are doing a lot of work trying to make your book the best, but we just went ahead ourselves and in the end I have gained even more respect for those in the trade.

I think sometimes knitters and crochets are intimidated about handling unusual fibers.  Can you talk about some ways in which to use or approach some of the more non-traditional knitting and crochet fibers?

Habu textiles provides you with a palette when you get their catalog of yarn snippets, you can imagine yourself an artist, you play with various pairing and swatch, there is a lot fiber exploration taking place, if you know what you want the knit fabric to do and it is achievable. And yet it is so accessible to anyone, yes it is a little more independence and work vs just buying yarn and pattern and making it up. But with Habu Textiles even though you maybe using same pattern, your yarn combination can be personalized and unique, that gives any knitter a designer feel to their finished garment.

Thinking outside the box is not always easy, I always suggest making a swatch, wash, pleat, play with possibilities. It is not necessarily that conventional garments would look great in experimental fibers, some work and some don’t. But please be more adventurous, in the end  you will be pleasantly surprised!

Where does your design inspiration come from?

I think this is always such a hard question to answer. To generalize it - life, things around me, architecture, natural setting. I am that person who is very observant and pays attention to details a great lot, I guess it comes from there. But also seeing people on the street, area your are in - other people’s creativity triggers your own, but the goal is to take it places further and create something that you love.

I LOVE Japanese craft books and design.  Can you recommend some of your favorite Japanese craft books or Japanese designers you admire?

I personally love Japanese stitch dictionaries that I collect, they refer to older forgotten resources and that is a great tool for a knitwear designer. I also admire Japanese sewing books, but I haven’t encountered that many I love. Pattern magic are my favorite series that provide me with a lot of inspiration. Designers who introduced world of Japanese fashion to the Westerners - Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto are still by far are my favorites. I had recently had a chance to visit their stores in Tokyo and they are utterly amazing, just breathtaking! Standing and staring just the way the dummies are dressed, the whole concept is different. And I like different. I am not brave enough to dress up entirely in avant garde attire, but I love to adapt the details of it into practical clothing. Balance is something that is very important.

What’s next?  Where do you see your designing going?

Being a designer is a non-stop creativity process, currently I am expanding my own line of patterns, so lots of knitting and writing, but I am also working on several designs with other yarn companies. Just several weeks ago I have released a design, which I am very excited about, it’s called Infinite loop and using Habu textiles yarn, it can be worn over 15 different ways and you can see it in a video that I made showing how to wear it.

Quick Facts:

On your iPod right now:

Florence and the machine - Dog days are over

If you were a yarn what yarn would you be?

I think I would be silk, smooth, drapey but sturdy.

Favorite place to knit:

My Ikea “Poang” chair with a lot of natural light.

Current project on the needles:

I have about 5, but on my lap right now I have a new design using pure linen.

Who taught you to knit?

My mother when I was 4.

You can purchase Ori Ami Knits here.

Please note: All photos copyright Ori Ami Knits and used with their permission.

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