I found some new indy-yarn that really does make a difference:

The lovely squishy and incredibly soft yarn that you see here is called Rosy Green Wool.
It's guaranteed 100% organic merino wool, sourced in Patagonia, then spun & environmentally friendly dyed at a small family business in the UK.

But it's not only the great quality that makes this yarn different!
It is one of the rare merino wools that is certified by the independent, international Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) for it's organic quality, it is machine washable (!) and the colours are not only gorgeous, but also made out of organic dyes that are not harmful: neither to the person that wears the finished object nor to the environment.

On a much more serious note though: Rosy did tell me something else, that I have never heard of before and that disturbed me immensely... As every other industry today, mass yarn production has quite some horrible secrets that are hidden from the consumer, too!

On her website Rosy explains:
"During my research I discovered many interesting but also alarming facts, from the painful mulesing that Merino sheep have to suffer to the large quantities of chemicals and pesticides which are normally used for yarn production. But unfortunately I could not find any organic wool which offers a verifiable guarantee that such things do not occur during the production and which is also really soft and not only available undyed. After what I had found out, it was simply impossible for me to continue knitting with such yarns and feeling good at the same time. The only solution: to produce a yarn myself which would meet all of these criteria."
Read more about how Rosy felt compelled to make her own organic yarn line on her site (in English) or on her blog (in German).

I have revisited two of my older patterns and updated them:

... and also added a long-sleeved version to the existing pattern (which has ¾length sleeves).
It's so practical that I have already worn it tons of times... something that you can actually even see in some of the pictures, especially the sleeves show some pilling...!
Oh well...

You can find this pattern either here on my site or on ravelry.

The second pattern that got a little face-lifting is my free Cocoon hat:

I have waited quite a long time to write this post, but finally I can say it: the pattern I have been working on since last summer is published!

It all started out as many of my patterns do.. I wanted to do some experiments on yoke/shoulder/sleeve construction and was determined to find a solution that allows for a top-down construction with a tailored, well fitting look and feel!

Especially the contiguous shoulder construction (an ingenious idea developed by Suzie Myers) intrigued me... I have done some garments with it and I liked the clean and well-cut shoulder it produced, but I had some issues with the way the fabric accumulated next to the sleeve and the narrow sleeve-cap that did not really adapt to the natural shape of the shoulder in my opinion (and I didn't find it as comfortable when worn as with a raglan for example).

I thought about all the other construction methods I knew for top-down knitting and I tried to combine all of the parts I liked about them... and I before I knew it I got a yoke that was something like a mesh up of contiguous, raglan, saddle and set-in sleeve... all in one! 
This sounds actually quite horrible, but I was very pleased with the "combination" yoke construction that I finally ended up with!

So I started to write this pattern and I can tell you that it is not easy to grade a pattern in different sizes when you have just thrown together different construction-parts, since there are no complete references to consult....
... I almost gave up on it, but I got so many lovely comments on my project page on ravelry that encouraged me to give it another try!

The pattern I ended up with was quite advanced naturally - so I wrote a completely different yoke construction (this time a saddled raglan yoke) for a separate version of the same cardigan, so as to make this pattern accessible to intermediate knitters, too.

After almost 6 months, 2 pattern PDF's, 2 tech-editors (that I almost killed with my constant emails) and around 20 marvellous testers this huge project found it's way into the ravelry data-base today!!!

With all this talk about the yoke construction I forgot to add that I had a blast designing the rest of the cardigan! It features a rounded, longer back, slip stitch patterns on the hem and on the top of the sleeves ...and POCKETS! 

You can find the pattern for this cardigan (both yoke versions are included in the download in separate PDFs) on ravelry or you can buy it directly from my site here.