Warby Parker Half Decade Collection

I've been a fan of Warby Parker eyewear for a few years now.  Stylish, affordable prescription frames from a company that gives a pair of eyewear to someone in need for each pair purchased?  Can't beat that.  When I updated my prescription recently, I excitedly settled on the Holcomb style.  I went back and forth a few times between some more conservative styles and decided that I liked these sassy frames the best.  For the most part I wear them for computer use and desk work at my day job, but I like that I can style them in my off time to give my wardrobe a little more personality.  Personality is good, don't you think?!  With all that said, I was excited when Warby Parker asked me to help them launch their new collection!  It just so happens that they are celebrating their five year anniversary, and in honor of this milestone they just released a special collection of frames.

Here is what they have to say about this event:

The past five years have been busy— we’re not complaining—and we’re just getting started.

Since February 2010, we’ve grown out of five offices and set up a second hub in Nashville, expanded to 500-and-counting employees, rode across the country in a refurbished school bus, opened 10 stores (with more to come) throughout the U.S., and distributed glasses to over one million people in need worldwide.

We’re celebrating the occasion with the Half-Decade Collection, a group of five and a half shapes from our first-ever collection, re-released in a limited-edition spectrum of our signature hue, blue, and engraved with a 5 on the temple tip. Each pair arrives packaged in a specially designed box inscribed with all our frame names to date.

The new Harbor Blue, Striped Indigo, and Atlas Blue round out a crew of perennial favorite colors Eastern Bluebird Fade, Blue Slate Fade, and Blue Sapphire. They give the frames—Huxley, Roosevelt, Nedwin, Wiloughby, Fillmore, and our Colonel monocle—a fresh look.

As always, for every pair sold, a pair is distributed to someone in need.

I like the sassiness of my Holcomb frames because of the shape, but color is an area I have not ventured into with my eyewear.  Talk about personality!  I think my favorite pair from the new collection is the Roosevelt in Blue Slate Fade.  Here is a sneak peek at the Still Light Tunic that I just finished (a hint at what is to come on the blog soon).  Normally, as you may have noticed if you follow my knitwear posts, I like to make with (and wear) a lot of color.  As a result, my accessories are a little toned down or nonexistent.  However, with a neutral outfit like this one, little pops of color really bring it to life.  Paired with some frames in that Blue Slate Fade hue or the Harbor Blue for a bolder touch, some brightly colored tights... good to go.
Or... I suppose we could get a little matchy-matchy.  This Ruckle tunic I finished over the summer would look great with any of the frames in the Half Decade collection, but I especially like these Huxleys in Eastern Bluebird Fade.  Still mostly neutral, with just a little colorful accent.  Discreet, just right.
Those blues, can't get enough.  I'm seriously tempted to spring for some!  You can check out the full collection here.
Warby Parker provided images and information for this post.  However, interpretations and opinions are my own, in supporting a great company that I am fond of!

Off the Needles || Foliage Wrap

 The Foliage wrap (by Anne Thompson).  If you saw my previous post about this, you'll remember that I received some Crazy Sexy Wool from Wool and the Gang to try out in one of my projects.  Since I already have an abundance of scarves and cowls, I decided to do something a little different with it and found this pattern on Ravelry.  I had a little less yardage than the pattern called for, however, so I made some modifications on the number of rows which was made up by the larger gauge, in measurements.  Before blocking I wasn't really sure how it would turn out, but it flattened nicely and spread out a little for a fit with a little more ease (though not much more).
The belt is what makes it work.  This is a pretty bulky knit, and drawing the garment in at the waist gives it a bit of a peplum look, in my opinion.  I like it with the black pants, but it could easily be paired with a  dress as well.  The pattern page shows it worn upside down, with the leaf edging as the collar.  I   didn't notice that until just now or I may have tried it that way for some of the photos as well, but I'm curious about it now-- on the next wear, definitely.
Since I normally work in pretty small gauge, this is by far the bulkiest piece I have made to date (aside from accessories).  The speed is a nice change from what I'm used to - talk about instant gratification!  It may have taken a while to get some final photos of the project, but this was finished within days of the previous post.
What gauge do you knitters prefer working with?  Are chunky knits your thing, or do you get wrapped up in tiny gauges like myself?  I might have been won over to projects like this one, just every once in a while...

