AnsonHauenstein

RHINEBECK 2017 - My Saturday Sweater, Rye & Rum Punch ! Wandering around the bluffs in Scotland last summer, Jill Draper mentioned to me that she was going to be doing a little partnership with Rachel Atkinson of Daughter of a Shepherd yarns , starting with Rhinebeck this year.  Now, if you aren't familiar with both of these guys, you may not realize how fantastic a match this is, but let me tell you it's a good thing we weren't on the edge of a bluff when Jill told me, because I literally lost my footing I was so excited! Both of these women are incredible voices in the world of wool and in keeping farming and farmers and sheep doing what they've been doing for years.  They know fiber and they know animals, and they value the people who work so hard to make yarn available to us. And, of course both of them make fantastic, beautiful yarn. So, to celebrate this partnership, Kirsten Kapur and I each set about designing something that would feature a combination o...

Some yarn is just meant to be shared.  And that's what my latest pattern, Blended Scotch , is all about. This pattern comes from the love I have for our community and a desire to do something to honor the connection we have with our knitting friends. Thanks to the internet, many of us live in different states and have very different lives from our knitting besties, which makes us get creative about our adventures. For the past 10+ years, my fiber people have become some of my closest friends and I can't even put into words how much I value the conversations and travels, and shared knitting and fantastic experiences we've had over the years.  SO...  When I was up in New Hampshire visiting Ellen Mason, who is one of my favorite knitting people, we went down into her magical studio and she pulled out this gorgeous yarn she'd been working on with Tammy White, who is one of her favorite knitting people. The two of them had paired Ellen's Doc Mason Wool with Tammy'...

You know when you have a cheap, crappy sweater that you love but maybe you're a little sheepish about the fact that you love it?  Because we're knitters.  We should know better, right? Well, that's what happened here. I had a Forever 21 tunic that I'd bought at a thrift shop, and it was intended to be my house sweater.  Loose, plain, sleeveless and dark gray - there was nothing special about it, but I figured it would do the job and when I had to leave the house, it was way better than my dancing frogs tee shirt or Craig's big gray sweatshirt that I have a habit of stealing. The thing is, I was not prepared to love the thing.  It was the perfect shape, hid everything that needed to be hid, and just begged for some plaid tails to peek out (I wear lots of plaid tail shirts).  It was loose and effortless and it actually did look pretty good with almost everything, so I started wearing it out. And once that happened, I had to knit a better one. Fast forward to last ...