In New England This Weekend? Get Ready for a Yarn Crawl

The fourth-annual I-91 yarn crawl is happening this weekend, with 12 yarn shops from Vermont to Connecticut participating.

All participating shops will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Some of the shops will also be open later on Thursday for special events.

In addition to the great shopping and supporting local businesses, each shop will have a clue to a mystery yarn project. There will also be a passport for the event, and people who visit and get stamps from all 12 shops will be entered into the grand prize drawing, which includes yarn, books, tools and accessories as well as a $50 gift certificate from each shop participating in the crawl. In all it’s a prize package worth more than $600.

Two runners up will also receive six gift certificates and some other prizes, and daily raffles at each of the shops will provide even more prizes and fun.

Learn more about the event from the WEBS blog (they’re one of the participants) or check them out on Facebook.

If you are planning to go or have been before I’d love to hear about it!

Next Pattern:

I’ve been enjoying knit amigurumi animal patterns lately (see also: this adorable knit pigeon) and of course being a knitter I love llamas.

So when I saw this little llama pattern I knew I had to share it.

The appropriately named Llama patter from Annie Ahn calls for fingering weight yarn, and it uses two colors for the body and three for the little blanket. The pompom can be made to match or in another color. All of these parts take tiny amounts of yarn so you can use whatever scraps you have left over from socks or other projects and change colors whenever you need to.

It might also be fun to use some mohair or other fuzzy or textured yarn on this one to give your llama a different look. In all the project uses between 100 and 150 yards, or 91-137 m, of yarn and the llama comes out about 10 cm/4 inches tall.

The body of the llama is worked in one piece, so this project is suited to intermediate knitters or those who have comfort working in the round and with all those little pieces.

This one is made to be small so you can carry it around with you (it would be super cute on a keychain or as a zipper pull) but I think it would be a lot of fun to knit this in larger yarn, too, to make a bigger llama. You could even make a whole family in different sizes just by using different weights of yarn and corresponding needles.

The details are so cute, from the shaggy hair to its little accessories, but you could make it plain or change it up by knitting a tiny scarf or even working a little fair isle pattern on the legs or body. So many fun possibilities!

The pattern is available on Ravelry in English and Korean.

[Photo: Annie Ahn]

Next Pattern:

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