Malia and Stephen launched their first yarn brand, West Wool, just a month before the 2019 Yarn Along, so this YAL celebrated the West Wool launch by featuring their fingering weight Bicycle base in each package. Each month included a hand dyed custom colorway that coordinated with one of our West Wool solid colorways. The non-superwash West Wool yarn anchors and frames the splashy hand dyed colors and this became a theme Stephen developed throughout the next year as it gradually evolved into his Painting Patterns series like Painting Bricks and Painting Waves. This year was a bit more understated than previous years and the result is three timeless shawl designs all featuring different shapes and colorwork techniques. Stephen especially loves the Mosaic Musings Shawl with its generous wingspan and graphic stitch motifs.
This Yarn A Long was the first season where you, the knitter, got to choose which color story you received. Instead of designing one color palette for each shawl, Stephen collaborated with the dyers on two custom palettes. Members received either all warm colors or all cool colors. Undercover Otter, Fru Valborg, and La Bien Aimée were the featured dyers and they all produced some truly stunning colorways.
The YAL 2018 featured two newer dyers, La Bien Aimée and Uschitita together with Skein Yarn from Australia, which was one of the first hand dyed yarns carried at Stephen & Penelope when it was then called Penelope Craft.
This year’s YAL brought together Qing Fibre, Garn Stories, and Undercover Otter who all created custom colorways for three unique shawl constructions. Smock It! was a summery and splashy fade with a uniquely smocked border and picot edge. All the Angles brought some striking geometry and yarn over eyelets and it only requires two skeins of yarn, one skein of each color!
