In a recent newsletter we asked for contributions from friends, customers, neighbors. Here is a timely piece we received on knitting:

A YARN, by Deborah Weisgall
I love Swans Island Blankets: their clean designs and vibrant colors, their combination of sophistication and honest function.  And their feel: soft, weightless, and warm.  When I visited their headquarters, their weathered 18th century Cape in Northport, and saw how individual each blanket was, how their manufacture is, literally, a cottage industry, I was hooked.  And intrigued—I knit, and the place was full of yarn awaiting transformation into blankets, skeins and skeins of gorgeous organic merino.  I wanted to get my hands on it.
 
“Do you sell yarn?” I asked.

Timing is everything.  “We’re just starting a line of yarn,” replied Bill Laurita, a partner in Swans Island.  New yarn is an inspiration, and this wool has inspired, so far, a scarf, a throw, a short-sleeved sweater; I have a winter sweater in the works.  What’s wonderful about it, besides its texture and the way it shows off pattern, is that Swans Island yarn comes with its own austere, luxurious aesthetic.  It wants to be knit into classic designs with elegant details.  It practically tells me what to do.  Knitting with this wool, I sense the community of hands that has touched it: the sheepshearers’ hands, the spinners’ hands, the dyers’ hands.  And, now, my own.      
 
The leaves are brilliant this year, a recompense for the wet spring. Please visit us in Northport if you happen to be in Maine for the fall.