With November’s mid-point behind us and knitters (aswell as their non-knitting friends and relations) stepping things up on the present hunting front, we’re starting the gift round-up season with our pick-of-the-best books. Original, knittable, niche, quirky and above all, readable: these are the ones that have held their own and stood apart during a particularly strong year for the knitty… Read more →
“So are we second cousins or first cousins twice removed? Or is that the same thing?” “Actually I think you might be 3rd cousins once removed.” Aunt Odile has the bunnies’ favourite family album on the kitchen table spread open on the family tree page. She painted it herself as an intricate fir tree complete with multiple branches and roots,… Read more →
All is not as it seems in hand-knit-land today. No sooner do we congratulate a knitter on the beautiful sweater we can see poking out from inside their jacket, than they give us a cheeky wink and reveal that it’s just a knitted neck. Deliciously warm cuffs turn out to be weird sleevey things that have neither upper arms nor… Read more →
The Manchelopis arrives here in large, shiny black plastic tightly wrapped bundles that put me in mind of the bales you see wrapped in the fields after haymaking in the summer. It comes that way because the 100g plates of yarn are so voluminous in comparison to normal 100g balls or skeins of yarn, that our standard 15kg order can’t… Read more →
Anna Husemann sits in the centre of a striped Louis XVI sofa, her face framed by long golden curls and a perfectly straight-cut fringe. Behind her is a studio pinboard of colour swatches, mini skeins, stencil cutouts and magazine clippings. There is an orderliness to the whole arrangement – Anna, the sofa and the items of the board – which… Read more →
Is Wild and Woolly starting a side hustle in background noises? Why are you writing about thrumming? No, this isn’t about thrumming as in the humming sound that engines make. This is thrumming as a way of adding an extra layer of unspun wool to the insides of knitted things to make them warmer. Hmm. Are you sure about that?… Read more →
A recent discussion in the shop on solving the problem of a knitter’s too-tight bind off yielded 4 different suggestions from the randomly assembled knitters… ‘I just pick a size bigger needle and cast off with that‘. ‘It’s always the sewn cable bind off for me.‘ ‘Knit 2 stitches, then put your left needle through them both and knit them… Read more →
“It was when I’d finished knitting the viruses. I started working on a death mask and I looked at it and thought, No. It’s got to be a vulture.“ Harry’s vulture, named Vern, has been stopping passers-by in their tracks, ever since he took up residence in the shop window a couple of weeks ago. Standing about a meter tall,… Read more →
Now I know that Halloween is not everyone’s cup of tea – I come from the generation of curmudgeons that bemoans the rise of over-the-top costumes and spray-on spider webs. We’re the ones who look grumpily at the halloween tat in other people’s supermarket trolleys, silently thinking ‘In my day…’ thoughts, with self-righteous re-written memories about carving jack-o-lanterns from real… Read more →
Out of respect for the faithful old-timers who’ve been reading these newsletters for a few years now, I made a decision this year that I’d skip the Woo-hoo-September’s-here! post. Apart from anything else, I suspect your mailboxes are already full of messages from other wool shops telling you how great it is that autumn’s here and it’s time to get… Read more →
