In the door-swinging-open course of the shop day with all it’s ‘How-are-you-and-how’s-that-sweater-going?’ conversations, it’s easy to forget that there are a whole bunch of knitters out there who get wool from us who have no idea who we are, for every knitter we talk things through with in the shop, there’s always another one who we never even get to say hello to. So we decided it’s high time we introduced ourselves..

Between us, Bronte and I take care of everything in the shop: front, back and underneath in the basement. We find the producers and choose the yarns. We take care of your orders and wrap your parcels. We get them into the post, answer your emails, phone calls. So in case you’ve ever wondered…

..this is Brontë (on the right) and me, wearing the sweaters we finished during the winter holiday. Bronte’s in a beautiful Esther Jacket made in Wool Dreamers Mota 463, which turns out to show the knit-purl texture pattern perfectly. She reckons it’s a bright tomato red. Helen who’s taking the picture and me both think it’s more of a proper orange. Either way it’s one of those cardies that magically manages to put a smile on the face of everyone who sees it. Obviously some credit is due there to the designer, but I’m going to say that it’s also to do with the way that Brontë understands length and fit for her body. She has this way of knitting and wearing things so that they look like they were personally designed for her, and often look better on her than the pattern model. Perhaps no surprise when you learn that at the last count her completed sweater pile stood at around 40 sweaters.
Brontë’s knitting story started in ernest as an art school student at Chelsea College of Art. There she developed a taste for good wool and a love of working out shade combinations for colourwork knitting projects. Resolutely determined that intarsia was the one knitting technique she couldn’t do, it turns out that she can do it beautifully after all. In fact, just about every knitting project, technique and problem she applies herself to, turns out beautifully. She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of patterns on Ravelry which makes her the very best person to go pattern hunting with. Other things which Bronte is also very enthusiastic about include, journaling and fantasy fiction reading, and excellent coffee drinking. She has also earned an international reputation for her sticker and stationery habit.

And that’s me on the left, still wearing my beret on account of how cold it is in the drafty shop at the moment. I’m in the Erin Sweater worked in Donegal Soft in a colour that we’ve called Flamingo Pink. Helen behind the camera, was a bit surprised about the colour choice as it’s a decidedly sweet and pinky departure from my traditional red. I also had my doubts when I began knitting with it but I’ve got to say that by the end, me and that pink had really hit it off.
I learned to knit when I was 9 by making a pair of mittens for my on-the-way new baby brother. 34 years of knitting later in 2014 I opened the shop and discovered that as well as knitting, I also love being a shopkeeper, window dressing, and solving other people’s knitting problems. I like telling stories and listening to the ones that knitters bring to the shop. Yarn-wise, I lean towards woolly wools and am now firmly convinced that you can tell the difference (in a good way) when you knit with wool from producers doing small batch things with fibre that they care about. Other current ardent passions include learning to sew my own clothes under the marvellous tutelage of the Make Town studio in Vyner Street and exploring my roots at a radical Yiddish language class in the basement of a bookshop in Kings Cross. When I’m able to, I also enjoy making trips to faraway places by train, and have a special love for border-crossing night sleepers. I am a very bad but also persistent pilates student – 10 years as a beginner and still working on strengthening my neglected core.
Come and say hello when you can, we’re really looking forward to finding out more about you and your knitting too!