Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2016

Can't believe that after all the preparations and build-up, the Edinburgh Yarn Festival is already over for another year! But what a festival it was, starting with a most stylish welcoming committees, dressed head to toe in Ullcentrum!

The most incredible selection of vendors came from far and wide to show the best of fibre crafts, classes on a wide variety of subjects were taught by the great and good of the knitting world over four days and through it all Jo, Mica and their tireless team kept everything running smoothly. The words "Creme de la creme" were mentioned a few times....and then there was us in the middle of it!

We had a couple of new things to unveil for EYF - Estelle was very excited about her custom built new box system for displaying the Pirkkalanka yarn which not only worked and fitted perfectly, it looked rather snazzy too.

But probably more importantly, it was the first outing of the Scattered Showers shawl that she had been frantically and secretly working on in the months leading up to the show.

Scattered Showers is huge blanket shawl in stranded colourwork made from our Ullcentrum sport weight yarn. It is worked in the round and steeked - a traditional fair isle technique which involves knitting a few extra stitches to then *gasp* cut the work open to make a flat garment.
The finished product measures 235cm across the widest point and 95cm from the top to the point
It is a gorgeous mass of warmth in winter, and because it's made from Ullcentrum's hardy Swedish wool, it will likely last a lifetime too.

We had many people admire the sample at the show so will hopefully start to see them out in the wild  soon,  including the one chosen by friend and EYF volunteer Fiona who changed the colours to reflect her beloved Mirri Dancers (Northern Lights if you're not Scottish)
The kits are available in their original colour way from the website now - we are looking at making the pattern alone available on Ravelry but still need to work out the logistics of that.

Another Finished Object to grace the stand at EYF was my Last Autumn jumper - so called because it was supposed to be finished by last autumn .... still at least it's finished now and I was pleased able to show people what the Autumn gradient looks like knitted up. I must admit I am pretty pleased with it - it's my first ever sweater and a really good, lightweight but warm one at that. I used a basic top-down "raglan calculator" pattern .... well, Estelle did and then told me to knit x far until a certain point where she separated the sleeves out and told me to knit some more ;p

Unfortunately, like many of the vendors, Estelle came back with a big dose of Scottish Flu, so things are only just starting to come back to normal at Casa Midwinter again - restock orders are on their way from Sweden and Finland, and right now the house is filling with mini skeins of Lithuanian Linen heralding the arrival of spring and the return of the Sweet Pea packs.

On the Needles -

Mark

I have just cast off the Lapland and White Linus I started in Farnham. I had to rip back quite a lot as I completely forgot to knit the garter edge, but I've caught up really quickly and it's looking lovely and bright waiting for a soak and a block.

Estelle

Estelle has been wanting to make Masgot by Lete's Knits for some time, and after meeting the designer herself in Edinburgh, finally cast on in Thin Pirkkalanka, in the hotel bed, the morning after the show. Any excuse to use her new knitting bag from the Kettle Yarn Company, really...

She then disappeared for a three hour Sunday breakfast with that other great knitting insomniac Caerthan of Triskelion Yarns while some of us stayed in bed til' lunch like normal people.

Where to find us next -

We will be at Wonderwool Wales on the 23rd-24th April at the Royal Welsh show ground in Builth Wells, which has always been a special show for us as it's our "home" show, and the place we had our very first day of trading, 3 years ago already! We will be at a fancy, bigger stall, right by the café in Hall 1, so don't forget to come and say Hi!

And so it begins ..

Our show season kicked off last weekend at the Unravel show in Farnham Maltings.

Thank you so much to the many people who stopped by and had a chat, it always makes these shows special to able to talk to so many great people.

We had a couple of shiny new things launching at the show: a new pattern for the thin Pirkkalanka, written especially for us by Rita Taylor. The Lancet Window Lace Cardigan is a lovely, open lace cardigan, perfect as a little spring cover-up.  I think it would look fantastic in any of the Pirkkalanka colours, from the soft, frosty ones like Frosted Lime or Blush, to more vibrant Raspberry or Grass.

