Weekending. With Yarn.

The other weekend, the ‘Stylecraft Blogstars’ headed to West Yorkshire for our twice-yearly gathering of woolly minds.

Imagine an entire weekend spent with kindred creative souls, where people will look at you funny if you don’t chatter on (and on) about knitting and crochet.

Imagine a get-together where it’s practically de rigueur to cast on at the breakfast table.

Imagine a weekend where nobody would dream of interrupting you whilst you’re counting. Imagine getting a glimpse into the yarny future, and being given samples of some of the exciting new yarns that’ll be hitting a wool shop near you in a few months’ time.

Yeah, it’s tough down the fibre mines. It is beautiful in Yorkshire, though:-

I came away bursting with plans and design ideas. Some bits of the experience are best saved for separate blog posts all of their own, particularly our trip to see the Hockneys at Salts Mill, and our tatting workshop. I’ll post about both of those over the coming week.

Meanwhile, back to Stylecraft’s own mill at Slaithwaite, to watch a presentation about forthcoming yarns, a few of which I’m allowed to show you already.

Would you like to see the next batch of releases, which should be hitting the shops right about now? OK, here first of all we have a new range called ‘Tweedy’. It’s an acrylic-cotton blend, available in four striking colourways:-

And following the success of the ‘Batik’ range, they’ve just added four new shades. Wa-hey! You could always download a free pattern for a fair isle cowl…

The ‘Head Over Heels’ sock yarn has been a big hit, so they’ve just added these new shades. The one on the left in the picture below would work well for my reindeer cowl, in case you’re so inclined. (Knitted version here. Crocheted version here.) Look!

I’ll be able to show you more of Stylecraft’s forthcoming yarns over the next few months. All in all, it was a rather fine weekend.