DEEP WINTER PATTERNS AND NEW CLASS

My second collaboration this year is my latest installment of patterns featuring Six Dutchess Farm Gotland. We’re thrilled to be offering our first sweater pattern for this yarn, as well a dead-simple ribbed hat as another easy-access point for working with this wonderful fiber. Introducing Freya and Ljus.

FREYA was conceived of as a piece to introduce new sweater knitters to garment making as well as a vehicle for learning about Gotland fiber and its wonderful properties. The pattern is very simple and approachable and yet I think the result is an heirloom quality sweater that will last you many, many years.

Six Dutchess Farm will be hosting me in a Zoom knitting class to work through the entire sweater and learn much more about this remarkable breed, how they are raised and turning their wool into yarn. Check out the full listing here.

I also wanted to offer another very easy pattern to act as a gateway for those who are new to working with this fiber. The LJUS hat is a timeless unisex ribbed hat in three sizes. Knittable, wearable and a wonderful showcase for this warm and enduring fiber.

If this fiber is new to you, here is bit of background. Gotland sheep originally hail from the island of Gotland in Sweden. They are known for their lustrous, curly locks and the beauty of the natural gray palette their fleeces produce, ranging from a deep charcoal to an ethereal light gray. Six Dutchess farm has a small fiber flock of Gotland sheep in four shades of these grays. The yarn is long staple, strong and hardwearing with a luminous sheen to it. Once blocked it develops a beautiful halo that gives the resulting pieces a luxurious aspect. The halo also serves to lock in heat, making Gotland knits extremely insulating. Best of all, this yarn has an enormous spectrum of possibilities when it comes to how it will bloom in blocking, depending on how open a gauge you knit it at, which means that you can create anything from a pair of indestructible gloves to a soft and downy tunic sweater all with the same yarn. Gotland knits just keep on improving with use and wear. You can see our previous pattern releases with this yarn here.

Six Dutchess Farm is a Hudson Valley Flower & Fiber Farm specializing in Gotland Sheep, Cut Flowers, Berries & Bees. They also offer a stunning array of cooking classes. Read more about their work with fiber and everything else on their site here.

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Because this very special yarn is limited in nature, in order to make the class and design even more accessible, I wrote a second version featuring a commercially worsted weight yarn—the sample is made from the beautiful Warmi yarn from Amano—70% baby alpaca and 30% merino and the sample will be on display at Annie & Company in NYC along with the full selection of colors in this yarn.

Although we want to encourage as many people as possible to use the Gotland fiber we also know that you may have yarn that you would already like to use in either a DK or worsted weight, so please feel free to sign up for the class even if you would like to use a different yarn. You can see all of the pattern specs for the Gotland or DK version here and for the Worsted version here, but if you have questions about the class or what to use for either version of the pattern please feel free to contact me here:

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One of the key elements to this simple sweater looking quietly luxurious is the double-length folded collar. I created a video tutorial for finishing the doubled collar on the Freya sweater which you can now see on my YouTube channel here. It can also be applied to any double-length collar you wish to finish using sewing, which makes a sturdy but still flexible finish for maximum comfort.

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I hope you are enjoying the descent into deep winter. May your days and nights be full of wool. And as ever…