Tag Archives: wool

British Wool Advent Calendar

British

Day 2 of the blogging from A to Z challenge. B is for British.

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that I have a ‘thing’ for British yarn (this actually extends to most things, but I’m going to limit myself to yarn here). I try my best to buy only British yarn, unless it’s something like cotton, which I don’t buy much of anyway. We have so many amazing different breeds of sheep, we have alpaca, we have angora rabbits and we have cashmere goats, that I don’t really see the need to import wool.

Many people believe British wool is expensive, but it isn’t any more expensive than wool from anywhere else. For example you can buy from the New Lanark Mill and pay only £4.50 for 100g of aran weight yarn, and the money goes towards the upkeep of the historic mill. Yes, you can find expensive British yarn, but you can find expensive imported yarn too.

Then there are places like Blacker, who sell not only the more well known Blue Faced Leicester, but also sell the wool from various different rare sheep, helping keep the breeds alive. Even these aren’t what I would call expensive, with prices at around £5 per 50g.

The most local yarn I ever bought was from the Winchester farmers’ market. It was spun from a flock of sheep from a local smallholding, and also hand dyed with natural dyes. So commercial producers aren’t the only place excellent yarn can be found.

I haven’t been able to try anywhere near all the British yarns available and I’m certainly not an expert on the subject. If you do want to learn more about the wonders of British wool, take a trip to KnitBritish.

I should mention that if you’re reading this and you aren’t from Britain, I highly recommend you research yarn and wool local to you. You might find something interesting to try.

Rosie’s Moments Yarn

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Back in September at Bristol Wool Fair, I bought some yarn from Rosie’s Moments. It’s British, reasonably priced and she uses wonderful colours.

At the beginning of this year she started making limited (around 20) monthly mystery boxes. I managed to resist in January and February, but by the March box I realised I had to try one. I nearly missed out as she sold out before I had chance to buy one, but luckily for me and a few others she made up a few extra. This time I jumped on the chance and I am so glad I did!

Around pancake day there was a giveaway on the Rosie’s Moments Facebook page. All I had to do was tell everyone what my favourite pancake topping is. So I did (apricot fromage frais if anyone is interested). A few days later it turned out that I was the winner! Yay!

The spring box and the prize arrived together. The box was fantastic. In it was yarn, chocolate, some yummy lemon soap, a notebook, a stitch holder, some stitch markers, some buttons and a little electronic tea light. And of course attached to the yarn was a little bag of lavender as always. (Turns out I’m not so allergic to lavender any more, which is quite good really with the amount I now have!) Edit: There was also a coaster which I forgot as it was on the table when I was taking pictures!

The yarn is 4ply, 20% alpaca, 60% merino and 20% nylon so is very soft. The colours are very spring like, (the colourway is called ‘Cute Lambs and Spring Flowers’) and remind me of the crocuses and daffodils that are the first sign of spring.

The prize was more than I imagined. I was expecting a skein of yarn and no more. How wrong I was! Instead, she sent me yarn, a project bag, some lip balm, some KnitPro DPNs, a notebook and a bath bar.

The yarn is called Forest Floor and is 4ply, 75% merino, 20% nylon and 5% stellina sparkle. It’s really pretty and I’m thinking of pairing it with the dark green I bought from her at Bristol Wool Fair.

So, if you want some yarn that’s bright and colourful, and want to buy it from a wonderful person, check out Rosie’s Moments. She also attends various events, and will be at the Bristol Wool Fair again this year.

In a final note, have you noticed that my photos are somewhat improved in quality (apart from the dark green yarn, that was taken a while ago)? My dad gave me his Canon EOS 50D after buying an upgraded model for himself, and although I am nowhere near knowing how to use it to its full potential I think it’s already improved my photos. It did take an awful lot of experimentation and manual reading to get them though!

Unravel – My first festival of knitting

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We awoke on Saturday to the first properly nice sunny day for some time. Armed with a large flask of coffee, sweets for the journey, and everything we could think of needing for a day out (minus the big bottle of water I left in the kitchen) we jumped in the car and set off for Farnham. We left at 10am, exactly when we planned to.

