Today's extremely exciting news is that Dale of Norway is now releasing their pattern booklets FREE electronically according to Nora Dereli of Allegro Yarns in this Ravelry post. No word if they are going to re-release their older patterns but if so I'd be in heaven. (Please Dale of Norway do it!!!)
Anyway there are currently two free downloads on the Allegro Yarns web site with more to come - the much sought after Commemorative Collection (with the wonderful Whistler maple leaf sweater plus 4 more sweaters and lots of great hats as well) that was going for big bucks on Ebay and their 2010 Vancouver Olympic sweater that also includes matching socks, hat, mittens, and baby items. Scroll down to download the two booklets at the bottom of THIS PAGE. Imagine being able to easily increase the size of some of their tiny charts. Really - this is just great news for those of us who love Nordic designs.
When I receive yarn for designing a new project I always ask the company to choose the colors for me. I am planning on doing a 4-color hat design and here is what Carol of Sunday Knits sent me. The yarns are really lovely and one cool thing they do is offer two sizes of skeins for colorworkers who might need just a small amount of one color. She sent two skeins of tweedy Brigadoon, a skein of Angelic which is a merino/angora blend and a skein of their Merino line Eden. All are sport weight so should work well together in a hat.