alpaca yarn - Flying Goat Farm

Posted on July 26, 2021March 19, 2022 by Lisa Check — Leave a comment

Small, Quick Projects for the Dog Days of Summer

It’s hot. I think it’s hot just about everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. My friends in LA and Oregon have been talking about trees becoming sunburned and the forests dying. And we here on the East Coast are stuck in the heat and humidity of summer.

Knitting becomes more of a chore in summer. Even so, I feel like I need to have the rhythmic motion of slip, wrap, slide of each stitch to let my mind get into a flow and to let my mind wander. I don’t want a big project that is sitting in my lap. I want something small and light.

I have some perfect little cowls that fit the bill. They are quick. They are smallish. The yarn is Oh-So Soft and gives your fingers joy just touching it.

What are they? They are my Zephyrette Cowls. Zephyrette is our signature yarn. It is made from soft baby alpaca fleece with long, strong silk and the king of all softness: Cashmere. Alpaca is cool to the touch. So it is a good choice for summer knitting.

There are 3 choices of pattern: Lacy Cowl, Interlaken and Rivulet.

Here’s how you get a kit for a project. First, go here and pick a color of zephyrette. There are so many choices. You just need one skein. Then go here and pick a pattern. Click on the shopping cart and check out. Your new project will be out in the mail to you and you will get it within days.

Posted on July 14, 2021March 19, 2022 by Lisa Check — 1 Comment

Thoughts on Summer Knitting

This summer has been really weird, right? No matter where you live in the US and probably even in the world. There have been crazy heat waves, crazy storms and early hurricanes and even historic droughts in the West.

Here in the East we have had the hot and muggy days for a couple of weeks now. It is hard to think about knitting, but even so my fingers are itching to pick up the needles and my mind really needs the “down time” that knitting provides. The quiet space where I am making and I can stop thinking. Does that happen to you?

So I was thinking about what I would like to knit or spin in this heat. And what jumped into my head is alpaca. Alpaca is cool to the touch. I don’t quite know what causes the phenomena. But it is true. Our Zephyrette yarn is baby alpaca, cashmere and silk. It is perfect for summer knitting. I have designed 4 cowls with this yummy yarn. The patterns come in a variety of skill levels and all take just one skein of yarn! These cowls make great, quick gifts too!!

I was also thinking that small projects that wouldn’t cover my lap would be a nice thing to make during the summer. So I’m thinking a cowl or mittens or a hat even socks could fit the bill.

Let’s make some great alpaca based projects while the summer is hot!

Posted on November 14, 2017 by Gusman — Leave a comment

Fixing Mistakes

Have you ever realized just how hard it is to proofread your own work? When I was teaching, I would suggest that the kids read their work backwards, word by word. Because we already know what it is we wanted to say, but did we really say it? That’s the tricky part. Now that I’m designing shawls and other knitwear, I think that I’ve gone over it all with a fine tooth comb, but every once in a while I write the wrong symbol. (Have you noticed how knitting patterns really are written in a different language?) So with my new shawl there is typo that will change the look of the shawl. At the end of each row I wrote “k2, kfb”. That’s wrong, because I had a yarn over increase, not that Kfb increase. So if you have the Raddiant Shawl pattern, please make that change on your pattern.

At Rhinebeck, I ran into Lar Rains. He is the designer of the Exponential Shawl. He also had a pretty significant omission in this pattern. I have the errata for anyone who has bought this pattern. Unfortunately, I don’t know who you are. So please email me at goat…… and I’ll send you the fix for this kit.