Monthly Archives: May 2014

I am so excited to share The Shepherd and The Shearer 2014 designers with you. Both of these designers are well-known for their style and innovation, as well as for their well-written patterns. (Believe it or not, those two things don’t always go hand in hand.)

Pamela Wynne has been working with Juniper Moon Farm almost since the very beginning. She is famous-famous for her February Lady Sweater which, according to Ravelry has been knit by more than 13,150 people.

She also created one of my favorite children’s patterns of all time ever, Ella Fun.

My favorites of Pam’s designs, though, are the ones she has done for us.

Edie has such amazing details. The trompe l’oeil tie kills me.

Maeby is such a show stopper! There are always audible gasps when I pull this one out at trunk shows.

Pam also designed the Whistler pillow and Smith blanket, two of our most popular patterns from this season.

I love working with Pam because she is incredibly professional but also incredibly fun to work with. I’ve always considered myself pretty lucky to get to work with Pam and I can’t wait to see her finished TSATS design for 2014.

We are also thrilled to pieces to be working with a designer who is new to us, Cecily Glowik MacDonald. When we were looking for another designer, it seemed like everyone we talked to recommended Cecily, and it’s easy to see why. She is super prolific and her garments are every so lovely.

I am in love with Graham.

And Jetty.

And Lakeside makes me positively swoon.

In our editorial meetings, we’re always talking about how a Juniper Moon Farm design should be lovely and, as importantly, wearable. Cecily is the perfect example of a designer who’s  garments are lovely and wearable.

Once we had settled on these two amazing women to design our TSATS 2014 sweaters, we turned them lose to do what they do best. Tomorrow, I will share with you the sketches and swatches they came back with.

Last year, we had a really cool idea. We wanted to put make a sweater that was a collaboration between the shepherd who grew the fleece, the shearer who carefully harvested it, the designer who created  the pattern and the knitter who brought all of those people intentions together with her own hands. We worked with some really amazing people to make this happen, including designers Kate Davies and Kirsten Kapur.

I love peeking at the finished TSATS sweaters you all have made. (You can see The Shepherd here and The Shearer Here.) It makes me so proud to see what started off as an idea being fully executed and loved.  Knowing that the fast knitters wore their sweaters to stay warm this winter actually makes me tear up.

All around, Emily and I were both very proud of what we did with The Shepherd and The Shearer. Which is not to say that there wasn’t a huge learning curve involved! There were definitely bumps along the way, but we learned from them and, when we decided to go forward with The Shepherd and The Shearer  2014, we knew we could do it even better than the inaugural project.

There are several big changes we’re making this year but I wanted to point one in particular out here: we will be using a different mill this year. In fact, we’re using a local, family-owned mill and they have assured us that accuracy is as important to them as it is to us. No more mailing out extra skeins due to yardage issues! We made sure everyone got the yarn they needed last year but it honestly nearly did us in.

One other difference is that we will be limiting participation to 300 knitters this year. Last year we originally started by limiting ourselves to 200 available kits but we were so overwhelmed by emails from people who wanted to buy a kit that we ended up selling way more and it lead to a lot of confusion. This year when the 300 kits are gone, we are done. I know it stinks that we won’t have enough for everyone but the truth is, we are a small business, and we want to give the proper attention to detail to each and every kit. We can do that better by limiting the numbers.

There is so much more to tell you– like which two AMAZING designers we are working with this year– but I don’t want to bore you to death, so I’ll save that for tomorrow.