Saturday 19 January 2013

Chat on Twitter leads to hunt for antidote to cold, snowy Britain

So this morning on twitter I follow a link and find that Artesano now does British wool - YAY!  And it's a chunky weight in gorgeous dyed colours.

Now I don't know about you, but today I've had to crank up the heating and can't get out to Tynedale Spinning Guild because of the snow.  So it's one of those cold, miserable days that makes me want to wrap myself up in layers of wool - and this time in something really bright to lift my mood.



Fortunately I have a good selection of woollies to choose from, but I thought it would be fun to have a quick whiz through the Woolsack stockists lists to specifically look for chunky/bulky weight British wool yarns dyed in bright colours.

With this thick yarn, even a slow knitter like me can make a hat, scarf, mini-shawl, cowl, or other small warming item in just a day.  That's what a lot of us need to cheer us up at the moment.



So here it goes - and if you knit something from anything on this list please let me know :-)

Artesano British Superwash Wool

Bedfordshire Wool Co White-faced Woodland

Herdy

Jamieson and Smith Shetland Chunky

Jamiesons Shetland Marl

Jillybean Yarns

June Onigbanjo

Natural Born Dyers

New Lanark Mill

Texere Yarns Chunky Wool 

ETA - Just found A Stash Addict's Chunky Bluefaced Leicester


Of course as I was going through the list I found some undyed chunky yarns in natural colours that 'ping' off the page - so here they are ;-)

Black Sheep Wools

Blacker Yarns

Garthenor Organic Pure Wool (scroll down to chunky)

Rowan Yarns

Toft Alpaca Shop

Woolcake

ETA - The Knitting Gift shop now have Chunky undyed Jacob 

Finally, if you don't know what to knit with around 100g of Chunky wool, that's 100m or thereabouts for most chunky, but do check first, here is a link to over 800 patterns on Ravelry.  Many of these can be purchased and downloaded through the website, and many are free to download.
If you're a quick knitter and wanting a bigger project, these are the search results for thosands of patterns using up to 200m of chunky wool, that's around 200g, but check the wool you're thinking of buying.

If you're not a member of Ravelry.com then it's free, quick and easy to join and has very high privacy levels.  Note that because it's a website hosted in America they use the American term 'bulky' to refer to what we call 'chunky' wool.

This has been a very quick look through the list and I've found a few links that no longer work and I know that I don't have every stockist of British wool listed yet.  So if you know of any stockists of chunky wool let me know so I can add to this blog page.  Or of any stockists missing from the Woolsack page for me to add there.  I'll be having a session with the website checking, updating and adding links

EDIT 20 January
Over the weekend I used the green yarn photographed above to knit myself a nice warm pair of wrist warmers - a quick and effective warming knit indeed!
Ravelry project for my Cold Weather Quickie Wrist Warmers
with enough of the wool left over to knit a mug cosy :-)