Royal Wedding Knitting Competition

We are very pleased to announce the Great British Yarns Royal Wedding Knitting Competition. This is offically now open for entries until the 20 April 2011. The winner will be announced on the 29 April.

If you would like to enter please design and knit or crochet a suitable and appropriate item for the Royal Wedding and post it to me (Sharon Spencer) at Great British Yarns. Please note that entries will not be returned. I thought it might be a nice idea to auction the items and give proceeds to charity. The lovely Crown Teacosy and Eggcup pattern is by the talented Debi Birkin She has lots of lovely patterns on her website, and it's well worth a visit if you get a moment.



Now, all important information - Prizes. These will take the form of gift vouchers to be redeemed at Great British Yarns. First prize will be a £50 voucher, Second Prize £25 voucher and third prize £10 voucher.


The rules are quite simple:

1) This must be an orignal design
2) The judge's decision will be final and no correspondence regarding this will be entered into!
3) Entries will not be returned and you must give permission for your item to be sold for charity.
4) Not a rule, but you might like to know that the copyright of the design will remain with the designer.

I thought I'd post this now so that if you have any spare time over Christmas you can get started!

Good luck everyone!

Merry Christmas

and a Happy New Year to you all!

We are closing on the 23 December (yes, later today) until the 29 December and hope to be posting parcels out again then. We have some fantastic bargains in our sale and will be adding to this in the next week. As well as clearance bargains we are also offering 10% off Rowan Colourscape.

What do we have planned for next year? Well, I am going to send out regular newsletters regarding offers, new stock and other things, so if you would like to sign up for that, please do so. I will be keeping the blog up to date and holding our Royal Wedding Knitting Competition. I will put up details of this in a separate post.

So, I hope you all have a relaxing and restful time and look forward to posting again the in the New Year!

Knit Picks Gloss

I thought I'd tell you a bit about the Gloss range. These are the least expensive of both the lace and the sock yarns from Knit Picks. At £3.99 a skein, this is very good value. A blend of merino and silk, this is a lovely yarn. The colours are solid and I hope Ive chosen a reasonable variety.

The only thing about this yarn, was that it wasn't as soft as I had expected at first squeeze. After a few squeezes, it did get softer! I think this probably more to do with the spinning and dyeing processes and that once washed it will soften up considerably. The solid black seems a little harsher than the other colours and so I suspect my theory is correct. Don't let this put you off though - it really is excellent value for money.

Knit Picks Wool of the Andes

I thought that as Knit Picks is new to the UK, a little explanation and information about some of the yarns might be a good idea. So, I'll start with the Wool of the Andes. Knit Picks offer this yarn in a worsted weight, a bulky weight with solid colours and these lovely hand dyed yarns.



The yarn is 100% Peruvian Highland Wool. I'll be honest, I was expecting this to be a bit stratchy and hard. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it is extremely soft and easy to handle. This hand dyed version is very, very pretty and the colours blend extremely well. The solid colours match the hand dyed and so can be used together. I think these yarns will be perfect for hats, mittens and because of its excellent felting qualities, for bags, and anything else you might like to felt. (You can tell that felting isn't something I'm particularly familiar with).



The suggested tension for this yarn is 3 - 3.75 sts per inch on 6 - 8mm needles, so it should knit up to most chunky type patterns. Knit Picks have a wide range of patterns on their website that you can either buy as a download, often for low prices such as $1.99, or, even better, for free.

I am considering making some hats for Christmas presents out of this. My nephew, aged 6 would love the Rolling Hills colour which looks like a camouflage colouring. He is very keen on Toy Story at the moment and so this would be great.



My niece (aged 8) would of course like the Galaxy colour way as it is the closest we have to pink and purple which are about the only colours she recognises.

Knit Picks has arrived!

Hurray! At Last! The Knit Picks order arrived on Saturday morning. I had thought it was going to arrive Thursday morning, but I was sadly mistaken. The consignment of 23 boxes on two palletts had come all the way from Vancouver, Washington, USA and then the problems started. On Thursday, the freight company admitted that they had keyed in the delivery date incorrectly and that it would now arrive on Friday morning. The disappointment was severe, but I got over it. Friday morning, I was up bright and early (not usual for me) and excited. We got to lunchtime, no order. So I rang the freight company again. It appeared an error had been made. They had keyed in Rainham, Kent, instead of Bath. The shipment had turned up in Rainham and had nowhere to go. Easy mistake. So, we could have it first thing Saturday morning. More disappintment. However, it arrived and here is a photo of Ian with the boxes.

I am very, very pleased with the yarn. The colours really are very beautiful. The yarn looks as though it is of a very good quality. I spend a very happy Saturday opening and checking off all the yarn. It was great fun. I really hope you all like it!

New Look

We decided to give Great British Yarns a bit of an overhaul and asked Adam of Flipside Studio in Bath to design a lovely new logo. This is what he came up with:



We love it - what do you think?

I'm Back!

Hi
Thank you to those of you who check back occasionally to see if I have written anything. Apologies for not doing so. I am going to be much better. The time just rushes by. I think that we haven't had a minute to ourselves since moving. However, enough of the excuses.

We obviously returned from New York and we had a great, if exhausting, time. We walked and walked and then walked some more. We didn't shop much but did find time to visit Tiffanys (no, I didn't get a gift) and a few other posh shops. We visited art galleries (quite a surprise as we said we wouldn't). Did a lot of walking around Central Park, up buildings, on a boat trip and soaked up the atmosphere. Great! Thanks Lucy!



Speaking of America, the picture above is a shade of one of the new yarns we are going to be stocking very, very soon. We have been lucky enough to buy stock from KnitPicks and will be the only UK stockist for this fabulous yarn! If you aren't familiar with KnitPicks have a look at their website. www.knitpicks.com. We are stocking some of their sock yarn, lace yarn, cotlin, (lovely blend of cotton and linen) as well as lots of other weights. Prices will be pretty much the same as the $ price, so a $4.99 yarn will probably cost around £4.99. I really hope you like this yarn. Their pattern support is great as you can download their patterns.

I'll keep you updated as to the arrival date, but in the meantime, here is a pic of one of the sock yarns.