Free Shipping on orders over €75 (Germany) | €125 (International)

0

Your Cart is Empty

Yarn
  • Our Favorite Fall Yarns

  • All Yarns

  • Spinning Fiber
  • Frau Woellfchen's Hand-Dyed Braids

  • John Arbon Appledore Tops

  • All Spinning Fiber

  • Notions & Gifts
  • Katie Green's New "Crafty Sheep" Tea Towel

  • Needle Stoppers & Stitch Markers

  • All Notions & Gifts

  • Books, Magazines & Patterns
  • Issue 12 - Art Nouveau

  • All Books & Magazines

  • About Us
  • We're here to help you stitch sustainability into every aspect of your making.

    With our carefully curated selection of non-superwash, plastic-free yarns and notions, we have everything you need to get started on your next project - and the one after that.

    Here's to a wardrobe of knits we love and want to wear for years to come!

  • Our Sustainability Pledge

  • Our Blog

  • Our Podcast

  • The Making Stories Collective

  • Gift Knitting - Our Favorite Patterns for Quick & Easy Knits!

    October 27, 2022 3 min read

    Hi lovelies! It's that time of the year - the holidays are fast approaching, and the gift knitting has begun!

    I really love gifting hand-knits, preferrably ones that are quick to knit up and make for a really enjoyable project - after all, I want to have fun while knitting them, and feel good about the finished object.

    We've put together a whole Pinterest board with our favorite gift knitting patterns for you that we hope helps with inspiring and planning what you'll be making for your loved ones this year.

    We've selected mostly designs that you can whip up in a weekend (hello worsted weight hats and DK weight socks!), and that also work if you're unsure which size would fit the recipient best.

    Hats, fingerless mittens, and scarves are great options there - hats and mittens will look good even if the finished object is a little more snug or loose-fitting than you intended, and scarves are great if you don't want to bother with sizing at all.

    We've also included a few bigger items (a wonderful cozy shrug!) and kids' knits for the little ones you might want to knit something for this holiday season.

    You can find the whole Pinterest board here:

    Screenshot of our Pinterest Board with Gift Knitting Patterns

    I couldn't resist, though, to pair a few of these patterns with yarn colors that I'm particularly in love with this year.

    Take a look:

    Agata Mackiewicz' Acorn Mittens were one of your favorite patterns from Issue 8 (so many FOs already!) and knit up in Hudson & West's Weld (shown here in colorway Red Feather), they'd be perfect for anyone who spends a lot of their time either outdoors - think of bike rides or playground dates! - or at the computer. Cold hands while typing are not pleasant at all, let me tell you!

     

    I love a cozy pair of DK-weight socks, both to wear and to knit. I wear my own Near & Far socks as bed socks these days (always cold feet here!), and when I knit them up, I was astonished at how quickly they were done. Go for a size 2 or 3 if you're not sure which size would fit best - they're really forgiving. Our LITLG Highland DK (here in Oast) is a sturdy yarn that would show off those cables really well AND make a long-lasting pair of socks.

     

    Looking for something a bit bigger? Thien-Kieu Lam - the queen of cabled scarves - was back in our Issue 8 with Sojourn, a beautiful worsted-weight scarf that looks complicated, but really isn't! Plus: You only need three balls of De Rerum Natura's Gilliatt for it. I fell in love with this stunning blue called Nuit the moment I unpacked our latest shipment!

     

    When I went through our patterns to look for ones that would work well with one of our newest yarns, Hudson + West's Forge, I stumbled over my own Multitudes Hat from Issue 4, also available as a single PDF. It's the perfect fit - crisp cables on a reverse stockinette background, and a pompom on top! Forge has wonderful stitch definition and a lovely color palette to choose from - I've paired Multitudes with Mustard here, but you could choose any of the 16 colors and they would all look good.

     

    Ending as we were beginning: With a sweet pair of fingerless mittens. Madeleine Renarde's Cellular Mittens from Issue 5 are perfect to use up any fingering- or sport-weight scraps you have - or for two colors of De Rerum Natura's Ulysse, the yarn we originally used for the design. The sample is knit up in Argile and Quartz, and I'd love to make a pair for myself in exactly the same colors!

     

     

    Tell me - are you planning to knit any gifts this year? If so, which ones? I'm so curious!

    Leave a comment

    Comments will be approved before showing up.


    Also in Blog

    Thoughts on closing down a knitting magazine
    Thoughts on closing down a knitting magazine

    November 19, 2024 12 min read

    As a lot of you might have suspected I have, at last, made the decision to definitely close down Making Stories Magazine after Issue 14, our 2025 Fall & Winter issue. This means we still have two issues to go - Issue 13, coming out in March (Confetti & Rainbows!!), and Issue 14, coming out in September. I wanted to share this decision with you bright and early as I don’t feel like holding this in when we publish our last Spring and then our very last Fall & Winter issue. I want to celebrate those issues, and the work that we have done over the last eight years, and I want to be able to share the bittersweet feelings that will inevitably come up when the list of “lasts” still do be done gets shorter and shorter.
    Read More
    All the knits I finished while recovering from surgery
    All the knits I finished while recovering from surgery

    October 28, 2024 8 min read

    About three weeks ago, I had surgery. Nothing major, and it was planned - but it was my first time undergoing general anaesthesia and facing an uncertain recovery period, both of which made me quite nervous. I knew that I was going to be in the hospital for two days, if everything went well, but then it was between one and three weeks of recovering at home, depending on how fast my body was going to heal.

    Needless to say, I packed knitting for the hospital, but I didn’t feel like picking up my needles until my second day in the hospital. And then I knit. I knit, and knit, and knit. Curiously enough, I always get the urge to clear off my needles this time of the year - something about the weather changing, sweater season approaching, maybe? And this year, this urge coincided with me wanting to do something while watching copious amounts of Netflix without having to think very hard about what I was going to knit. Win win!

    Read More
    Art Nouveau Sample Preview Video - Issue 12, Fall & Winter 2024
    Art Nouveau Sample Preview Video - Issue 12, Fall & Winter 2024

    June 26, 2024 1 min read

    Let’s wander the streets of Brussels and Paris, searching for the hidden architectural Art Nouveau gems – houses, doors, windows, street lamps. Let’s explore Berlin’s Jugendstil tile art, marvelling at the colors and shapes taking form. Let’s get lost in the work of water color artists, glass blowers, jewellers, embroidery artists, and myriads more, who dive into the shapes and curves of plants and flowers, moving, flowing, mirroring.
    Read More