Pam Allen Honored as One to Watch in Maine

Each year MaineBiz names a handful of “women to watch” in various categories, including women-owned businesses. For 2012, the woman to watch who owns her business is Pam Allen, owner of Quince & Co. yarns.

The awards presentation is next month, and you can read more about how the business got started and watch a video with Allen talking about why her business is successful (hint: because she is her customer).

If you don’t know about Quince & Co., it’s based in Maine and uses American-sourced fiber to produce its yarn, which is spun in Maine (the story indicates they’re setting up their own dye company, too, which will also be in Maine). The colors are gorgeous — though Allen says she’d only produce neutrals if she were really just making yarn for herself! — and the yarn can be purchased in a couple of stores in Maine and one in the UK and otherwise is available direct from the company.

Allen says this is one way to keep the cost of the yarn low when faced with the higher production costs involved in using American fiber and doing what they can to keep their footprint small. If you’d like to know more you can sign up for their weekly e-newsletter. (There’s a box at the top-right corner of the home page.)

[Photo by Quince & Co.]

Next Pattern:

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift.

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style.

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills.

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather.

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do.

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall.

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills.

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths

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