It was a Cream Tea event at McWalker Yarns in Millvale, PA, Wednesday afternoon. Freshly baked scones, clotted cream with Four Fruit or Blackberry jam! Pots of hot tea. Knitwear Designer Jody Long was in from the UK,making his sixth shop stop in the USA on his Fall-Winter 2023 Tour-Cables Across America
It was the place to be for creative inspiration!
It was such fun watching Jes model his knitwear designs which were knit up in all of his gorgeous yarns.
Tomorrow June 10th in World Wide Knit in Public Day
I’m headed with a friend to Millvale PA where McWalker Yarns and Abeille Voyante Tea Co are teaming up to celebrate and knit! 10-Noon
Yarn is Regia Merino Yak from McWalker Yarns
The sweet bag stitched by a Woolswap partner’s daughter in Norway.
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Here’s a photo of McWalker Yarns owner Amy McCall holding the photo I took of her as she opened the store in April 2018. Standing with her is fabulous crochet artist Melissa White (who is also an employee) The photo shows how much the store’s inventory has grown!
McWalker Yarns in Millvale PA is celebrating their fifth anniversary and Local Yarn Store Day. There are special sales and prizes for shoppers this Saturday April 29th. Amy says in her latest newsletter “To celebrate this special occasion, I asked Toni at Raggz Fiber Art to create an exclusive assigned-pooling colorway for us to be named “The Yarn Shop at the End of the Rainbow.” Wow, has she outdone herself! We have, for now, a limited number of skeins of this amazing colorway in fingering weight. These will go on sale on Saturday (4/29) at the anniversary party (and are destined not to last”
A solid community of fiber enthusiasts has flourished, even during pandemic times. It was during these long months that McWalker began mail order sales, curbside pick-up and hosted Zoom meetings several times a Week. There were classes and make-alongs, friendships formed, even during isolation.
Here’s the post created upon the store’s April 2018 opening Millvale Welcomes McWalker Yarns
also the First Anniversary post is here
Congratulations to Amy on bringing her dream into reality. A dream where we share in the yarny goodness and positive vibes. When entering the store there’s a welcoming spirit. It’s a wonderful local yarn store.
Snow flurries were blowing as I headed to my car. I was parked across the street from McWalker Yarns .
Look what I saw embedded in the street.
Look who gave me the gift of a birthday song video.
Sam Barsky and his Artistic Sweaters came to Yarns by Design in Oakmont PA in 2019 summer and I blogged it. Click on his link to see the list of sweaters he’s knit. Here are a few of his artistic designs.
An April 2018 New York Times Article by Laura M Holson It’s Sweater Weather Forever states:
“Samuel Barsky has gained a measure of fame online for posting photographs of himself in front of famous landmarks with his handmade sweaters.”
Thanks Sam. What a great surprise.
Sam Barsky gave me the gift of a birthday song while wearing a birthday cake sweater. Click to see his video we have a mutual friend. A prolific knitter, Naomi, whom I “met” on McWalker Yarns Knitting Zoom .
T-Shirts of his designs are available in his website.
By the way both stores will be hosting the Steel Valley Yarn Crawl July 29- August 7, 2022 click more information
My friend Ann in Colorado invited me to join her knitting group (via Zoom) one Friday afternoon. Everyone was knitting a woolen piece to be Felted into a bowl. it was fun to knit with them , virtually.
You have to use large knitting needles and 100% wool yarn to be sure it will felt. I was trying out Germantown yarn worsted by Kelbourne Woolens made in the USA. Our local yarn store, McWalker Yarns , had just gotten some in stock. I chose one 100 gram skein of Sage Green.
It took me a little under two hours to knit. I ran it through the front loader in hot water with old canvas sneakers, twice. A top loader is preferable for agitation and a quicker result.
Note:There are free knitting patterns to search online to make felted bowls. The pattern I used is in a book so can’t copy it.
Supporting local small businesses.
This afternoon Pittsburgh Street Pizza was set up in front of McWalker Yarns on Grant Avenue, Millvale PA. (If you’re not local you can still order yarn online but not the pizza 🥲)
And I didn’t even know what a ROCCBOX Oven was until this afternoon.
“The restaurant-grade portable pizza oven. Dual fuel, fire up with the convenience of gas or discover the flavor of wood for the ultimate pizza experience”
Friday night McWalker Yarns hosts a Sip and Stitch Zoom meeting. A great way to connect during the Pandemic. While we were knitting and chatting, we started talking Halloween. One of our participants lives in Australia, so our evening meeting is her morning coffee time. Gayle was saying it will already be Halloween for her at next Friday Night’s Sip and Stitch Zoom meeting. I thought, wait I will don the mask that is on my dining room table. I sewed this costume for my son Mark in the early 80s.
So here I am sporting the ET mask and Gayle in Australia photographed me and sent it. With her gracious permission I am sharing her photo of me.
I “met” Gayle through the Woolswap program she runs, as well as many other knitters around the world, sharing fiber, creativity and inspiration with one another.
It’s me. You can see my knitted shawl peeking.
Monday afternoon I popped over to McWalker Yarns store in Millvale. Robin was working and helped me get a pattern and some Rowan Felted Tweed yarn to make a sweater for the NaKniSweMo Challenge -to knit a sweater in the month of November. I’ve seen Robin on Zoom Stitch meetings for several months but it was great to see her in person. AND lucky for me she had the Star Wars socks with her, the ones we’ve been watching the progress on as she knit them during our virtual meetings.
All I can say is WOW. They are something to see. She is an advanced knitter, clearly.
Meet Robin, attorney by day, knitter extraordinaire on her days off. Here she is showing her pair of hand knit Star Wars socks. Amazing work. She says they are a true labor of love and the recipient is a real SW fan so they are going to be thrilled when they unwrap them at Christmas. Don’t think the recipient will be seeing the blogpost but want to keep the details vague. Look at her expert knitting letters with tiny stitches May the Force Be With You. Alas, she created the designs herself by finding a multitude of charts on the internet and adapting them for the scale of socks but perhaps they will inspire you to design your own Star Wars socks.
Posted with gracious consent. Thank you.
Wednesday afternoon, Amy at McWalker Yarns in Millvale PA, unboxed several Pittsburgh designs and also Rainbow Sock Blanks created exclusively for McWalker Yarns by Yarn over New York.
“A sock blank is a long, rectangular piece of knitted fabric created by a knitting machine and then dyed or stamped with color. The edge of the sock blank isn’t bound off — it’s loose so that you can knit from it, pulling the stitches out as you go. The basic idea behind the sock blank is that you’ll get an amazing yet unpredictable colorway when you knit with it. “
