Through the window and beyond

There’s just a couple of days to go until we shut the wool shop door and flip the closed sign round for the final time this year. It’s also my cue to invite you to put down your knitting for a moment, take 5 minutes out of thinking about all the things that still need to be done, and join me to look back at the year through the knitted make-believe we created in the shop window through the last 12 months.

January 2025, Skating into winter

April 25, Woolly Vapour Trails

October 2025, New Online Shop!

December 2025, ‘Tis the Season to be Woolly, the magic scarf Christmas Tree.

Behind the scenes of the window, another story has unfolded this year, as we finally hauled the website out of its ten year-old structure and design, into a brand new place for knitters everywhere to come and join in with us here in Clapton. It was a process that started with digging deep into what the shop does and means to do, so that we could find imaginative and inviting ways of doing that online. It was a time for stepping-back, to look at things as a whole – from above and all around – of getting transported back to special moments – like when a knitter finally triumphed with finishing after years of starting and stopping, of watching friendships unfold between regular knit-nighters, and of finding wool which would help fill the sweater-shaped void in a broken-hearted knitter’s life.

Unravelling this tangle of wide-angle and narrow focus stories so that we could take their meaning and make it into plan with which to build the new site, would not have been possible without the insight and skill of my design collaborator, Gregor Timlin, who has taken this shop and its values under his wing since it was just a twinkle in this woolly-headed knitter’s eye. The herculean coding work of building it into something findable, navigable, readable and USEFUL, then fell to Jono Lewarne, and his indefatigable persuit of making things properly and beautifully. We were a very small team, but a team nevertheless, and however exhausting it got, it never stopped feeling like we 3 were doing it together and making something good. And for that I really can’t thank them both enough.

But whatever spins or sparkles on the website, it’s obviously the content inside that really matters. In the case of Wild and Woolly that is of course the wool and the classes and the extraordinary people who make them possible, and with whom it’s my privilege to be able to work. Special thanks is due here to Helen Reed for the fairy dust she sprinkles on every Sweater Club class – the wit and skill which makes it all such a joy, Wendy Peterson for her techniques classes and the way she thinks – deeply, logically and marvellously – and the way she communicates – generously and clearly – about unpuzzling the knitting that puzzles us, Shelley Zetuni for brilliantly breathing new life into knitters’ holey sweaters with her celebrated beautiful darning techniques classes, and Nina Dello for valliantly keeping the Crochet Lates flag flying. Thanks too to the faraway knitters who made the long journey here to give master classes: Charlotte Jenner on mending with stitch in the heat of high summer, and Irene Waggener for bringing the sock knitting skills she learned from the shepherds in the High Atlas mountains, all the way to east London.

This also feels like a good time to thank the wool makers who make the yarn which keeps us warm and inspired to continue making – we wouldn’t even be a thing if it wasn’t for the care and thought they put into what they do. The full list is on the website but right now, I’d like to single out special thanks to the new-comers which came from Scotland this year: The Birlinn Yarn Co, Uist Wool and Wee County’s Kinross Lambswool. It’s always exciting when we get new yarns in the shop, but seeing how knitters have taken to these beautiful new Scottish yarns leaves us in no doubt that they are right at home here.

And finally there’s the hidden heroes who quietly do the tasks that make it work but you might never see: Thanks to Andzelika for keeping the shop clean and tidy (also apologies for the chaos I leave behind), and Sally Cadle for her patience and genius in managing to unmuddle the muddle I make of book keeping, and of course the handsome window cleaner who comes every Saturday to clean Lower Clapton Road’s woolliest window.

But haven’t I missed someone out? Yes, finally, finally, I’d like to thank Brontë for making any of it and all of it doable, for straightening things out and keeping us sorted, for wrapping and posting, stocking and re-stocking, helping and sharing, searching and finding, and always taking so much care. Obviously Wild and Woolly would be a total shambles without Brontë!

Most of all, it’s all of you that I would like to thank for being the other hand that makes this one clap. Thank you for putting your trust in the shop, for reading the long-winded stories, for allowing us to help you pack and wave you off on your knitting voyages, for inspiring us with your creativity and for taking the time to pick up your needles and learn something new. You make it all make sense.