Holiday Knitting Ideas-Week 4

One of my favorite gift ideas for this time of year is fingerless mittens.  I am knitting a pair of Fetching fingerless mitts in our Mountain Colors 4/8's Wool for a holiday exchange with my Fiber (knit, spin, weave, etc) Guild.  In past years I have knit at least 15 pairs of these for friends, family, gift exchanges, etc.  They are always well received and don't take very long to make!  I've used 4/8's, Twizzle and Mountain Goat...they all work great.

Another easy pattern is the Lacey Jeannette Wristers.  

Lacey Jeannette Wristers

They are knit with our Jeannette yarn (65% Cashmere/35% Silk).  Talk about a super soft pair of mitts....YUM.

Another fun possibility is the Sailor's Rib Fingerless Mitts.

Sailor's Rib Fingerless Mitts

I knit these in Mountain Colors Twizzle.  Note how the strand of silk in this yarn creates a wonderfully tweedy effect!!

It is not to late to knit several pairs of fingerless mitts for your holiday gift list!!  I'm off to work on mine.

Holiday Knitting Ideas-Week 3

This week we are looking at scarves.  Here in Western Montana scarves get a lot of use during the cold winter months.  I personally LOVE to knit scarves and I have a very large bag of them.  I am still looking for the perfect way to organize them and I would welcome suggestions!!  But I still want to knit more.  They make great gifts and are such portable projects for folks on the go.  And they are a really fun way to try out a new-to-you yarn!

At String Theory Yarn Company in Illinois they designed Life is Good, a super-easy scarf that knits up with one skein of our Mountain Colors Jeannette yarn (65% Cashmere, 35% Silk). Yum. That would be so, so soft. And the clever little place to tuck the tail is perfect!

Life is Good

Early in the Fall Diana and I took a workshop from Sally Melville.  It was amazing.  One of the many designs she shared with all of us was her new Lace-Meets-Leaf scarf.

Lace-Meets-Leaf

This scarf uses a single skein of fingering weight yarn.  We knit one up in our Crazyfoot yarn (colorway Harmony Mallard) and everyone who sees it thinks it is great. The tails wrap around and hold the scarf in place. I plan to knit this scarf for sure!!

Scarves are in fashion...everywhere I go someone is wearing a beautiful scarf...so knit one for yourself or a friend ....there is still time to finish one for the holidays!!

And the winner is....

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:53Powered by RANDOM.ORG
 So I have counted the posts (didn't count the duplicates) and the winner of our contest is.....
Francie.   Congratulations and I will send you a pm on Ravelry too.  You can select your favorite Colorway, Solitary color or Harmony color and we will dye your 6 skeins of Mountain Goat!
Thanks to everyone who entered!!
======Update=====  I entered the correct number into the random number generator but it doesn't show up in the part I pasted above...and I can't make it paste in correctly.  But I really did pick the correct number range!!

Last call for contest entries!!

You only have until the end of today...Weds, November 14th to enter our drawing for 6 skeins of Mountain Goat (see previous post about November Knits)!!

I will draw a winner first thing in the morning (I am NOT staying up until midnight..but I will be up by 530am Mountain Time).

Good luck!!

Holiday Knitting Ideas- Week 2

The knitting needles are clicking and the holiday knitting is going strong at Mountain Colors.  I have several projects under way and several more I need to start.  Diana and her daughter-in-law are planning to make yoga socks for a few friends!

Mindful Yoga Socks

Diana designed these lovely Mindful Yoga Socks and she is sharing the free pattern with you here. It isn't yet up on Ravelry.  Meanwhile we found these Yoga Socks that can be knit with our Crazyfoot yarn. The Crazyfoot can be thrown in the washer and dyer so that would be very practical!! 

The Simple Yoga Socks pattern is really nice and it calls for our Bearfoot yarn.  They would be really nice on your feet during a cold spell and certainly a GREAT gift for a special friend!

Simple Yoga Socks

Here is a picture of the Rough Sea Shawl that we mentioned last week.  Have you started yours yet? 

I am off to cast on my project this evening!!

Rough Sea Shawl

November Knits and some FREE yarn

After a bit of confusion about the date of our blog tour post, we are here to take our turn on this fun group of postings.  November Knits is a lovely new book with many beautiful designs. Kate and Courtney have done a fantastic job!

We were thrilled when we saw that the cover sweater, Burdock Cardigan,  uses our Mountain Goat yarn. The yarn was dyed in one of our Solitary Solids (Olive) and the sweater looks like a very comfortable, easy to wear design. 

Whenever a new book arrives at the studio our dyers, office gals, etc pour over the pictures and projects. If several of the projects are flagged as ones to be knit SOON we know a book will be a real hit.  Such is the case with this book.  I want to knit the Market Jacket, someone else loves the Palomino Mittens, the Bozeman Jacket caught everyone's eye...we live in Montana and Bozeman is only a few hours south of where we live! The Trefoil Cardigan reminded us of sweaters we had a "few" years back. Fun.

To celebrate this beautiful book and the wonderful Burdock Cardigan we are going to give away enough yarn (6 skeins of Mountain Goat) to one lucky person.  It can be the color of your choice...a Solitary Solid, a subtle Harmony blend or one of our many colorways.  Just post a comment and we will use a random number generator to select the winner.

Be sure to leave your Ravelry name in the comment so we have a way to contact the lucky winner!!  The winner will be selected on Wednesday, November 14th.

Happy knitting.

Holiday Knitting ideas- Week 1

Here in Western Montana we spent 10 weeks this Fall with extreme amounts of smoke from forest fires that were burning nearby.  It seems like September and October were the months that never happened!!  So now it is November and the holidays are fast approaching.  By our calculations we have just over 7 weeks of knitting time left!

To encourage ourselves...as well as you...we have been looking at designs online and found some great ones that will work with our yarns!  This week we are looking a shawls and shawlettes (is there a better word for these small scarves?).

If you have plans to knit a larger shawl, check out Prieta's Rough Sea Shawl on Ravelry. It is lovely and will work up perfectly in Mountain Colors Bearfoot or Crazyfoot.  Any shawl that calls for Fingering weight yarn will work with these two yarns. 

Want a shawl that uses our Winter Lace wool/silk lace weight yarn?  Annis can be knit in the full size seen in the photo OR there is a mini-version too. The Swallowtail Shawl is a beautiful design.  I am a "new" lace knitter and I finished my Swallowtail . It is light and soft and pretty.

Want a triangular scarf sized shawl (shawlette) in fingering weight yarn? 

Larch by Rue is a beautiful design.  There are also MANY other scarves that could be knit with Bearfoot or Crazyfoot. Each is lovely in a different way.

So grab your needles, some Mountain Colors yarn and create a wonderful gift for yourself or a friend.