New Alpaca yarn!

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New British Alpaca yarn Special Offer Here at Made By Ewe we have been busy ordering new stock for the Summer and this gorgeous alpaca yarn is just in. The yarn is a blend of 70% Superfine British Alpaca and 30% Bluefaced Leicester wool. This is a well proven blend which offers increased resistance to shedding and pilling and adds loft and substance tot the handle. The yarn is of course deliciously soft, with a slight haze. It is DK weight and there are 110m on a 50g ball. There is a good range of neutral colours for classic knits. Also some brighter summery colours in rose pink, sky blue, moss green and this damson, my favourite! As a special offer to blog readers, there is a 10% discount on the yarn for a couple of weeks, making it just £5.63 a ball, which is an absolute bargain.  If you are ordering from the website, enter code ALP10 at the checkout.  I you pop into the shop, I will apply it at the till.Happy Knitting!

Shawl Knitting

I have been an admirer of Martina Behm’s patterns for a while and I recently bought a copy of Leftie from her Ravelry store.

(Image copyright Martina Behm)

This is what Martina says about her pattern:” Leftovers. Everyone has them, everyone hoards them – especially when they are some precious hand-dyed yarn that is not always in stock.Well, now their time has come: Leftie is an asymmetrical shawlette that was designed to show off your favorite little leftovers.The stripes will swirl around your neck in a very flattering way, and the cute tiny leaves are the perfect way to make your favorite colors shine.”

(Image copyright Martina Behm)

The pattern calls for 4ply yarn, but I didn’t have any so I am knitting mine in beautiful British BlueFaced Leicester DK yarn (available from the Made By Ewe shop). The yarn is lusciously soft and I can’t wait to wrap it around me, when the shawl is finished.

I am doing the leaves in Artesano British BlueFaced Leicester blend.  (This yarn is now discontinued, but I do have a few spare skeins if you just love those colours.)

 

I am very pleased with how it is turning out.  The pattern is very well written and it is a relaxing TV knit.  I’m not sure how big the shawl is going to be yet, basically you knit on until you are happy with the size, but I will keep you posted!

Knitting and Weaving!

We are busy gearing up for Yarn Shop Day this Saturday 2 May and we are excited to announce that we will be having a weaving demonstration from 11am on Saturday morning.

The lovely Sally from Mingled Yarn will be bringing a portable rigid heddle loom to show how it is done, and you will also be able to have a go!  Sally is really talented and has won prizes for her weaving, so do come along and join in the woolly fun.

There will also be glorious pompom making, Knit and Natter and discounts on yarn.

Yarn Shop Day

On Saturday 3rd May 2014 over 160 shops throughout the UK took part in the first ever Yarn Shop Day. Organised  as a way of encouraging knitters to visit their local bricks-and-mortar store, National Yarn Shop Day is on Saturday 2 May this year and we will be celebrating here at the Made By Ewe Shop in Broadwindsor, Dorset.

There will be on the day discounts on a range of yarns.  We are also planning to Yarn Bomb our tree in the courtyard and would love your help.

Here is the tree, not looking very woolly at the moment.  We want to fill Mr Tree with pompoms and woolly creations and wrap the trunk in knitted and crocheted squares.  I’ve made a start, but my one pom pom looks a bit lonely so far.

Do come and join us on the day and make something woolly – pompom makers and wool provided!   Or, if you can’t get here, send us something to the shop, address below.

We will be having a Knit and Natter in the morning too, so hope to see you there!

Made By Ewe, Studio 6, Broadwindsor Craft Centre, Broadwindsor, Dorset DT8 3PX

 

Baby Knits

We’ve been busy here at the Made By Ewe Shop in Broadwindsor, knitting baby jumpers to showcase some of our yarn.

This little jacket is made from lovely British wool, Diggle DK, It is a lovely tweedy yarn, 97% wool, and the jacket is just right for a country outing.

For Mums who prefer a machine washable knit, we have these 3 sample tops, knitted in Rico Baby Classic, an easy care acrylic blend yarn, which can be washed at 40 degrees.

A pretty bolero for a party dress…

A cosy hooded top for the beach…

and a fun, stripey jumper with stripey buttons to match.

We have also knitted this deliciously soft little jacket with some of our new yarn from King Cole.  I love the teddy buttons!

Finally this useful little gilet has been knitted in one of our popular Wendy yarns, Festival Chunky.  The colours are lovely and it has a very nice feel to it too.

New Yarn from Fox and Forest

I’m really excited to now be stocking yarn from Fox and Forest, a local company based near Newton Abbot in Devon . Look at this lovely pile of gorgeousness.

The yarn in sourced from John Arbon in Devon and it is all British yarn.  Some skeins are a blend of alpaca, merino and nylon, some organically farmed merino.  The skeins are all hand dyed by Tamsyn using natural dyes, some of which are gathered from the Devon countryside.  The labels have intriguing combinations  – rhubarb, logwood and cochineal and weld and cochineal for example.

And the skeins have lovely names – yellow nectarine, Aurora and this one, Icebergs, which is actually 4 mini skeins of different shades of blue.

I had a go at dyeing with natural ingredients years ago – great fun, but not very successful. My wool coloured with onion skins turned out rather a dazzling yellow and the blackberries turned the wool a rather disappointing muddy blue, though it did smell good!  Tamsyn’s colours are all beautiful, soft and no smells!

I have a selection of DK and 4ply skeins, and I will be listing them on the website shortly, if they don’t sell out first!

Rico Melange Chunky

Look what one of my lovely customers has made herself!

She is only a beginner knitter too!  The yarn is the gorgeous Rico Melange chunky, supersoft and gorgeous colours. It is 50% wool and a roving style yarn, lovely to knit with and quick too as it is chunky weight. (£3.49 a 50g ball at the Made By Ewe shop in Broadwindsor.)

Well done Rosa!

Wovember Words: Wool from stuffing to stitches

Some warm woolly thoughts for a cold rainy day – the inspiration behind the Made By Ewe Sheep Knitting Kits!

Wovember

At WOVEMBER we love to hear exactly why people love to work with wool.  Louise interviewed Linda Regel – owner of Made By Ewe – last year for KnitBritish: her knitting kits are illustrative of her love for British wool and here she explains her inspiration for her Knit Your Own Sheep kits.

Knit Your Own Gotland Sheep kit

“It is absolutely essential to me that all of the yarn in the kits is British. There is so much lovely yarn in this country, as you know, so why would you want to use anything else? I like to know that the yarn I buy is supporting British farmers. I also try to use as many other British things as possible – the stuffing is fleece from British sheep and the new tube packaging is made in Britain. The knitting needles are purchased from a British maker too.

The kits contain…

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Sheepy Giveaway!

I almost forgot to tell you that there is a Giveaway for a Herdwick Sheep Gift Set running on the Let’s Knit blog .

The knitting kit includes British yarn, fleece stuffing and cute Sheep Knitting Needles.  A perfect present for a knitting friend, or maybe an extra present for you to sneak under the tree!

You have until Friday to enter so be quick! Good Luck!

Now back to packing orders…..

Christmas shopping opportunities!

If you live near Barrow-in-Furness, the Dock Museum stock some of my British wool knitting kits and they are having a Very Vintage fair this Sunday.

It looks lovely – I wish I could go, but it’s a bit too far from the South West of England.  I hope that some of my lovely readers can make it though!