February 2007: Latest News

Winter this year on Arran has been dramatic and occasionally ferocious in its intensity.

House rattling gale force winds, power cuts lasting several hours, huge trees uprooted and a much disrupted ferry service.

Primal urges take hold — the need for fire and candlelight, the need to curl up, be warm and rest until the days are a bit longer and less gloomy.

Knitting, of course, at this time of year provides just the right amount of industry to offset complete lethargy while allowing us to stay cosy.

We welcome you again to our website and thank you for the great response to our first email in November. Especially great to hear from those of you who were inspired to take up needles and yarn after a long break from knitting.

Workshops in Ireland

At the end of November I taught my first Creative Knitting Workshop at Yarn in Galway in the West of Ireland.

The workshop was based on The Arran Measurement System.  This allowed each person to be creative with stitches and to adapt a favourite pattern or design a new garment from the amazing range of yarns available to us in the shop.

One of the knitters who took part has written about it on her blog.

I will be at Yarn again on Saturday March 10, 2007.

For more information and to sign up for the session check out the Yarn website.

New Resources

We’ve added to our Resources page:

“Learning to Knit”

helps you through the psychological and technical hiccups when starting out.  There are simple patterns to start you off such as “Sam’s Scarf”.

Knitting Record Sheet

This is a sheet for you to download free to help keep a record of your knitting projects.

A very important feature of this page is “Notes for Next Time”.

You can record your successes as well as failures and turn them into future successes.

Children’s McBride Gansey

There is a new pattern available for purchase in our traditional collection. It is the children’s version of the McBride Gansey.

The history sheet tells you more about ganseys.