Have you seen this yet?

We are delighted to be supporting Giselle and Number 63 with their Crochet Confidence Weekend – 21 – 23 June 2019. .

During the weekend you will be able to build your skill and confidence in crochet and will come away with at least one project finished.   You will begin Giselle's exclusive 'From Sand to Sea' blanket (pictured) which will help you to learn various different techniques and the yarn pack supplied will enable you to finish the blanket at home.

The weekend begins at 6 pm on Friday 21 June and finished around noon on Sunday 23 June and costs from £330/night inclusive (further pricing details are listed below).  The venue is the wonderful hotel Number 63 located just off Kensington Gardens in Bayswater.  I've already stayed at the hotel and Greg has been using it as his base while working in London so we can both attest to it's wonderful location and calm atmosphere.  The hotel It is a short walk from Paddington Station and an even shorter walk to Lancaster Gate tube so is easy to get to by public transport and makes a  perfect base for visiting London.

What the workshop includes:
The weekend comprises two nights dinner, bed and breakfast, Saturday lunch, refreshment breaks, plus all the yarn you will need for the weekend and to finish the projects at home, plus the support of experienced crochet tutors and designers.
What you need to bring:
The only materials you will need to bring with you will be your favourite hooks (3.5mm, 4mm and 4.5mm are likely to be needed), darning needle, scissors and a measuring tape (optional).
Accommodation and prices:
All rooms are ensuite. Weekend places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment. A limited number of day passes for Saturday are available. Maximum group numbers including any Saturday Day passes will be 24.
Weekend Prices:
Double occupancy of a twin room/triple in suite – £330 per person
Single room – £345
Single occupancy of a twin room/double in suite – £395 per person
Single occupancy of Suite – £415
Saturday Day passes:
A limited number of Saturday Day passes (which include the two Saturday day workshops, yarn for these, lunch and two refreshment breaks) will also be available at a cost of £80. Please contact Reception on +44 (0) 20 7723 8575 or e mail info@number63.co.uk
Booking is through Number 63
Terms and conditions:
Full payment will be required on booking, but cancellation will be possible on the following terms:
From 22 May to 7 June – Refund of 25%
After 7 June no refunds are possible.
As this is a special event weekend, Number 63 must have the whole payment on booking and not just a 20% deposit as per their standard online booking system (which unfortunately does not allow the flexibility to make individual adjustments). Therefore once you have booked your place on line please telephone to pay the balance by card. If Number 63 does not receive the full balance within 7 days, the reservation will be cancelled in line with the Special Terms and Conditions applying to this event.
Qualifying shareholders of Number 63 (Soroptimist) Ltd are entitled to their normal 5% discount on accommodation only.
TO BOOK SIMPLY CLICK BOOK ACCOMMODATION HERE AND SELECT FRIDAY 21 JUNE AS YOUR CHECK IN DATE  

Ruth and I are heading off to the Smallholder's Festival at the Royal Welsh Showground tomorrow.  The show runs over Saturday and Sunday and we are joining the Cows on Tour Stand with Prudence our knitted cow.  We'll also be offering mini-workshops making felted bits and pieces so if you are at the show come along and say hello and join in.

As we will be out, Greg is looking forward to running  the shop on Saturday morning so if you drop in, please be patient because he's not as familiar with our systems as we are. 

It's nearly April which for most of you means that Spring is on the way but for us means that Wonderwool is on the way!

We've got some exciting things planned for the show.  Primrose our knitted cow (the successor to our first prototype, Prudence) will be coming along to promote Cows on Tour and kits to make her will be on sale.  

For the crocheters amongst you we will have a showpack containing the wonderful Honeycomb throw and cushion from Stylecraft.  The show pack will have nine balls of Belissima (three each of three colours) the pattern and a bee stitch-marker all in a bespoke calico bag.  The show price will be £30.00 which is really good value.

Like last year, we will be showcasing mainly British yarns and we will have samples on show so you can see the wonderful projects that can be made from them.  The Tessellated Tiles blanket and Caribbean shawl will both make a return to the show together with a new colour-way of the shawl (more pastel this time).  Ruth, Jenny and Gaelle have been working on new patterns and we will be collaborating with Michelle from Woolly Wumpkins again too.  We'll all be there to give lots of advice about mixing colours and yarns.

There'll be more updates before the show so look out for posts on facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Wonderwool Wales takes place over the last weekend of April at the Royal Welsh Showground Builth Wells -- we'd love to see you there.

We've just had the first of our Summer cottons come in.  This one is from Katia and is a cotton/ltencel blend.  Called Cotton-Tencel,  it is 67% lyocel and 23% cotton.  It is very soft and has a slight sheen to it and makes up to most DK patterns.  Katia provides pattern support on their website or you can come into the shop and we'll show them to you.  The woman's jumper pictured takes nine balls for a medium size and the man's jumper pictured would take 12 for a medium.  The yarn retails at £3.95/50g.

Ammonite Yarns and Cows on Tour
 
We are really excited about a project we are helping with here in South Wales.
 
Cows on Tour is a group of farmers who are passionate about food and farming.  They are taking the farmyard to the schoolyard, talking to schoolchildren about where food comes from.

Abi Reader from Cows on Tour approached Ruth and Jenny at Ammonite Yarns before Christmas to see if they could help with providing knitted or crocheted cows for their campaign.  The cows will be given to the schools on the tour and used to promote the campaign. Abi’s initial request was for 50 stuffed toys which Ammonite Yarns just couldn’t provide but instead Jenny has designed a knitted cow (the prototype here is Prudence) which with a bit of tweaking will be the Cows on Tour cow.  Prudence started her tour in February at Stitches which is the annual yarn trade fair where she met lots of other stuffed toys!

