Highlights & Happy Projects of 2018

We’ve had quite the exciting last year here at Monarch: a ton of new projects, vending at new knitting conventions (hello, Vogue Knitting Live!), fantastic workshops led by wonderful makers, inspiring interviews, and the addition of some really beautiful new yarn brands onto our shelves. Here are some of our most popular posts and a collection of our favorites.

top nine.

Our Top Nine 2018 posts from Instagram with our sweet Linus centered around a year of fun shawls, beautiful sweaters, gorgeous fibers, and wonderful makers.

happy project.

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The Latitude Pullover by Elizabeth Doherty has been such a popular project in the shop! Once Ann knitted her own and gushed about how fun the pattern is to knit, so many of you wanted to cast-on as well. Our dear Jana knitted one in her favorite color, orange!

knit, blog & be happy.

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Our 2018 New Year’s resolution was to start blogging more. We’ve had the pleasure to interview a ton of designers, yarn dyers, makers and friends of the shop. We even started a series of meeting our staff. Read back and get to know Ann, Koryn and Jenn.

monarch & friends.

This has been our second year vending at Stitches West and we must say, we absolutely love it! It’s always so much fun to see so many clients from home and those from afar visit us in our booth. And getting to partner with our friends Shibui Knits is such a treat! We’re so fortunate to work alongside Sandy Barnes and Britt-Marie, too. They even joined us in San Francisco for Vogue Knitting Live. We cannot wait to work with them again at Stitches West 2019 in February!

happy stash.

We were so excited and honored to add three gorgeous bases of the Plucky Knitter to our shop. Their fibers, colors and overall aesthetic are just what we adore. Plus, they are just the friendliest! We loved knitting up the Whirlwind cowl with their Scholar yarn.

Another new favorite this year was the addition of The Farmer’s Daughter Fibers. Just absolutely stunning yarns! Read more about Candice, the owner and dyer of this beautiful brand.

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We welcomed some new Monarch goodies this year, too! Our ceramic camp fire mugs, new drawstring bags and a custom candle (Pebble Beach) made just for us by Wax & Wool!

happy workshops.

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It was such a treat to host Marie Greene of Olive Knits for two workshops this year. She even designed a shawl just for us! The Pacific Grove shawl is knit up in one of our favorite cashmere yarns, Lux Adorna and it is such a fun project. We look forward to working with Marie again next year… more on that soon!

happy five years.

Last but not least, we celebrated 5 years as the new Monarch Knitting! All in thanks to the support of our community, both near and far. We love opening our doors each day to welcome our wonderful community into our knitting home. We look forward to more happy projects, posts, events, workshops, and of course more photos of our sweet Linus!

From all of us at Monarch Knitting, we wish you a Happy New Year!

Welcome Candice of The Farmer’s Daughter Fibers

We’d like you to join us in welcoming Candice English, the brilliant creative behind The Farmer’s Daughter Fibers.  We are so overjoyed to now carry a selection of her yarns at the shop: Squish Fingering, Craggy Tweed DK, and Squish Worsted.  It’s been such a pleasure working with and getting to know Candice!  We hope you’ll find this wonderful post just as inspiring as we have…

 

Your story behind your brand is rooted in history.  How did you get started with fiber arts? What motivated you to start dyeing yarn?

My paternal grandmother did about every fiber art you can imagine, her craft room would put all of us to shame! I grew up doing a lot of cross stitching with her and I think the fiber arts was pretty embedded in me. It wasn’t until my early 20s when a friend taught me to knit, I was pregnant with my daughter and I became immediately obsessed. My Mom, sisters, and cousins are all extremely artistic – they can turn nothing into something beautiful. Whether it’s food, buckskin, wood, painting, beading, we all use an instinctual guide to our art. I knew almost nothing about dyeing yarn besides some plant dyeing I had experimented with, but woke up one day to find myself 30 something years old, working 60 hours a week in a corporate job, never seeing my kids, and my marriage kind of falling apart. I had this vision in my head how to put all of this creative energy I had pent up, and knew my color palette was fairly unique. So I dove head first into creating The Farmer’s Daughter Fibers. It was all out of place of desperation, cultural heritage, instinctual creativity, and a passion for knitting and yarn!

Your yarns are beautiful!  Can you tell us a little more about Squish Fingering, Squish Worsted and Craggy Tweed?

Thank you! Squish Fingering and Squish Worsted are great workhorse yarns. They will basically do just about anything you ask of them. I love them for gift knitting, because they are easy to care for. Craggy Tweed is one of my favorite yarns to knit with, the little tweedy neps are so fun to work up.

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Which patterns do you recommend for these yarns?

There are just so many to choose from these days! My current favorite in my closet and in my queue are Caitlin Hunter’s Ninilchik Swoncho for the Craggy Tweed. I wear that sweater at least three times a week, and I think everyone needs a swoncho! I also have some Squish Fingering stashed away for Caitlin’s Marittimo, it is going to be my Spring time knit! I am also dying to cast on the Nightshift Shawl by Andrea Mowry with some Squish Worsted. Too much to knit, so little time!

When you’re not dyeing, creating and being all around stellar at running your business, what are some of your other passions and/or hobbies?  Knit, crochet, weave or all of the above?

Knitting of course, I still like to cross stitch once in a while and weaving is so relaxing. I am an avid reader and try to get up to the Mountains as much as I can to hike and explore! It’s my happy place.

We’re always looking for pattern inspiration, what’s currently on your needles or in your queue?

Right now I am currently working on the Rug Sweater by Junko Okamoto, not in FDF yarns but I think it’s important that I do some selfish knitting! Also, I’m desperate to knit everything in the new Winter issue of Pom Pom!

Favorite thing to listen to/do while you work and/or knit?

I typically watch TV shows and movies when I am knitting and I have been watching a lot of oldies lately. I think it must be the weather! John Wayne and the Cowboys is my current favorite, Lonesome Dove is another classic I watch every December. I just watched Urban Cowboy for the first time last weekend, now I want to take some two-step lessons! And while working, I typically don’t have a lot of background noise, boring but effective for me to stay focused.

It looks like you’ve had quite the busy last year (we love your studio space!), what’s in store for FDF for next year? 

2018 was such a crazy whirlwind! We have a lot of fun events planned in 2019, our upcoming ones are VKL NYC, Stitches West, another trip to the East Coast in May, and our retreat in June. I am also super excited about some upcoming collaborations in 2019 with my near and dear fiber friends, stay tuned!

We can’t wait for your upcoming announcements!  It’s always such fun and so inspiring to follow along with you on IG – always gorgeous shots of your yarn, projects, and Montana!  Where can our readers find you online?

Thank you! We are so excited to be apart of the Monarch Knitting community!

Instagram @thefarmersdaughterfibers and our website, www.thefarmersdaughterfibers.com