Letters
Euroflax Color Party!
Dear Ann,
You and I are not much for trends. We like the things that we like. We like them a lot. The things we like do change, but in their own time.
One of the tastes we have shared for a long time is a fervent love of linen yarn, spun from the fibrous stalks of the flax plant. I can’t remember when I first discovered Euroflax linen yarn, but I remember that the linen love hit me right between the eyes. There are several patterns using Euroflax in our first book, published in 2006. I remember knitting up all of those samples in 2004 and 2005; so fun. Both of us continue to knit with linen today. It takes color like no other fiber. Linen garments and accessories last and last, getting softer with age, wear and laundering, but never ever wever pilling or stretching out of shape, or misbehaving in any way.
About the only thing I can say against linen is that when you’re winding it, it doesn’t want to stay in a ball. It wants to hang loose and limp, and get itself knotted up real tight if you’re not careful and orderly in your winding. It’s madness to wind linen yarn into a center-pull ball; linen needs to be in an old-fashioned hand-wound ball, like a child would make. Once you’ve got your balls of linen yarn wound up neatly, don’t throw them all into a bag and let them start unwinding and tangling. Keep them nice and quiet, and put one ball in your bag at a time.
All of a Sudden, It’s a Thing
Given our long, steadfast devotion to linen yarn, it was amusing and delightful to see linen all over the TNNA trade show in Columbus last weekend. Linen! Linen! Linen! It was like the world had just discovered linen, a fiber that goes back at least as far as the ancient Egyptians.
On the show floor, we saw several beautiful versions of pure linen yarns, including our beloved Euroflax, which still has the biggest and best palette. We also saw too many linen blends to count. Linen blended with merino, with silk, with alpaca, and even with cashmere. Each one more toothsome than the next. The animal fibers add warmth and softness to linen, and linen contributes its amazing strength and swing. In some yarns, constructed with the linen and the wool as separate plies, the two fibers take up the dye differently, yielding beautiful shading. It’s mesmerizing to look at.
After looking at all that linen at TNNA, I was dying to get home to my own little stash of linen goodness.
Three sets of Euroflax Mini Skeins, fresh out of the shop.
[Sigh of contentment.]
My miniskein colorways are:
Earth.
St. Lucia.
Santa Fe.
We’ve carried Earth in the shop since since Day One, but St. Lucia and Santa Fe are brand-new colorways, freshly picked out by for this summer by Melanie Falick.
First, We Wind the Slippery Little Devils
Job one: wind the Euroflax minis. SUCH FUN.
A true color party. (Yes, I did spend the afternoon winding skeins and playing with the stop-motion app. It’s called working, Ann. Gosh.)
I love the balance of brights and neutrals in these three sets.
The Perennial Question: What to Knit?
I’m hesitating about what to make with these 990 yards of linen goodness. I’m deeply drawn to make a super-generous version of the Dangling Conversation shawl I made last winter. I gave that one away because I knew in my heart that although it was the perfect colorway for me (Earth), and as close as I had ever gotten to the perfect summer scarf, I wanted it bigger and more dangly, so that it could hang down if necessary, and give my neck more breathing room. With just one set of miniskeins, the Dangling Conversation is a good-sized kerchief; with as many as 15, it will be the true summer schmattah of my dreams, long enough to blow in the breeze or double-wrap when the A/C gets blasty.
Other ideas are also beckoning. I happen to know that our friend Nell Ziroli has a stripey summer top pattern for Euroflax mini skeins on the stove; it will be coming soon. Am I a stripey summer top sort of person? Will it look as nice on me as it does on Nell?
Or: should I get three more sets of miniskeins, turn my collection of 15 minis into the full Super Mega Bundle (30 skeins), and make a Super Mega Linen version of Joji Locatelli’s new Starting Point wrap? (The Ravelry listing doesn’t yet have photos, as Starting Point is Joji’s Mystery Knitalong project, but the Instagram hashtag #startingpointmkal offers up scores of beautiful images of this stripey rectangular stole.) It’s an intriguing thought, but it wouldn’t exactly be mindless knitting, to have to figure out how to sort my miniskeins into five “colors,” and then split them to make the two matching sections of the shawl. But it’s fun to think about.