Wool and the Gang || Crazy Sexy Wool

 To be fully honest, the blogs that I follow are a little heavier on design than they are on knitting.  While I love knitting (obviously), I find that the hip curation of fashion/lifestyle/home decor by design bloggers piques my interest a little more strongly.  Furthermore, when their posts come full circle to tie in knitting or nature (my other obvious interest), I'm all the more intrigued and energized by it.  Thus, my feelings about Wool and the Gang.  I first came across this company a couple of years back through one of the aforementioned blogs and really dug their crisp, minimalistic, modern aesthetic.  Upon looking into them a little further, I discovered their focus on quality, sustainable craftsmanship in fashion, and an emphasis on sustainable and recycled yarns.  WATG designs simple knitting patterns that may be purchased as kits or separately as yarn and pattern to encourage handmade fashion… and if you're not a knitter you can buy the garments hand made by one of the WATG makers.  Pretty basic, huh?  Basic, but personal, and with beautiful products to boot.
When WATG reached out about getting some of their yarn into my hands to try out, I was clearly all about it.  A week later, I had two balls of Crazy Sexy Wool in my possession, in the Magic Mint colorway.  When I think of mint green, I picture… well, the walls in my study, because that's one of our colors of choice when it comes to home ambiance.  Rather than the sherbet green, this shade of the yarn is more of a cool, minty blue.  I can almost smell peppermint when I look at it… or maybe that's just my essential oil diffuser.  No matter.  Color often drives my instincts when it comes to yarn selection, so when I opened the package the day it arrived I was instantly drawn to the vibrancy of the hue.
When I reached in to grasp the yarn, an involuntary sigh definitely happened as my hand melted into the softness.  This is some seriously soft yarn.  Super bulky, too - probably one of the bulkier yarns that I have worked with.  I'm also a sucker for single-ply yarns.  Whether it's the case or not, I always feel like I'm knitting with handspun yarn when I work with single-ply.  With some single-ply yarns the fiber will pull and break apart in the middle of a project, but I had no such experience with this yarn.  It's just as taut and strong as a plied one.
As someone with an abundance of cowls and oversized scarves, I decided I wanted to try something a little different with this 100% Peruvian wool.  Since I normally work with a pretty small gauge it was a difficult decision, but I finally settled on a variation of the Foliage Wrap by Anne Thompson, a vest with a large leaf edging around the bottom.  Given my lack of experience with bulky non-accessory garments, this may or may not be the final form of the yarn.  If I don't like the project after it's blocked, I may frog it and go for a hat instead.  No tears lost over a little more time with this chunky goodness.
Each ball of Crazy Sexy Wool has 87 yards, and I must say that I am impressed at how far one ball of the yarn takes you - much farther than I expected.  The vest is nearly done, so expect photos of it soon, or, you know, photos of some other mystery garment if I decide in the end that the pattern doesn't work for me after all.  Another bonus: working with US 19 needles goes a lot faster than US 3.

Wool and the Gang provided the yarn for this review, but all words and opinions are my own.

Off the Needles || Cardoon

A while back I wrote about some recycled yarn in a review for Love Knitting, Rowan's Purelife Revive.  It's a cotton and silk blend, made from recycled garments that are stripped down and respun into a new yarn.  Each colorway is named for a different stone, and if you get a close look at the yarn you can see why - despite one major color overtone it is covered with tiny flecks of color, just like you would see in a slab of granite.  The colorway you see here is Pumice.
To go along with this summery, eco-friendly yarn, Rowan came out with a collections of patterns called  the Purelife Recycled Collection.  I've been working on Cardoon for a little while now and finally recently finished it.  The pattern itself is fairly simple, with a rib stitch making up the entire garment.  It does require seaming, but the gauge was large enough that I did not find it too cumbersome.
One thing I will recommend about this pattern is to make one size smaller than you would normally wear.  Mine is a size medium because I wanted a little bit of ease (my normal size is on the small end of the medium range), but it ended up quite a bit looser than I anticipated.  I'm still happy with the oversized sweater look that I got (since that's what I was going for), but if I had wanted a more fitted sweater the outcome would not have met my expectations.
The sleeve would tend to slip off my shoulder in the sleeveless dress I wore it with, but when styled with a t-shirt and unbuttoned it seems to stay in place pretty well.
The Purelife Recycled Collection is full of down to earth knits for a transitional season such as spring.  I admit, the beautiful photos of the country make me itch for a little excursion out of the city.  I too want to frolic in a field of native grass wearing a delightfully chunky tunic!  Several of these are probably going onto my queue...

 Check out Purelife Revive and the pattern collection.

Dress: Fleet Collection (purchased from Collected Thread) | Necklace: Kalee Jones W

T-Shirt: Bombs Away | Jeans: Banana Republic | Sandals: Chaco

On My Needles || Cardoon

Don't you love those flecks of color?  This yarn is quickly becoming a new favorite.  I've partnered with Love Knitting again to try out more of their eco-friendly products, and this time it's a recycled yarn by Rowan, called Purelife Revive.  It's made with recycled cotton, viscose and silk fibers, and has the feel of a plant fiber yarn that has me thinking it will just get softer with wear.  I love the statement on the label, "Recycling is becoming increasingly important in a world coming to terms with the challenges of environmental, economic and climate change.  Rowan Purelife Revive is made from used garments which have been selected according to the silk, cotton and viscose content.  These are then carded to make regenerated fibre, which is then spun into this beautiful, high quality yarn, which gives life to new hand knitting designs." The colorways are named for different geologic formations, and the one I chose is called Pumice.  I love the Pink Granite colorway as well - it really does look just like granite, with the various shades embedded into it.  Very fitting for the theme of the yarn as well to name them after a unique set of natural formations.

