The obtuse triangle (had to look that one up!) on this map shows my life travels from my hometown of Portland, Maine, to college in Boston to my post-college years (20+ of them) in New York City, to finally return to my homestate just a few years ago.
While I had a never-a-dull-day career in magazine publishing in NYC and met a lot of terrific people (some great knitters among them!), I am amused when I think that only by reconnecting map dots back to Maine did I have the good fortune to meet Helene Rush and her staff at Knit One, Crochet Too yarns.
Helene has been a knitwear designer for more than 30 years, and has owned Knit One, Crochet Too for the past eleven. She is also one of the smartest and nicest people with one of the best eyes for color in the knitting/yarn business. Not that it's needed, but here's proof!
Driving around my new environs shortly after the move, I happened by Helene's yarnie HQ--a mere 5 miles from my house. And I thought, hmmm, home really is where the yarn is, for once not referring to my own crazy stash in the closet. It was months later before I finally stopped in to introduce myself. That day I left with some skeins of top-secret new yarns to swatch with--fall yarns that Helene & Co. were prepping for their debut at this year's fall TNNA. And today we're posting the first of my designs for Knit One, Crochet Too, the X-Cable Turtleneck, made up in Helene's new Covet.
Covet, 100% superbaby alpaca, is one of those yarns that is so lovely to knit with that I can honestly say I wouldn't care if I had to frog my FO, because it would give me the instant-gratification experience of knitting with Covet again.
Helene and I have three more designs coming in the next few weeks, featuring her other new yarn--Sebago, a DK 100% superwash Australian Merino in an intoxicating array of colors--and two designs in an old K1C2 favorite of mine, Brae Tweed.