The journey was uneventful, save for a rather long game of ‘I spy’. No traffic. No getting lost. As we entered Farnham we saw banners and adverts for Unravel. We arrived at the planned car park at 11, again, exactly the time planned. Things were going far too well, especially as we tend to be good at taking wrong turns during trips.

We had parked in a car park by the river, as suggested by some members of the Unravel group on Ravelry. We set off towards the venue, Farnham Maltings. We had planned to walk along the river but ended up taking a slight detour, but it was nothing major. The trip was short, and we arrived at the Maltings in about 10 minutes, with a quick stop to admire some pretty crocuses. They followed the path of the river all the way from the car park to the Maltings, as we found out on the way back.

When we arrived at Unravel there was no queue for the advanced tickets so we could head right in. Nick set off in search of food while I made my way to the venue for Susan Crawford’s talk on vintage Shetland knitting.

The talk was interesting, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the intricately knit colourwork on the pieces. It impressed me that the yarn they used was so fine, somewhere between lace and 4ply. A 4ply cardigan takes long enough for me, I don’t think I could go any finer!

After the talk I met up with Nick, who had not only successfully found food, but had a bit of an explore of the building. We decided that we should look at everything before buying anything. There was so much I could have bought: yarn, buttons, needles, more yarn, baskets, aprons, more yarn.

There was a workshop at 2pm to learn how to felt a small creature. I’ve never done felting before, and Nick was up for giving it a go. Unfortunately it seemed there was a misprint in the guide book and the workshop was only meant for children. Although the tutor was perfectly happy to teach adults, we decided to leave the limited places for the children instead. It was then (I think) that I bought my first skein of yarn, as the room was next door to the workshop. It’s easyknits.co.uk DW Toughie in the colourway Who.

We headed out to a seating area and had some coffee while planning the rest of our afternoon. The tent was decorated with a knitted pigeon, pompoms and on every table was a decoration of a ball of yarn with needles stuck in it.

After we were suitably refreshed, we made our way back to the stalls. The first thing I bought was a shawl pin and some buttons. I had seen some shawl pins earlier but, although they were stunningly pretty, I didn’t want to spend that much money on them. This one was much cheaper and still pretty. The buttons are for the Thermal I’m knitting.

Then we found the John Arbon stall. I have knit with their Exmoor Sock yarn before and loved it, so when I saw the bargain yarn, I went a little mad. It was £3.50 per 100g for bobbin ends. So I bought:

100% Wensleydale. Nick chose this as we’re planning for another pair of socks and this was the brown he was looking for. I can’t find any info about it anywhere.

Exmoor sock in Heather

Undyed Alpaca/Merino/Nylon 4ply. I may experiment with dyeing this but I’m not sure yet. It’s so very soft and it’s a pretty natural colour.

Alpaca Sock

My favourite (for now), Alpaca Supreme. I wouldn’t usually buy silk, but this was just so pretty and so reasonably priced that I couldn’t resist. I’m looking for the perfect shawl pattern for it.

On the Little Grey Sheep stall, we found the perfect blue that Nick wanted to go with the brown. It’s a mini skein and as he only wanted it for detail, that was brilliant.

Nick decided to head outside and sit down while I had a final look around. During the first look round I saw a single skein of Colinette Jitterbug in a crazy green colourway that I fell in love with. I told myself that if it was still there I would buy it. It was, so I did.

I was also on the lookout for a project bag for my mum. I didn’t find anything suitable though unfortunately. There were some fantastic bags there, but none of the ones I saw had any pockets, and I’m pretty sure she wants pockets. I was tempted by the baskets, but I didn’t like any of the ones left on the stall, so that will be something to get another time.

There was so much more I could have bought, but I was pretty restrained, and thanks to the bargain John Arbon yarn, spent less than I had budgeted.

The plan when we were done was to find a pub for dinner and to watch the rugby, but we decided to just head home as we were both pretty tired. We walked back along the river (the right way this time) and drove home, entertained by another game of I spy.

My first visit to a knitting festival was very positive, and after being undecided for so long I was very glad that I visited Unravel. I did find it a little too crowded, but waiting until the afternoon to buy proved to be a great idea as it meant the crowds had died down and there was a bit more room to browse.

Seeing as he was so patient to come to an event all about knitting with me, please take a look at Nick’s website. He’s a game developer and is just getting ready to release his first game, Hyper Gauntlet.