Lately, I have started to support yarn makers in their start up.
Often, these smaller crafts are being overlooked by the large investors of more commercial manufacturers. Thus the independent yarn makers launch their own campaigns, where individuals can support directly, either via their own blogs or via Kick-Starter or similar.
I find it very satisfying to help some of these creators. Not only do you help a new business, you also get to try out some scrumptious new yarns in faboulous colours. Till date, I have supported a total of four start-ups for new yarn.
I will explore these new yarns together with you. Perhaps you might get the taste for trying out some of them or totally new yarns popping up!
The first one I supported, is dating back a few years, so I will start with that one.
The yarn is Buachaille, launched by the Scottish knit designer, Kate Davies. She has a fantastic blog where she explains the full process going into the yarn production. She also have some great knit design books, of which I have a few already.
At the time, Kate launched her Buachaille yarn, she had a yarn club of seven different colours which were accompagnied by a book with designs to use up all of the seven skeins included in this club. I managed to make two of those designs till now - the slippers have turned out very popular; they look good, they are very comfortable to wear and they are a fun quick knit to do.
The yarn is 100% wool; it is a 2-ply worsted yarn which knits up very well. What amazes me the most is the softness of this yarn - it does not feel at all like one-hundred percent wool!
I now have all 11 different shades of this yarn. Till now, I think that my favourite colour is the light green (yaffle) and the dark blue (moonlicht nicht), and of course the two natural non-dyed colours are also great.
In any case, as you can see that all shades go so well together, that you can really mix and match these eleven shades, as you like. It will always look good!