Love Knitting sent me a copy of the coinciding pattern book, the Purelife Recycled Collection.  The first garment I'm making from this lovely array of organic, down to earth pieces is Cardoon, a one button cardigan with rib texturing.  It's knitting up pretty quickly, so I hope to share the finished product with you in just a few weeks!  This would be a great pattern to make for a Christmas gift - since it goes fast and the cardigan is not too particularly fitted - no wonky shapes here to deal with.  It looks like both the yarn and the book are on sale on their web site right now, too!  More on this piece soon!

Cleaning Knits at Home Using Eucalan

It happened.  We finally broke 90 degrees.  I know Oklahoma's summer was particularly short this year (jump for joy), but to be honest, I LIVE for the milder seasons of fall and spring.  Crisp evenings with a hint of chiminea smoke in the air?  Of course!  Long sleeves and scarves and pumpkin everything?  I'll take it! One of my favorite parts about fall is the wardrobe changes and the shift from wearing as little as possible without looking indecent (ahem), to carefully selecting the layers - texture upon texture, solids with patterns - warm and cozy all the way.

In preparation for this exciting time of year, I recently brought out my sweaters to start getting them ready for wear.  Woolens don't typically need as much cleaning as other types of garments, but they are also a little more finicky than your every day cotton top or pair of jeans.  So for the most part, I err to my laundry motto:  "When in doubt, DRY CLEAN".  However, when one has as many sweaters as I do (which is a lot), this can quickly add up to a costly visit.  Clearly, some alternatives are needed.

 

Love Knitting offered to send me some Eucalan to try out, which is a delicate, no rinse wool wash intended for cleaning a vast array of garments, but of most interest to me: knits!  It's an eco-friendly product containing lanolin, which is a natural conditioner for wool that reduces static and makes the fibers softer.  Eucalan comes in a variety of fragrances, including eucalyptus, lavender, grapefruit, natural scent, and Wrapture, which contains jasmine oil. (I'm refraining from jumping down the rabbit hole that is reminiscing about the intoxicating jasmine bush in my childhood back yard.  Mmmmm).  Once I received my package from Love Knitting, I set to work and washed literally every sweater that I own.  Yes, every one.

 

 

For the garments that specified "hand wash" or "dry clean only", I soaked them in my kitchen sink after adding one tsp of Eucalan per gallon of cool water.  Each sweater was washed separately unless I had another one of similar coloration.  After soaking for about 15 minutes, the instructions direct you to squeeze the garments gently in the water in order to make sure the lanolin oils get to all of the fibers.  Then drain the basin, squeeze out what water you can without wringing, and reshape and dry the garments flat.  After I drained the water each time, I rolled the garment up in a towel and pressed on it lightly to soak up some of the excess water before laying out to dry.

 

 

 

I felt comfortable washing my less delicate sweaters in my front loading washing machine.  To wash with Eucalan in this type of machine I added 2 tbsp to the fabric softener compartment and set the machine to rinse and spin only with cold water.

 

 

Both washing methods worked great for my garments.  While a couple of the fragrances sound like they might be a little overbearing (i.e. grapefruit and eucalyptus), they are actually quite pleasant.  Each scent  lingers on the garments mildly, adding just enough aroma to be rendered enjoyable without even coming close to overdoing it.  I noticed a stronger scent in the garments that I soaked in the basin than I did on the ones washed in the machine.  Despite the faintness, I think they will be very soothing in wear.  Overall, I loved the Wrapsody scent the most - very feminine and romantically perfumy without disappearing into old lady-ness or obnoxious odor.

 

 

One of the great things about the product is that since no rinsing is required, you run less of a risk of felting or agitating the fibers on your more delicate knits.  In addition, I especially loved that the wash seemed to moisturize my hands instead of drying them out.  One thing I used to hate about my barista days was the dry skin and split fingers from washing sinks full of mugs.  Despite the constant rinsing of my hands during this process, it really felt like it was conditioning my skin in addition to my woolens... Win-win?

Overall, I'm excited about the quality of washing I observed from using Eucalan, the pleasant aromatherapy I will enjoy when donning my favorite cardigan next month (!), the lovely skin treatment my hands got out of the deal, and how much I am going to save on dry cleaning bills this winter (!!!).  Now I just need to take a pill remover to these babies and they'll be good as new!

You can purchase Eucalan products from Love Knitting here.

Love Knitting provided the products for this review; however, the words and opinions are my own.