Northeast Fiber Arts Center

10/19/2026

Malabrigo Day! Mark your calendar to stop by the shop and pick up a new project this Saturday, October 24th!
We're celebrating the line of Malabrigo yarns and fiber ( great for felting and spinning!) that we stock with some great door prizes. Randomly drawn from among customers purchasing any yarn or fiber on Saturday, we have 4 Malabrigo yarn and 1 Nube (Malabrigo's lovely merino fiber) giveaways to kick off your holiday gift making season.

10/16/2026

Aargh!!! The platform that I have used for my email newsletters for over 20 years apparently shut down... without notice....taking my entire mailing list with it! So the October newsletter i had scheduled to go out this week i have no addresses to send it to. So apologies to the 4500+ customers that were on it!
Im starting a new list within my website, so if ypu want to get the monthly newsletter going forward, you'll need to sign up again from here (http://northeastfiberarts.com).
I the absence of the newsletter, please check out the Events page of my website as there are 4 FREE events scheduled (3 tutorials and a Yarn Feature) detailed there. Just click thru to the link above and then choose Events from the 6 options ( or drop down menu if youre picking up from a phone!)

Or...you may see a slightly different price at the store than you saw online becuase I haven't updated the web yet (and now with tariffs, the price of diesel, etc just about every order I receive has some price increase in it!​)​​

10/13/2026

A fresh shipment of sashiko kits and threads arrived this morning. In addition to the 20+ traditional colors i restocked, I brought in a series of bright, almost fluorescent colors, for you to play with!
And if you're thinking about doing some sashiko table runners, placemats or XMAS ornaments ( ooh....how about stitching a XMAS stocking?!) to add festivity to your holiday decor, we have fabric that already is marked with dots at the proper spacing so you can design your own patterns, cut and sew!

10/10/2026

I LOVE this Blue Wave Hat! I've had intentions to Morse code a similar sentiment into some felt jewelry all summer, but never got around to it. This afternoon a customer brought this Ravelry pattern (https://ravelry.com/patterns/library/blue-wave-secret-message-hat) to my attention and thought I'd share it with you all. Hopefully we will have a blue tsunami next month!!

Blue Wave Hat with Optional Secret Messages

10/09/2026

Seems like everyone is picking up yarn for sweaters right now! Thats great, but this is also the time of year to think about any XMAS stocking knitting you may need to knit for new additions to the family?
Whether you want to knit wool or a wool boend, a bulky or worsted hauge, and whether you prefer hand or machine washable, we have options! Both the lighter and brighter red and green, as well as the deeper, darker, more saturated palette ofvred and green are in stock! So stop in soon to get the stockings going so they're ready to hang XMAS eve!

10/07/2026

We got a restock of the luxurious merino-alpaca-silk blend, Moonshine, yesterday. A fabulous choice for a cowl, hat, or scarf for someone special. And with our restock, came a new color- this lovely soft pink!

10/05/2026

I knit this simple garter stitch hat using the new Akeboshi wool and silk bulky gauge yarn from Noro. Because I was knitting a hat and wanted it dense to be warmer, and particularly since I wasnt doing a ribbed hat which has stretch, I used a US 9 and have 4 sts per inch. I didn't like this colorway at first, but chose it thinking it could be a hood "guy" color. When done I like it! Kind of vintage.. and definitely "autumnal". It looks great with the rust colored jacket I have, so now I see it as unisex not just masculine. Could easily get 2 from a ball- there's more than a half ball left. Guess I'll knit another for the Ukraine donation

10/03/2026

OK. So this isnt directly, but rather peripherally, related to fibers. A lot of customers have asked me what the blue or purple drink is I often have at the register. And the answer is sort of related to indigo, the natural blue dye that I use for a lot of my shibori pieces.

It is butterfly PEA tea. Note...it is NOT butterfly P*E tea, which a lot of customers ( including myself when I first heard about it) assume I mean (and then I can immediately see the wheels churning in their mind trying to imagine how on earth the "butterfly p*e" is collec ted!).

The "butterfly pea" is a plant that is related to the indigo family. But it does not dye fabric. Instead it creates a beautiful blue tea that is high in all sorts of anti oxidants etc. I like to drink it as iced tea with just about 1/4 tsp of Shelburne Farms Liquid VT Honey. But it is really nice with ch*****ne, thru which i introduced it to my friends at a birthday party!
AND....if you add a sq**rt of lemon or lime (or dilute it with lemon or lime sparkling water) it turns PURPLE....much the way we can alter some natural dye colors like cochenile by making it acidic vs. Alkaline. And just like natural dyes, the soil and weather conditions affect the intensity of the color you get. This morning i opened up a new packet of flowers and the in tensity of this batch is much lower than my last batch so you can see the color is not as deep.

So if you wondered but were afraid to ask, here's your explanation of the beverage you may see me sipping! And a reminder that when we use plants and sawdust to dye yarn and fabric, we have to "go with the flow" a bit when we pick from the garden for our colors.

Below with a Pic of my butterfly pea tea is a mass of scrap fabrics and laces I put in the leftover pots out back to use up some natural dyes from a couple of weeks ago. They aren't intense because we've dyed pounds of yarn and fabric in them at this point, but i figured I'd get every last bit out of them and I rather like the soft palette. It's sort of vintage

10/02/2026

A restock of kid mohair/silk and alpaca/silk "carry alongs" arrived today so we are back to having over 90 colors to choose from. It adds such warmth and a lovely halo to carry one along with another yarn for sweaters, cowls, hats and mittens. If you havent done this yet, you might want to add a strand to your next project.
Its been crazy here today so I had all I could do to get the colors out and on hooks. So the display is a little haphazard! Maybe Chris can put it into a more pleasing sequence of colors on monday!

10/01/2026

Finally a Noro that knits at a true bulky gauge ( 3-3.5 sts/inch)!
Akeboshi just arrived. Named for the early morning star ( Ake means dawn in Japanese and "boshi" means star). It is 85% wool and 15% silk and each 150 gm ball features 295 yards. There are little bits of brighter colors worked on throughout that look like little sparkling stars when knit up....hence the name!
I really should be working on my Patagonia sweater today, but the need to cast on and swatch this is too much to deny!