See you at the Fair? Regular hours this week, CLOSED on Labor Day 🎡

September 01, 2026

Yarn Folk will be open regular hours -- including stitching times today and Saturday -- but we will be closed on Monday, September 7. If you've ever driven westbound from Ellensburg on Labor Day, you understand why! If the busses were running, I could count on some good knitting time, but since they aren't, I'll be working from home!

If you're local to Kittitas County, I hope you have a chance to visit the Kittitas County Fair, and if you see a superintendent (they'll have an ID lanyard), tell them thanks--they are hard at work long before the gates open!

…mark your calendars

Social Stitching

Every Saturday, 2-4p

Every Tuesday, 10a-12p

📍Kittitas County Fair

Thursday, September 3 - Monday, September 7

Have a Ball Fall Crawl

The virtual crawl takes place on Zoom September 19, 20, 26, 27. Register here! We'll be presenting on Sunday, September 20 at 9:45a PDT, and Xandy Peters is this year's guest designer!

Wildcat Night Out

September 22, 5-7p Welcome back to Ellensburg! At participating downtown businesses & Unity Park, following Bite of the Burg

Spinzilla

October 5-11, details coming soon.

Malabrigo Day

Saturday, October 24th

…new in the shop

Since I'm in delivery purgatory this week, let's have a look at some of the smaller things that have arrived in the last couple of weeks:

New sew-in tags from Sarah Hearts

Fall-scented lotion bars from Hive & Holler

Mix-and-match colorful acrylic Mini Minders from Lemon Wood, as well as a couple of Whirls.

A nice restock of stitch markers from Allstitch Studio.

…to inspire

If you have ever accidentally called a pattern a recipe, a) you are very much not alone in that, and b) you might be more right than you know!

Knitting and crochet patterns and cooking recipes are all technical writing, and specifically, they are procedural technical writing.

Think about the similarities:

If it is a published pattern or recipe, there's probably a photo of the finished item.
Materials or ingredients lists have identical functionality: they tell you what you need, and how much of it.
There will be information about the size of the finished project, which may be scaled--chili to feed six or a dozen, a sweater with finished chest sizes from 32" - 64".
You'll get information about tools or techniques you will need.
There are (more or less) standardized abbreviations.
The largest section is likely to be a detailed list of steps that you will need to complete in order.
Extra information might include the origin or inspiration for the pattern or recipe.
For techniques, a supplementary video tutorial might be linked.

Accurate details make a world of difference! And in both worlds--stitching and cooking--a quality piece of writing doesn't guarantee the outcome, but it does increase your chances of success. Neither realm is fully standardized, but if you know what kind of information you are going to need, and have a sense of what makes it easiest for you to process that information, you're probably going to have a nicer time in the making.

...currently stitching

Let's take a look at a couple of cowls in progress. Even though the designs are quite different, both feature purl welts. (Welts are the horizontal equivalent of ribbing--except that on the right side of the fabric, they tend to protrude, rather than retract.

I'm in the decrease section of The Traveler Cowl, and I've also added in the third and final color. I used one row stripes to blend from one color to the next (but you could do two row stripes if you didn't want to think about managing increases or decreases on the wrong side). Again, this is Malabrigo Torzal on US 5 / 3.75mm needles, and this new yarn is a true pleasure to work with.

Zay has been cheerfully coaxed into refreshing his knitting skills and helping out with some sample knitting. This is a Simple Yet Effective cowl, 2/3 or so of the way done. He is using Malabrigo Seis Cabos, and the Tin Can Knits app.