Well… Here goes nothing. I am having a shop update this weekend at my Etsy shop. There will be a smattering of different weighted yarns such as:
I have been making a greater effort to spin up more fiber of the same colorway. I though that this would help people be able to have more options when knitting with handspun. I am appreciative of any interest in the shop, even if it is to just window shop.
All the best,
Steph
One of the amazing things I did on my trip was visit Jaimeson in Sandness. I have never seen yarn being made…. I mean aside from hand spinning, I have bought a lot in indie dyed yarns in the past and while I have a great appreciation for their dying talents I have never considered thinking about how the wool from a sheep makes to the skein in a stash.
Family owned and operated, Jamieson is in its 5th generation of operating. It does everything well there is one outsourced operation but you get the general idea. It was pretty amazing to see the processes from Fleece, processing of the fleece, dying, blending, and spinning the yarn, I have new appreciation on how lengthy the process is. Here are a couple of pictures that document a few steps of the process:
After an overnight ferry from Aberdeen we arrived in Lerwick. The beauty contained in the pictures speaks for themselves:
There was a fair amount of internal debate on how to capture or share some of my thoughts and experiences on the trip. It was so much fun and I will never forget all of the memories and places I visited, but there was so much going on it is difficult to document, so I am just going to wing it and do the best that I can.
Edinburgh Yarn Shops:
Ginger Twist:
This quaint yarn shop is focused on indy yarn but not in the traditional sense. The owner hand dyes her own yarn and has a smattering of other yarns. As an American I found the shop very small, but it was jam packed with yarn in every little square inch of the store.
One of the things I immediacy noticed was that the blend of the yarn are very different from back home. I picked up some souvenir “hand dyed” which has some Masham fiber. I also bought some Gotland lace that is single farm sourced from Chopped Ginger, as well as a little knitting bag which colorways were exclusive to this shop.
Be Inspired:
Hands down my favorite shop. I can’t say enough about the owner I could stay and chat with her for hours. I got to see a handful of yarns that I haven’t seen in real life and that was informative. This shop specializes in Indie dying and I saw Uschitia, Hedgehog, Wollemise, but also some others including their own yarn Shillidisair ( the owners are now retired) and Orkney Angora( I went pretty nuts but… mainly because I am really limited to light airy fibers due to my sensitivity to alpaca and mohair) this was a total science related purchase, but I am very excited about it,
Kathy’s Closet:
My friend and I went here on the tour and we hear Karie Westerman and Lucy Hague speak. this shop focuses on British Wools and while I did pick up some handspun and a new book by Baah Ram Ewe (that I had not seen before) I held off a bit on buying a lot since we had not yet made it to Shetland.
Hearing and seeing Karie and Lucy’s stuff was amazing. My mind is still blown at Lucy’s beautiful samples and even the most sophisticated knitter’s on the trip were scratching their head on how the samples and designs were knit. I have no words, but a few pictures: