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...
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- Tags: DK, Eden Cottage Yarns, farming, fibre, fleece, naturalfibres, nature, Oakworth, Polwarth, sheep, wool, yarn
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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- Tags: BFL, colour, Colour Inspiration, colourinspiration, colours, craft, crafts, creative, creativelife, crochet, dyeing, ECY, ECY News, eddencottageyarns, Eden Cottage Yarns, edencottageyarns, flowers, Gallery, General Stuff, handdyed, handknit, handknitting, handmade, hobbies, hobby, Image, indiedyer, inspiration, knitting, naturalfibres, wool, yarn, yorkshire
Christmas gifts: the best ideas for knitters, crocheters, and yarn addicts
Stuck for what to buy the yarn addict in your life? You're in luck because crafty/creative/yarny people are easy to buy for - it doesn't take much to keep us happy! Whether their (or your) thing is crochet or knitting, or neither ..yet.. (!) we've got loads of lovely gift ideas for you. Similarly, if you've been given an Eden Cottage Yarns gift voucher, why not use it to buy yourself one of our gift ideas? We've started by creating a special gift collection/category on the ECY website HERE, so that should help you with a starting point. Here are some of...
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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...
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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...