You can never have too much yarn

We’ve spent the entire weekend moving all the Great British Yarns stock into the new studio. This involved a total of twelve trips in our Renault Scenic (with the back seats removed) moving 144 boxes containing approximately 18,000 balls of yarn! Nobody was more surprised than Sharon at the huge amount of stock stacked on the floor when we’d finished.

Having all the stock in one place will be a far more efficient way of working compared to working on a split site as we have been doing. However it’s also made us realise that we have quite a lot of yarn so the next job is to sort the stock out and then carry out a full stock check.

After that we will be moving our office into the studio so we can finally take full advantage of having a proper dedicated space to run the whole business from. Once that’s sorted out we will turn our attention to getting the showroom ready so we can invite the public in and hopefully get a few of the balls of yarn sold!

Home from Knit Nation

I’ll start by saying a big thank you to those of you who took the time to visit our stand at Knit Nation last weekend. It was great to meet with some of our existing customers and also to see so many new ones.

It was a real treat for us to be able to take our yarn out of storage and show it off to everyone and we were very encouraged to see the positive reaction to the stock that we took along, in particular to the UK Indie Dyers and also the Knit Picks.

The event itself was very well organised and run by Alice and her crew and there was a great atmosphere throughout. It was also nice for us to be able to meet and chat with other traders and look at some of the other superb yarns on sale.

A fantastic show – we hope to return!

Knit Nation

We are really excited to tell you that we have a stand at Knit Nation this year! For those who haven't heard about this event, it's a Knitting Show held at Imperial College, London from 15 - 17 July. There are classes, events, a Knitting Salon where afternoon tea can be purchased (looking forward to that) and lots of other knitty treats.

Our stand will contain lots of Knit Picks, lots of undyed yarns, some Rowan, some gorgeous hand dyed yarn by UK indie dyers and some really exciting stuff from Knit Pro which arrived at my front door just a few minutes ago! We have a few Symfonie Rose Crochet sets, lovely needle cases, DPN tubes and craft sets, all of which are new to the UK. These will be appearing on our website next week

We will be removing stock that we are taking from the website tomorrow night (Thursday), but don't worry, we will be putting it back on Monday.

Writing of Indie Dyers, we are delighted to say that we have persuaded Karen of Twisted Limone to dye some of her fabulous yarn for us. Karen dyes sock yarn in really vibrant colours and then winds them into ready to use balls of fabulousness! The photo above shows a few of the colours we have. We will be taking these to Knit Nation, and I'm sure they will disappear fast. More are coming though and these will be on the website as soon as we receive them.

So, if you are planning to visit Knit Nation, do come and say hello - we would love to meet you.

Making a Start

We’ve finally been able to get into our new unit and make a start on some of the work we need to do before we can move the stock in. Over the weekend this has involved removing some old tiles from the area that will house the yarn showroom (previously used as a kitchen).

Sharon gets to grips with the old tiles (just before her dad turned up and actually did the job!)

Meanwhile I set to work to remove the “infinity wall” from the far end of the unit. The building had previously been used as a photographic studio and this structure had been built in to remove the hard line between the walls and the floor.

Beyond infinity – luckily it came apart quite easily

At the front of the unit we plan to have a large table suitable for workshops and a knitting group. At the moment this space is a rather nasty shade of green but it will be brightened up and have some Laura Ashley wallpaper applied to one wall to make it a bit more cosy.

The workshop space.

We did manage to do a bit of painting and plastering but there’s an awful lot still to do and with Knit Nation looming we’re going to be in for a busy few weeks.