It’s been cold, rainy and grey outside all week, but inside in the wool shop you’ve all been giving us plenty to smile about. Here are our edited highlights from this week… ‘the book just arrived – I knew it would be amazing, it’s more than just amazing – rest of day cancelled – fire stoked, coffee on, phone unplugged..‘ ‘I… Read more →
Waterloo station had never looked so woolly. It wasn’t a yarn bombing event, but ten minutes until the departure of the 10am train to Farnham, home of the Unravel Festival of Knitting. Right, left and centre on the grand station concourse, there were sweatered, beanied and shawl-wrapped knitters waiting for the platform announcement. I felt a pang of self consciousness… Read more →
The key ingredients for the perfect pudding, an old friend of mine explained, are something crunchy, something creamy and something fruity. He expanded this theory over a bowl of apple crumble and custard when we were housemates in a shared student house about 100 years ago. I reminded him of his old pudding formula when he presented me with some… Read more →
What kind of knitter are you? You’re 6 rows on from the row where you did a series of 2/2 right cross cable twists, and you notice that you forgot to twist one of those cables down there. Do you: A: Think that no one will notice and carry on merrily knitting, telling yourself homilies about Persian rug weavers and their… Read more →
One strand good, 2 strands better? Really? Will the addition of that super-skinny thread really make a difference? And if i’m not that great of a knitter will I be able to manage it? And oh my, it’s looking p r e t t y pricey now you’ve added in those extra balls of fluff, so what about we leave… Read more →
It was quite early in Wendy Peterson’s young life as a knitter that she noticed her right leaning decreases were neater than her left leaning ones. It bothered her. It looked wrong and she wanted it to look right. This was long before knitting on the internet, before the time of hacks and FAQs. There were no online hive minds or videos to… Read more →
It’s a funny thing about the the tail end of the year, that whatever gets shaken up during that hurtling towards the end of December, it somehow always manages to settle down again when we get to the other side – the unfinished projects are reassuringly still unfinished and the woolly universe of patterns still beckons with more sweaters than… Read more →
It’s thanks to our local pub quiz at the Elderfield that I now know the meaning of the word Anatidaephobia (irrational fear of ducks) and Doraphobia (a dread of touching the skin or fur of an animal), or better to say, thanks to the genius quiz master, Lou, and her bottomless pit of obscure phobias. But so far, we’ve never had a word for… Read more →
In the early days of opening the shop, when asked where exactly it was, I would commonly answer, “just the other side of Paradise”. Paradise for those who do not know, is the Halal butchers just down the road. I could equally well have said, just down from the Ethiopian church, or around the corner from the mosque at the… Read more →
Shop regulars will know that we can talk about knitting gifts from mid summer if you like, but there’ll be no fairy lights or Christmas window action until we’re safely over the 1st December line. As we are now thankfully there, I thought it might be nice to share our getting-ready story with you.. It begins with the turpentine-ish smell… Read more →
