Choosing the right yarn

Hello lovelies! Today I’m back with a blog post filled to the brim with questions - and answers for them! As we’re adding our first unspun yarn - Manchelopis - to the shop, and the experience of knitting with unspun yarn can be a bit different than what you’re used to, I thought it would be good to have a really comprehensive post about everything you might want to know about how to knit with unspun yarn.

Happy August friends! I don't know about you but at this time of year, my needles start getting antsy for some cool-weather knitting. Despite the temperatures still being high, and the air being a little more humid than I would like, I know that in a few weeks I'm going to need some woolly transitional pieces to layer over my summer linens. If there is a gap in your wardrobe for such garment, then now is the perfect time to get making!

If there is one thing that can make my day, it's getting to visit a yarn store. There's something about the atmosphere, seeing yarns that I love and discovering new ones. Getting to squish those skeins, and see all the colours in real life, there is nothing better!

Unfortunately though, getting to visit yarn shops we love and seeing all that woolly goodness in real life isn't always possible. There may not be a stockist close by for the yarn you're looking at, you may not be able to physically get to a yarn shop very often, or in the case of the last few years with lockdowns, bricks and mortar shops have had to close and move their business online.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are officially into the warmer months, which brings around the age old crafting question; Are you a seasonal knitter?! If, like us, you never put your needles down, do you find yourself looking for warm weather projects?

In our last blog post, we introduced you to one of our favourite sustainable yarn producers, Garthenor, chatted all about their gorgeous sock yarn, Snowdonia Sock and did a little project planning to get the sock inspiration flowing! If you missed that post, you can catch up on it by clicking here.

Today, we want to take a look at another of their yarns; Beacons! This DK weight yarn has been a firm favourite ever since we introduced it into the webshop, and there's a good reason for that.

In the Autumn of last year, we permanently introduced a selection of carefully curated, sustainably made yarn to the webshop. Our aim for selling yarns was simple; we wanted to bring you an opportunity to shop beautiful yarns with the confidence of knowing they were sustainably produced. We wanted to take all the guesswork out of knitting sustainably for you, knowing we'd done all the research for you!

When we were thinking of yarns we'd like to sell in the webshop, one name came up immediately; Garthenor.