In honor of our newsletter’s new Tip of the Week, we’re having a Twitter contest! Simply tweet your favorite knitting, crocheting, or yarn-related tip @LionBrandYarn by Friday, August 28th. Be sure to use the #LionTip hash tag to make it easy to spot. Only one entry per person, please. Our favorite will win a $50…

What is the main reason you choose a yarn:  color or texture?

Q – I want to knit a simple baby blanket in worsted weight yarn. How much yarn will I need? A – While the amount of yarn will depend on your gauge, yarn choice, the stitch pattern you select, and the size of your project, we do have a great chart that has estimates for…

The brand new LB Collection is (finally!) here! This collection is something we’ve been working on for a long time and I’m so excited that these yarns are making their way out into the world! We’ve heard lots of great comments and questions from you! The LB Collection is a range of specialty yarns produced…

It’s no fun when a company discontinues your favorite product (Loreál- I’m looking at you. I still want Le Grand Curl Waterproof Black Mascara back). When we discontinued Cotton-Ease a lot of people were upset. The internet/blog world was grieving the loss of this washable cotton-blend yarn. Campaigns to keep Cotton-Ease began immediately after the…

I generally believe that everything–whether tool, material, or method–has a purpose to which it is ideally suited. In my opinion, sewing is good for some things (dresses and bags), knitting works best for others (socks) and crochet is ideal for still others (amigurumi and afghans). And I think every yarn has unique characteristics that tell…

Vanna’s Choice Baby is our collection of newest colors in the same weight and make-up as original Vanna’s Choice. When we introduced Vanna’s Choice, we heard from so many fans–including Vanna herself–who were using it for baby and children’s projects. People loved the weight, softness, and easy-care of the yarn, but were looking for additional…

In last week’s post I talked about how we design based on experimenting with swatching. Last week I shared a peek into the process by which we decide on color sequencing. Here is the afghan we created with the new Vanna’s Choice colors that was based on that swatch.

If you’re a yarncrafter and you’re on the internet, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of people like to make socks. And if you listen to our YarnCraft podcast, you’ve heard me talk about socks an awful lot! I mostly taught myself to knit while I was in design school. I wanted to take hand-knitting…

Swatching is an important part of the design process. Let’s say we decide to design a striped afghan knit with Vanna’s Choice. The variables are infinite! How many of the 49 colors do we want to include? How long should each stripe be? What colors should be placed next to each other? When designing the…