The past couple of months have been really busy here at ECY Shedquarters! There sort of wasn’t much to report on in July because although we did a lot of work it was mostly producing and setting up for things that ended up happening in August.
Let’s start with pattern releases.
Firstly there was our long-awaited Swainby Hat pattern release (which is HERE on our website plus is on Ravelry and Payhip). This pattern has been through test-knitting and we have a gallery of the test knit hats HERE if you want to see what it looks like in a variety of yarns. It uses one 100g skein of aran weight yarn and if you fancy a cowl to match we have our Swainby Cowl pattern HERE and a gallery blog post for that HERE too.
Continuing with ECY releases we have revamped and re-released our Mint Collection by Anna Elliott. The collection of three hats was originally made in Whitfell DK which was the 100% baby alpaca we used to stock. We discontinued it a while ago because although it was lovely it wasn’t really popular enough or financially viable. I chose to reknit the samples in Bowland DK as at the time I hadn’t used it for a while and it’s one of my oldest yarns which has been with me since before I was even Eden Cottage Yarns (long-time customers might remember that I was Wild Fire Fibres before that!). Bowland DK is 100% superwash Bluefaced Leicester so it’s our most woolly yarn, lending itself beautifully to the textures that Anna used in her hats. All three hats can be made using one 100g skein each of two colours. You can find the revamped Mint Collection on our website HERE and they are also on Ravelry and Payhip. We have set up a bundle discount for them on all three platforms so it doesn't matter where you buy the patterns. At the time of writing we have no Bowland DK in stock but it will return soon and Loop stock it. Also there’s always the ever-popular Milburn DK!
Moving on to other peoples patterns using ECY yarn.. firstly Michael Harrigan had a scarf pattern published in the Fall 2023 edition of Cast On magazine earlier in August, and this beautiful pattern calls for our Keld Twist yarn (1 x 100g skein). Keld Twist is one of our superwash merino/linen yarns - it’s a 4ply thickness but is made of 2 plies for a loosely structured and soft yarn. You can’t feel the linen - it’s just there to give the yarn a rustic and textured look. Cast On is the regular publication from The Knitting Guild Association for members only. Find out more at tkga.org.
Next up, Liz Corke released a shawl pattern calling for Keld Fingering (the singles version of Keld Twist!) in colourways Linen and Faded Bloom. It uses one 100g skein of each and it does need some contrast between the two colourways as a lot of the pattern is mosaic knitting with gorgeous graphic lines. The pattern is available on Liz’s website HERE as well as on Ravelry. I did dye more of the yarn as it sold out, but that sold out too, so I’m going to dye more asap (at time of writing)!
Finally, we had a collaboration in place with Janina Kallio aka Woolenberry Knits in August. She released a shawl pattern called Cloud Gazing which calls for Keld Twist (this is totally coincidental!) which is a one-skein shawl featuring a gently rippling pattern. Janina has used our yarn in patterns for many years now so with this one we decided it was time to do something a bit more to celebrate, so we gave each other discount codes for our newsletter subscribers - ours for a yarn discount and hers for a pattern discount. We also thought it was high time we featured Janina on the blog, and so you can read our interview with here HERE. If you’re not on our newsletter list and would like to be you can join up HERE.
What other news?
Well there was NEWS aka North East Wool Show, that was pretty big! I was asked to go last minute so had less than a week to prepare (it was manic!), but luckily I’d been busy dyeing not one but three hand dyed yarn updates so was able to pack those up straight away. I was super-excited to be going to a show again, especially in an area where there hadn’t been one before. We were given a stand which was basically as far from the entrance as it could have been, BUT we absolutely loved our space as it was big, filled with natural light, right next to a seating area, had great views over the racecourse and gold course, had a door if we needed ventilation, and there were even plug sockets. It was so civilised! So I am hoping that we can do that show again and claim the same space again as we really made ourselves at home there! Thankyou to everyone who came to see us - we honestly had such a wonderful weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yarn!
I mentioned updates.. well when we got back from NEWS I straight away cracked on with yarn photography in the fortunately cloudy weather than we had in the days following it. There was so much yarn to photograph! I started with sparkly Rosedale 4ply which is our lovely soft superwash merino/nylon/gold stellina sock yarn (a great all-rounder). The gentle sparkle in it is beautiful - it’s not too in-your-face and you can’t feel it in the yarn at all so it doesn’t tickle or anything. You can find Rosedale 4ply HERE plus the gallery of projects in it HERE.
There was also Carlisle Fingering - that’s our lovely smooth and soft superwash extrafine merino singles yarn (4ply in thickness hence being called fingering weight). It’s a while since I last did an update of this - I can say that for many of our yarns as it’s simply so time consuming restocking them all - so I was really excited to get back to it. There’s something about the way it takes colours that’s a bit different to the rest of the yarns - it has a great clarity somehow. It’s very satisfying. I know that people can be put off by singles yarns thinking they’ll break or pill easily but I wouldn’t stock this yarn if it was like that. It’s all in the quality of the fibre and the spinning. So whilst the plied yarns are undoubtedly stronger, don’t be afraid to use our singles yarns for garments and suchlike. I have personally tested them to make sure they are practical enough for my liking. Carlisle Fingering is available HERE and the gallery of projects in it is HERE.
Finally as part of the triple there was Lowther Lace. You know I was saying about it being a while since I did lots of our yarns? Well this one was… two years.. arrrgh. It’s really not intentional - I guess other yarns just kept getting prioritised. I absolutely will not leave it as long again though, this yarn is utterly divine. It was initially aimed at being our alternative offering of a fluffy yarn for people who can’t or don’t want to use fluffy mohair (Eldwick Lace). But actually it’s taken on its own following now as although it is a good substitute for Eldwick Lace it’s also got some different qualities. It’s much more of a fuzzy and cuddly fluff - like a teddy bear - whereas Eldwick Lace (which is kid mohair/silk so it is the finest mohair we can get) is more of a wispy and silky fluffy softness. It’s hard to explain! Anyway, Lowther Lace works well on its own, it works well held double with itself for things like the Cumulus Blouse by PetiteKnit, and it works well held double with smooth yarns for the myriad of patterns that now call for 4ply + fluff (a personal recommendation would be Nimbus Cowl by Purl Soho). Lowther Lace is HERE and our gallery of projects using it is HERE.
There’s plenty more I could write about for this blog post but it’s already long enough so I’ll finish by saying that we’ve just sent out our latest wholesale newsletter and if you’d like to join it you can do that HERE. We send them out roughly quarterly. We’re gradually adding more hand dyed colourways to our wholesale range plus of course there’s Milburn 4ply and DK, and the remaining Whitfell Chunky available.
That’s all for this month’s round up! Coming up next month amongst other things we’ve got Yarndale, so we hope to see lots of you there!!
