Getting started with knitting and crochet - tips and resources

Posted: March 17, 2020

Getting started with knitting and crochet - tips and resources

Intro (feel free to scroll past if you want to go straight to the resources!)     Yarn crafts are really good activities to help combat boredom, loneliness, restlessness, depression, and anxiety. I say that because they’ve helped me in all of those ways. Having a project on the go can give you an achievable thing to focus on (obsess over if you need to), which can make you feel settled, relaxed, calm, and accomplished. I know that some projects can make you feel quite stressed with their complexity but that’s totally not necessary so don’t let it put you...


All your questions answered about Yarnlings™ - the tiny balls of ECY yarn.

Posted: August 01, 2019

All your questions answered about Yarnlings™ - the tiny balls of ECY yarn.

You may have seen us selling these like sweets in a sweet shop at shows, or perhaps you've seen our cute jars full of them online... we get asked certain questions about them over and over so thought it'd be sensible to put our answers in a blog post. I hope it helps! Have you got any more questions that we've missed?   What are they?  Yarnlings™ are small balls of yarn ready wound into 5g weights for 4ply or 10g weights for DK. These could be any of our regular bases and any of our colourways, semi-solid or variegated. ...


Reasons to love alpaca yarn and fibre: all your questions answered!

Posted: July 11, 2019

Reasons to love alpaca yarn and fibre: all your questions answered!

We love alpaca at ECY, but feel like it's perhaps underestimated, or a bit under-appreciated. We get asked lots of questions about it, so have put together what we hope is a helpful and insightful blog post answering as many questions as we can. The first section is quite long by the way, but does need to come first. If you're interested in things like the difference between baby alpaca and other alpaca types, please scroll on down!  If you have any more questions that we've missed please do let us know. 🙂 Tell me about alpaca - where are...


Why we love Polwarth sheep and wool!

Posted: March 06, 2019

Why we love Polwarth sheep and wool!

We talk a lot about our love of merino and bluefaced Leicester yarn but we have been also using New Zealand Polwarth wool in our Oakworth yarns for years. To let you know why we love this fabulous breed we wanted to share some information about why they are so amazing. Breed Polwarth sheep originated in Australia in the 1800s (in fact it is their centenary year this year!) when Lincoln and Merino bloodlines were mixed. This combination was used to attempt to increase the hardiness of the Merino so that they could increase the areas that could be grazed. This...


The story of colour development in a dye studio (shed)

Posted: December 12, 2018

The story of colour development in a dye studio (shed)

I’ve spent quite a lot of time this week working on colour development and thought you might be interested to read about it - Claire and Debbie were, anyway, as they saw the work in progress and were wondering what on earth I was doing. They also had the unbridled joy of watching me flicking really slowly through my wildflower book to find the plants I was looking for and check their names. I do talk to myself whilst I'm doing this (yes, and I'm only 33) so I think they've learned to just ignore my ramblings.  This week I was...


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