Neutral colours at Eden Cottage Yarns: why we love them and which ones to look out for!

Posted: September 11, 2018

Neutral colours at Eden Cottage Yarns: why we love them and which ones to look out for!

Can we talk about neutral colours for a moment? Firstly, what constitutes a neutral? For me it’s a colour that isn’t leaning towards any particular colour group, if that makes sense. I suppose another criteria would be that it goes with everything, or most other colours. It starts with white, black, and grey, of course, but then for me it extends to beiges, oatmeals, browns, and creams. I was talking about it with Claire though and was surprised when she brought out dark blues as neutrals - to me they’re just blue, which is not a neutral, but as she...


Let's talk about charity.. and yarn!

Posted: September 06, 2018

Let's talk about charity.. and yarn!

One of the greatest pleasures I take from having grown a successful business is that I’m able to donate to charity on a regular basis; as well as get involved with other one-off projects. With our Flower Power Fund (Marie Curie) yarn having sold like hot cakes last week, and Yarndale having announced this year’s charity project I thought it would be a good time to talk about charity in the context of yarn and ECY. Yarndale has been going for five years now, and when they started they had the Oxfam yarn amnesty thing and it still happens every...


Yarn for charity?! Yes please! ECY and The Flower Power Fund..

Posted: August 31, 2018

Yarn for charity?! Yes please! ECY and The Flower Power Fund..

Remember how we mentioned the Flower Power Fund a few weeks ago? Well, we are very excited to be providing September's yarn. The super-limited-edition colourway is called/inspired by Nigella and 100% of each sale (after tax*) will be donated to the Flower Power Fund. Not a few quid, not even 50%, but 100%.. because I'm a bit of a "go big or go home" person and I think if you're going to do something you should try and do it properly. That means that the cost of the yarn, my time dyeing, and my staff's time twisting, labelling and packing are all being donated...


Bot accounts on Instagram: what are they are what can we do about them?

Posted: August 13, 2018

Bot accounts on Instagram: what are they are what can we do about them?

In the past few days I have noticed a HUGE surge in stolen posts from me by bot accounts. They heavily feature a number of other people’s’ posts that I recognise, too.  I’ve reported them over and over and over - please if you see these report them as spam if nothing else, and don’t give them any engagement (likes or comments).  I’m now following Louise Tilbrook's lead and using less-known hashtags, e.g. #knitsnotbots #ukknitters #creativesofinstagram #knittersofravelry #crochetnotbots and more (Louise has lots of good suggestions). By doing that we can all connect with genuine accounts. After posting this ^^ on...


Create your own colour combination collage!

Posted: July 27, 2018

Create your own colour combination collage!

Half the fun of yarn (buying it, using it, working with it!) is combining colours when you have a specific project in mind. Other than at shows, we know that you cannot see the colours available and combine them in person and from feedback we know that this is something that would be useful to help you make decisions about purchases. From interactions online we know that colour combinations are useful and whenever we show you selections, they are commented on positively. Some of you will have experience of manipulating images online but others will not and so we thought...