Trunk Show Black Sheep Style and a Free Acorn

 Trunk Show With Photos: 

 Today Black Sheep at Orenco Opened its first trunk show with a lovely fibre artist, Malanie Dilworth.  Melanie owns Black Trillium Fibres.

  Her sense of color and yarn naming is nothing short of brilliant.  With colorways like Beach Glass, Butter Beer and Portland Rose who can help but fall in love with her yarns.

 Malanie came in at 10am on the dot with two tubs full of wool/silk and wool/nylon sock yarns.  We literally filled a trunk with part of these yarns.  The remainder went down on the shelf below. Melanie stayed and hung out with us for the morning talking to customers and knitting.  I leaned a lot about the dying process from her and she has promised to help us run a yarn dying or painting class in January!

  Melanie also brought in two shawls to display.  The one in the back is a Color Affection Shawl by Veera Valimaki. in Black Trillium's Merilon sock yarn.  The colors are Inkwell, Good Egg and Charcoal. The shawl in the front is: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. This yarn is Black Trillium's Pebble Silk in Claret.

Melanie went home in the afternoon but she left her shawls and yarns for us all this week.  Make sure and stop by to touch them, look at them or even take some home to keep! 

The Acorn

Over the past two weeks among many projects making slow progress I experimented with a little acorn pattern (OK a lot of experimentation).  My results are this knitting pattern to share.  As you work on these little gems remember that no two acorns look alike so experiment and do not follow the directions exactly.  My best results were with sock yarn but I made plenty with both worsted weight scraps and sport weight.  Each are fun and unique.  

 My favorites are these two made from Cascade Heritage sock yarns.  The one on the left has its color change on a purl row and the one on the right does it on the knit row.  I like that one has a little shorter nut portion and nobbly transition from the nut to the cap.

 Six knitted Acorns, seven real acorns, a knitted Oak leaf and a knitted Aspen leaf

 The brown acorns were made from worsted weight Cascade 220 in dark brown and the caps are from Cascade sport weight in a heathered brown color.

 The variety of nut and cap shapes and sizes are fascinating to look at and even more fun to try and duplicate by varying the number of knitted rows in each color of yarn.

 The Aspen leaf is knitted following (well attempting anyway) call Playing in Leaves by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer .  It is available on Ravelry.  This pattern is not for the faint of heart.  It is full of yarn overs, knit three together, short rows and counting!

A close-up of the various brown acorns

 All of the acorns (knitted and real) together.

The Oak Leaf is a free one offered by Nicky Epstein.  Hers is as a luggage tag (which I love).  It is really nice to knit up and using sock yarn and small double pointed needles it comes out nearly the same size as the oak leaves off my tree.

Needles:  Two size small size double points (I used size 1).

Gauge:  It really doesn’t matter.

This is a very free form activity.  Adjust the number of rows you knit each time to create acorns that are as individual as they are in real life.

1. Cast on 1

2. Knit in the front and back of the stitch (2 stitches total)

3. Slide knitting to the end of the double pointed needle (to create an I-chord)

4. Knit in the front and back of each stitch (4 stitches total)

5. Slide knitting to the end of the double pointed needle.

6.  k1, Knit in the front and back of the remaining stitches (7 stitches)slide knitting to the end of the double pointed needle

7. k1, knit in the front and back of the remaining stitches  (13 stitches)

8. Turn to wrong side of knitting and purl across. From now on you will knit back and forth with a wrong side (purl) and right side (knit).

9. *Knit 1, K front and back, K1**.  Repeat * to ** until end of row. (19 stitches)

10. Purl across.

11. Repeat row 10 across (28 stitches).

12. Purl across.

13. Change yarn to color choses for acorn cap.

14. K1, Knit front and back across remaining stitches. (41 stitches)

15. P1, k1 across back.

16. K2 together, P2 together, repeat across. Knit 1.

17. P1, K1, repeat across. 

18.  P1, K1, repeat across (alternating stitches to form seed stitch)

19. Pi, K1, repeat across.

20. K1, P2 together, repeat across.

21. K2 together, P2 together, repeat across. (7 stitches remain)

22. K2 together, P2 together, K2 together (4 stitches remain)

23. Slide to end as if to made an ichord.

24. knit 1, knit 2 together, knit 1 (3 stitches remain)

25.  Make 2 inches of I-chord using these three stitches knit and purl in a random fashion to create a bumpy branch look.  

If you try one do send me a picture.  I will put up photos as they come in.