Latest Posts

Vintage Shetland Blog Tour

Today sees the launch of a blog tour and crowdfunder which will travel from Shetland and back with the news of a very special book and how you can help it on it’s journey. I am delighted to be stop one on Susan Crawford’s Vintage Shetland blog tour!

For the last four years designer and knitting anthropologist Susan Crawford has been working on recreating 25 hand knitted items from the archives at Shetland Museum. With the help of textile curator, Dr Carol Christiansen, Susan has had access to the many items donated to the museum and has chosen to recreate a selection of garments and accessories for women and men, in both Fair Isle and lace. Read More

Scollayalong: British wool

There have been a lot of suggestions and showing off of yarns in the KnitBritish ravelry group of the yarns being used in the Scollayalong, which casts on on the 17th July. I wanted to share with you some of my personal yarn favourite British yarns. It isn’t mandatory that you knit your Scollay in British wool for this KAL, but there will be a prize at the end of the KAL for a Scollay made in UK wool…just saying!

All of these yarns are ones which I have personally knit with and all are available from KnitBritish sponsor BritYarn!

brityarn

 

BritYarn is a brand new online yarn shop specialising in British wool.
To share and celebrate in a love of British wool, click the logo!

 

 

| Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Shop DK
– £7.45

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100% Wensleydale wool from the heart of Yorkshire, this is a really delightful yarn! I used this yarn for my Lush cardigan and really loved the stitch definition. The knitted fabric has a soft halo and gorgeous lustre and the best bit is that I find it hardly pills! Wensleydale wool has a slight crisp hand-squish-grab, but feel of the knitted fabric is quite soft – everyone who saw my lush at EYF were pleasantly surprised that while it looked rustic it was soft next to the skin. 

| West Yorkshire Spinners BFL
– from £4.85 – 6.90

BFL is a truly classic British breed wool for hand-knitting. It is available in natural colours, as well as 7 gorgeous dyed shades and you will find this a soft, bouncy and a really strong yarn. Cashmere-soft against your skin there is a little lustre on this too. I have knit a lot of items in this yarn including a baby lush and a nursery pillow – texture just works so well in this yarn.

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 | Blacker Westcountry Tweed
– £6.00

I adored reviewing this yarn last year and I always envisioned knitting a sweater in it.

It is a blend of Black Welsh Mountain yarn and Teeswater cross and is full of woolly character; soft, lofty and with lovely neps that really bring the knitted fabric to life. Check out that stitch definition! I reckon the reverse stocking stitch and lace will look great in this yarn

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| Wendy Ramsdale
– £3.85 

Ramsdale is 100% wool made from a blend masham fleece and is available in 10 really fantastic colours.  It is a single ply yarn and so makes a slightly different looking knitted fabric than the other yarns mentioned here. With a slight fuzzy halo it is incredibly tactile and again the colours, all named after Yorkshire towns, are really delicious. A budget friendly yarn too.

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| WYS Aire Valley
– £4.75

Aire Valley is a workhorse of a yarn that packs a mighty punch in its 100g/230m ball. This is a 75% British wool, 25% nylon blend, machine washable wonder. Fantastic for knitting garments that are a little easier to care for. I knit a Vivid blanket in this for my new-phew and its a cracking yarn, which seems to only bloom and get softer with each wash despite that little dash of man-made fibre. This yarn is also BritYarn’s yarn of the month for July! There is a great range of colours and lots of choice for your Scollay cardigans!

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It’s not too late to sign up. We will be casting on the KAL on Friday 17th July and we will be KAL-ing right up to 25th September.

Which yarn are you going for yourself?

hapalong prizes: THERE’S MORE!

Last time I wrote about the prizes for the Hapalong KAL I think I told you I would be revealing more and with less than two weeks to go til the end of the KAL, I thought I’d share some more…. Read More

Scollayalong KAL

Ever since Karie Westermann released her Scollay cardigan I have had lots of you asking me if there would be a KnitBritish KAL to coincide. Myself and my cohort-in-British-wool Isla, from BritYarn, have been planning this for weeks and you can now sign up to the Scollayalong KAL!

We will be casting on this gorgeous cardigan – designed in wondrous British wool – on Friday 17th July and running the KAL until 25th September.

If you are not familiar with this design you can read about it on Karie’s blog, but here are a few details to whet your appetite. Read More

episode 33 Scollayalong KAL and IBYC

UPDATE: Due to space I can no longer host the audio files on the blog, please use your favourite podcatcher or right click the Podgen link below, to listen in a new tab (y’know, so you can also refer to the shownotes whilst you listen!)

ooh! what a lot has been going on since last we spoke! Get in here for a right wee blether with me, BritYarn, all things IBYC and a KAL! You can also listen on iTunes, via any podcatcher or my Podgen page

There is a wee dip in the volume in this podcast….I nearly lost the whole shebang, but managed to rectify it, though it is a bit rough around the edges…like meself!

brityarn

BritYarn is a brand new online yarn shop specialising in British wool.
To share and celebrate in a love of British wool, click the logo!

Indie Burgh Yarn Crawl 

This was held in Edinburgh at the weekend and featured Kathy’s Knits, Be Inspired Fibres and Ginger Twist Studio. I had a list and on the top of it was Sock Anatomy, by Clare Devine. I also bought sock sized chiaogoo from Mei and inevitably went off list to buy some Signature yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners for a FoolProof cowl. Read More

Sponsored by a genuine love for British wool

I spoke on this topic on the podcast last week and I thought it would also be an important post, to share with you some of my feelings and ideas around sponsorship; 

I have often thought about having sponsors on KnitBritish, but two things would often stop me going further: having a focus on British wool as I do, it could be counter-intuitive to introduce show sponsors who didn’t also have this as an interest or focus. For a long time sponsorship just wasn’t an idea for me, because I didn’t think there would be an ideal fit.

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Introduction: Make It Fit

If you listen to the podcast, or spend time on the KnitBritish ravelry group you will have heard about Make It Fit. This is a planned series of posts curated by Jo Milmine, of the Shinybees podcast, and myself on the issues, hurdles and questions that arise from trying to knit garments which fit your body. The whole idea arose out of various twitter conversations on the subject of being proud to knit to our own fantastically unique proportions. We asked questions of ourselves; why do we choose the pattern size closest to the size *we think* we are? Shouldn’t we embrace our own measurements? We can knit and we can knit well, so why shouldn’t there be more emphasis on knitting to fit? Read More

five questions for BritYarn

Meet Isla Davison, owner of the brand spanking new BritYarn and sponsor of KnitBritish!
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I asked Isla if she wouldn’t mind swinging by to answer a few questions so you can get to know her, her love of British wool, her favourite projects and about her BritYarn adventure.

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