As many of you know, Shepherd’s Wool from Stonehedge Fiber Mill is perhaps one of the most loved staple yarns at the store. I am grateful that a lovely customer suggested looking into it before we opened the shop. Working with a family run operation in the US has been wonderful for us as a store, and you all love supporting a US made yarn. Recently Stonehedge has started expanding their yarn into other gauges. The newest is Shepherd’s Wool DK, also a 100% merino wool that knits up into an amazingly soft fabric. The ply on this one is a little different than it’s larger worsted weight cousin, and I have been just itching to play with it. When Kate Gagnon Osborn had her little daughter Charlotte last month, I found a great reason to finally knit with it. Kate is a fab knitwear designer and also co owner of Kelbourne Woolens, distributors of the Fibre Co yarns. It is darn hard to figure out what yarn to use when you are knitting for someone who owns a yarn company. I figured she probably didn’t need to see more of her own yarn. I didn’t want to knit in something that wasn’t a small independent company since theirs is also. And I wasn’t super concerned about machine wash-ability since I figured a knitter would understand hand washing:) Shepherd’s Wool DK seemed like the perfect choice. The pattern that I selected was Olivia Petit by Connie Chang Chinchio. For the 9 month size, I used just 2.5 skeins of the yarn. The color is Antique Rose – a lovely heather of coral and pinks. I paired it with some of our new hand painted wood buttons. I think it turned out just adorable!
We also just got a wonderful shop sample knitted up in Shepherd’s Wool DK. This would be a great Mother’s Day project, if you are still looking for a good one. We selected two wonderfully contrasting colors for the Filtering Daylight shawl. It is has a simple feather and fan border and the center lace panel isn’t too bad with a nice garter stitch section all around it. I think it would be a good television project, for a show you didn’t want to pay too much attention to 😉 This version took 3.5 skeins of the white color (420 yards) and one skein of the blue (120 yards), but it did take every single yard of the blue. (We bound off in white because of this). If you are worried about yardage or are a loose knitter, you might want to grab two skeins of your contrast color.