We thought it really important that the cows should be made of British wool so that they promote sheep farmers as well as dairy.

The yarn is Jacobs Aran from West Yorkshire Spinners and if we can source a CE labelled fleece then the stuffing will be wool too. 

What we need now is willing knitters who would be prepared to make the rest of the cows for us.  We are being very cheeky and asking knitters to support this campaign by giving their time and knitting skills and we will provide the kits for the cows.
If you would like to help with this then contact jenny@ammoniteyarns.co.uk for more information. 

If you’d like to make a cow for yourself then keep an eye on the Ammonite website as we will be launching the kit at Wonderwool Wales at the end of April.
 
You can find more information about Cows on Tour on their website www.cowsontour.com

Ruth and I made our annual visit to Stitches, the annual UK trade fair for Crafting, Sewing, Haberdashery and Yarn shops.  We are generally chauffeured there by my husband, Greg (also known as our Logistics Manager for any yarn related outings) and this year we were also joined by Gaelle, our crochet specialist and Prudence the Prototype cow.  We were out of the house by 8.30 am (on a Sunday!) and headed off up to the NEC, Birmingham with notebooks in hand and budgets fixed firmly in our minds ready to meet our suppliers and replenish our shelves ahead of the new Season.

It is so hard to be restrained with so many new lines being shown.  The first to arrive (probably by the end of this week) will be Dream Catcher from Stylecraft.  This is a new cake yarn in with 10% wool content and will retail at £7.99 for 150g which is really very good value.  It is available in six shades and is a beautiful, DK weight mélange of colours in a roving style yarn. The colour change is phased so that the shades shift gradually.  The range includes relaxed shape garments and a range of stylish accessories. There is also a beautiful free shawl pattern on each ball band.  As well as the garments in the patterns, Stylecraft have also included accessories with exact yarn quantities given so that knitters can weigh their leftover yarn and choose to make the accessory too or download a different one.

West Yorkshire Spinners were launching their new Signature sock colours (designed by Winwick Mum herself, Christine Perry, some new colours and designs in Bo Peep and a new wool range, Colour Lab.  WYS haven't forgotten the crocheters in their pattern support and there are some lovely new designs being released to support the yarns.  Bo Peep has particularly strong pattern support for knitters and crocheters with super-cute toys to match the garments and mini-garments to fit the toys.

I've only skimmed the surface of the yarns we saw and yearned for -- there will be more information as the different yarns makes their way into the shop.  You can also expect a post shortly about the mysterious Prudence and her adventures at Stitches and the forthcoming Wonderwool.

We all love knitting and crochet but not that many of us love sewing up and our projects sit lonely and ignored waiting to be finished.  Often though it is the finishing that makes the project.  I spend many happy hours knit-picking over the atrocious sewing up of garments in magazines (I may be alone there but I doubt it!) so it's really worth making sure that it's done well.  A neat seam and well sewn-on buttons make all the difference and sewing in ends properly will save much angst later on as they won't come  undone.  Our Sew-Up-Saturdays take the monotony out of finishing off as you can sit with friends and a cup of tea and cake and time will pass more slowly as you sew and snip and finish off those pesky UFOS.  

January 26, 10 am till 1 pm will is the first Sew Up Saturday of the year this weekend so tidy up all of those projects that have been sitting in baskets since before Christmas, bring them along to the shop and start sewing!

It sounds musical but Thrumming has nothing to do with stringed instruments.  It has to do with string of a sort -- the wool variety!  Thrumming a knitted item involves incorporating roving (unspun fleece) into a piece of knitting to make a lovely cosy fabric.

Originally 'thrum' referred to short bits yarn leftover from weaving.  Weavers would use the thrums for stuffing items like pillows and later for making hats and mittens warmer.  These thrums caught and frayed quite easily though so knitters evolved the technique to use roving instead to make lovely cosy items like hats, gloves and, for the more ambitious, jackets or even blankets.

We will be running a workshop on Saturday 2 February to teach knitters how to thrum.  We will provide the materials to make a thrummed mug cosy with materials and patterns available to buy to make bigger projects.

The workshops runs from 10.30 am till 1 pm and costs £35.00 including materials for the cosy.  Just click on the picture  to link to the booking page.
 

I can't believe I haven't written a proper blog since December -- life has been busy!

It's difficult to get away from Brexit at the moment but it did mean that BBC Wales came into the shop this Monday to talk about the effect of Brexit on small businesses.  Nick Servini also took the opportunity to have a chat with some of our knitters and crocheters.  How exciting and terrifying was that!  If you missed our five seconds of fame it is on BBC i-player,https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0by2nt8/bbc-wales-today-evening-news-15012019.

If Brexit is getting you down, the mental health benefits of knitting and crochet are well known, so pop down to your now famous Local Yarn Shop and pick up a new project to see you through the political plotting.

Our lovely local yarn dyer Michelle is hosting  a knit-a-long on her Woollywumpkins Ravelry page. It starts on December 27th and is aimed at getting us through the post festive slump and relaxing us into the new year.   We have the patterns in stock together with lots of lovely Woolly Wumpkins hand-dyed yarn.   Stitches used in the pattern include knit, purl, yarnover, cast on and cast off so it is simple enough for everyone to enjoy.  Pop in before 1 pm on Saturday and you'll be able to have the pattern and yarn for Christmas!
Cwtch Me Close pattern