Brooklyn Tweed Blog — Peerie

This year we’re welcoming the highly-anticipated return of fall with two new pattern collections, the first of which is now ready for you to immerse yourself in today — Early Fall 18. The conception of this collection began with a curious attraction to the quiet yet compelling colors, shapes, and textures found in the art of paper folding. Our Design Team took this inspiration to their drawing boards and created an exciting collection that embodies those first feelings of intrigue by challenging our perceptions of how a knitted garment can be constructed, assembled, and made. In Early Fall 18, you'll find...

Today we have the thrill and pleasure to share our newest core yarn with knitters around the world. Peerie is four worsted-spun plies of all-American Merino wool, soft and sleek and springy, perfectly suited for stranded colorwork and so much more. It comes in our largest palette yet — 45 sumptuous solids — to support the tonal shifts, complementary notes, and zings of contrast necessary for Fair Isle-inspired knits. Any yarn we add to our permanent stable needs to be a true workhorse, so we made sure Peerie would shine in all kinds of projects, from textural stitchwork to cables...

Colorwork traditions have steadily been on our minds since we began the development of Peerie, our first fingering-weight, worsted-spun yarn. Deeply rooted in knitting traditions from around the world, we have always had a fond place in our knitterly hearts for the use of color to transform knit fabric into a work of art representative of the region from which the chosen technique originated. The Shetland Isles are well known for their colorwork traditions, and the name "Peerie" comes from the Shetland vernacular meaning "small" — it felt apropos to name our newest core yarn as such, especially given that peerie bands...

In the wool world, there is perhaps no other fiber more ubiquitous than merino. From our fiber and making community to the ready-to-wear industry, merino has become interchangeable with wool, regardless of the specific fiber content of the wool. However, beyond fabric, yarn and other textiles, Merino itself is its own breed of sheep, with a rich history dating back to 12th century Spain and distinct fleece characteristics that make our breed-specific-loving hearts sing. How is it that this one word — merino — can refer to two quite different things? As we discussed in our Foundations installment on Breed Specificity, most...