While I ponder, I’ll treat my miniskeins like a coffee-table objet d’art, and get a start on my Granito pullover. (Which, in Manos Milo, also has linen in it. Linen is a thing!)
Love,
Kay
It’s so great to have an opportunity to jump into this conversation, which was left dangling… Ages ago I commented on one of Ann’s posts. It preceded your (Kay’s) post on the Dangling Conversation scarf. It included photos from the first Field Guide, (p 23) of Ann’s lovely linen sample piece. I said it looked like it would make a lovely wrap, and wondered if she would share her pattern. Long story short – I purchased two sets of the Earth colorway, and I DID make myself a wrap, loosely based on that photo. I haven’t yet entered it on Ravelry, but did try to enter a photo on the Lounge, but I can’t figure out how. I love all your ideas for linen, and can’t wait to see what you decide to do, and I love the new mini-set colorways!
Earth is definitely “my” colorway, and I really want to see pictures of your wrap! 🙂
Oh Kay, you Temptress! you know I had to order the Super Mega Bundle, didn’t you? Now I need to figure out a glorious large wrap pattern for my lovely linen.
Speaking of linen, I recently figured out that I will never find the quality of linen bed sheets I yearn for in contemporary outlets, so I headed to Etsy and am now the delighted owner of 100-year-old French linen sheets and pillowcases. The texture, softness, and quality of these linens is not to be believed until you experience them in person. I love that everything is mismatched, with hand-embroidered monograms, none of which are of my initials.
And I spent no more than I would have for modern high end cotton sheets.
I used the Forest mini skeins for a Dangling Conversation scarf and it is wonderful! Am making DC in the Sea combination for a friend now. About winding: Tried first with a ball winder – what a mess. Then wound by hand – still fussy, getting tangled as I knit. Got a nostepinne, and presto, neat center-pull balls with no dangling.
I have two bundles of Earth intended for a DC….but now I’m thinking I should see what Nell’s new top is all about…oh, the linen love!
OMG these three colorways together are RIGHT up my alley!!! I’ve just planned a late-September Cape Cod beach getaway, so I will defs need a big summer schmattah for wrapping. THANK YOU!! XOXO
This is exciting! For someone who can’t wear a wool it’s thrilling to find patterns for non wool items. Fabulous colors!
I used to be in that situation but somehow my wool sensitivity faded away. But back when I couldn’t wear wool, I got so tired of the heaviness of cotton, so linen was a huge thing.
Sigh, O coffee table objets d’art! I used to be able to do that until I adopted a cat who thinks All The Yarnzes Belong To Her. The other cats ignore artfully displayed yarn, but Mishka, um, decorates with them. Everywhere. Around every table and chair leg in the house. Also, on topic, I just bought the Dangling Conversation pattern and plan to make a linen one. Yay, another WIP (that I have to keep in a zipped opaque knitting bag or in a drawer — the above-mentioned cat even chews through plastic ziplock bags to get to the yarnzes) — as soon as I buy some linen!
You have to admire her passion!
Mesmerizing stop action. How many times is too many to watch that…?
Seeing Euroflax in all those colors brings to mind one name: Kaffe Fassett! Kay? Kay??? Kay??!??? Bueller?????
gosh, I’m hankering after those pretty colors. love the juicies with the neutrals, very yummy, very MDK!
I wonder if some of linen’s current popularity isn’t from a surge in weaving. I see kitchen towels.
Although I was pathetic and took NO pictures at TNNA, the linen combo yarns really grabbed me. And then, on the flight home, I sat next to a shop owner working in a linen/merino fingering weight yarn. It’s fate, I tell you, fate. I have plans for the mini skein set I bought from MDK last year to mix with a solid linen for a gradient yoke sweater. We’ll see when that happens!
Oh, the new color sets! Oh, the old color sets! You temptresses, these are irresistible. Your mini-skeins have fostered a linen love affair for me.
I immediately fell in love with the mini skeins of Euroflax so I ordered the Super Mega Bundle! Like you do. I don’t know what I will do with all of it but I expect to make significant inroads when I knit the Ashley Skirt from Interweave’s Knitting Daily show. I just need to pick up some black Euroflax. It’s going to be beautiful