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Extreme Makeover For Knitting Show

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Well it’s a sign of the times when even television shows are getting extreme makeovers and “Needle Arts Studio with Shay Pendray” is the next contestant. They will be receiving a new name, new theme and a new set.

The 30 minute episodes which begin in July will be hosted by “Interweave Knits” Editor Eunny Jang, “Interweave Crochet” Editor Kim Werker, “Handwoven” Managing Editor and former Managing Editor of “Spin-Off,” Liz Gipson, along with Shay Pendray.

If you are more of a do-er than a watcher then “KnittingDailyTV ” vows to merge how-to television programming with the online community in an exciting new way.

KnittingDailyTV.com is the online companion to the TV show. The site will feature video clips, episode recaps, patterns, interactive discussion, local TV schedules, and more. In addition, “KnittingDailyTV ” will have a presence on MySpace and Facebook and episode previews will be available on YouTube.

The show will regularly invite the Knitting Daily online community to be a part of the program by incorporating segments such as “You Asked It,” where hosts answer everyday needle-arts questions of people in the online community or “You Made It,” featuring their handmade creations—bringing a fun twist to the traditional knitting circle and the viral concept of the online knit-along.

“Knitting Daily TV” is produced by KS Inc. Productions and will be offered in the same public television time slot as Needle Arts Studio, which has carriage in more than 157 markets and distribution to 55 million U.S households.

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Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]