Cecelia Campochiaro Knit Kits
Oct 22nd 2024
We hosted our 40th Anniversary Retreat last week, and what an experience it was! When this event sold out in one day, we knew it was our job to create something special for all the knitters who came from around the country to join us. Luckily, by working with Cecelia Campochiaro and the Winchester Inn, it would have been hard to go wrong. We had educational classes, excellent food, and some lovely excursions. The week could not have gone better, and we want to thank our wonderful participants for being so encouraging and enthusiastic. Don't forget to scroll through this email to catch a sneak peak of our Spring 2025 retreat!
Now that our retreat guests have headed home and things at the shop have settled, we wanted to share some of our favorite Cecelia Campochiaro project kits with you. Each kit features a curated selection of Ito yarns in colorways hand picked by Cecelia herself. These fantastic scarf and shawl patterns are a great introduction to Cecelia Campochiaro's designs, and use a variety of interesting techniques like color marling and sequence knitting.
Warm Day is a light, gauzy scarf or shawl. It is worked in a syncopated knit–purl rib pattern using four colors to make color blocks. Each Warm Day Scarf kit includes the pattern, as well as 4 cones of Ito Kinu in curated colorways.
Ito Kinu is a 100% silk noil yarn (also called organic silk) as it is produced from the leftovers of spun filament silk. Differently colored fibers are blended to produce a melange effect. This all-purpose silk yarn has a tweedy look and a lovely cotton-like feel.
Fabian Redux is a modified version of the original Fabian from the book Making Marls. Three colors of Ito Kinu yarn are worked individually with one color of Ito Karei cashmere yarn to create three different marls. The form is a 1x1 parallelogram using sequence knitting, so the fabric hangs on the bias. Each kit contains 3 cones of Ito Kinu, 4 balls of Ito Karei, and the pattern by Cecelia Campochiaro.
Ito Karei embodies the epitome of luxury and craftsmanship. This exquisite yarn is made from 100% grade-A Mongolian cashmere, enhanced with small colored tweed nubs that add a special touch to every knitted piece. It is a carded yarn spun on a traditional carriage spinning machine - a technique known for producing the highest quality yarns which offers an incomparable knitting experience transforming every project into a luxurious masterpiece.
This cheerful shawl is the first of a series of marls-based colorwork shawls. Colorwork Series No. 1 is a shawl using ten base colors of Ito Sensai yarn worked doubled to create marl stripes. The marl sequence is inspired by traditional colorwork knitting, and the design is easy because of the sequence knitting 1-row patterns. Each kit includes 12 balls of Sensai in 10 different colors and the shawl pattern by Cecelia Campochiaro.
Ito Sensai is a delicate a blend of mohair and silk, that's luxurious and light as a feather. We love this lace weight yarn for lightweight, ethereal knits.
Colorwork Series No. 2 is a study in close colors marled together and randomized. It uses seven hues of Ito Kinu, which make 21 two-strand marls. Each of these 21 marls is worked for one pattern repeat two times; this means every color is represented evenly and the yarn is consumed evenly.
The stitch pattern is a damask-type pattern, meaning it is made up of areas of stockinette and reverse stockinette. This shawl has the hand of stockinette but looks lively because of the way marls have vertical directionality on stockinette and horizontal directionality on reverse stockinette. Each kit contains 7 cones of Ito Kinu and the pattern by Cecelia Campochiaro.
PSSST! THE SNEAK PEEK YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR...
We had such a fantastic time at our first retreat that we decided to do another one! Tickets will go on sale Friday, November 1st, at 8am Pacific Time.
We will post more details on our website early next week, so be sure to check back!