Estelle also finished her Siri cardigan just in time for Unravel, even running off to Textile Garden for buttons as soon as we arrived. This one is worked with our Filcolana pure Gotland Wool which makes for a wonderful lightweight but warm garment. The Siri pattern is very clever - the yoke has a slightly challenging stitch in it, but once you get used to it, it makes for a beautiful texture!

 

As always, the Linus kits proved incredibly popular, with some even coming back for their third or fourth version! We saw some great new ideas for the Linus on the Line shawl, including these bold pink and black options, and use of the new solid Cerise colour way. Amanda and Emma sent us this picture of them casting on as soon as they got home from the show!

For those of you waiting for the kits to come back in stock, rest assured that they are being shipped from Sweden as we speak, so keep an eye on Facebook and Instagram for updates.


On the Needles

Mark
- I am still working to finish the last autumn jumper that Estelle challenged me to complete for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival.
- Simply because the jumper was a bit big to be able to attach to my belt and wander around with, I cast on another Linus in the beautifully bright Lapland and solid White colours.

Estelle
- Is locked away in the Top Secret Midwinter Yarns experimental knitting department (Otherwise known as the sofa in front of the T.V. ) coming up with something special for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival looming ever closer.

I love being being completely over dramatic about that :D

Apologies for the interruption!

It has been brought to my attention that this blog has been badly neglected since before Christmas!
I can assure you that we are as busy and bursting with ideas as ever - starting with preparations for Unravel in Farnham next weekend. 




We hope to see you there, and promise we'll be back with a proper blog post soon!

Some ideas for Giftmas

As knitters, crocheters and crafters, Christmas is our time to shine. There may be a running joke in the media about itchy, ill-fitting sweaters from Grandma but we know that a lovingly made item in soft wool is a wonderful way to show someone that you love them and wish them to feel warm and embraced all year long. 

Unfortunately, this does mean that this time of year can be quite stressful for knitters. Hand made gifts don't only mean having to come up with ideas and rushing to the shops to find supplies, but also the actual time required to make the gift! So here at Midwinter Yarns, we thought we'd put together a few ideas for quick, simple knits that can be done in a couple of evenings to minimise the worry.


Firstly, and we have shouted about this one before: The HYGGE collection. Karina Westermann designed this collection of 1 or 2 skein accessories specifically with Christmas knitting in mind - quick, simple but still impressive pieces. 

Particularly lovely are the Skovtur fingerless mittens. These are done in our Thick Pirkkalanka in simple colour work, meaning that the finished fabric is really thick and warm. I know that a few of these are already being made for family members in colder climates such as North America and Canada! The pattern is a great introduction to colour work if you've never tried it before, and looks suitably impressive. 

Hygge also features two brilliant little hats, both in Thick Pirkkalanka again, Top Hygge with its fun pompom and the more minimal Tryghed, shown here in 314 Deep Orange and 3734 Moss respectively. (Pictures by David Fraser)

                      


But for ultimate warmth and speed of knitting, there is the Brygga cowl. This uses our chunky Lovikka wool and knits on size 10mm needles...truly done in an evening! 

Picture by David Fraser

We have kits available for this in all the Lovikka colours, including the printed pattern and some beautiful, hand crafted buttons made from reclaimed Applewood - so you could even give the kit as a present to a fellow knitter and save yourself the work itself :)

Speaking of Lovikka, you could also make the original Lovikka mitten - traditional mittens as worn in Lapland. These are knitted on smaller needles than the cowl for a denser fabric which will felt and become wind tight with wear. The pattern for these is free with 2 hanks of the yarn - just leave us a note with your order and we'll pop it in. 

Enrico from Parisian yarn shop Les Tricoteurs Volants has designed a fantastic pattern for the Thick Pirkkalanka: the Ianto Hat. This one is free to download on Ravelry and features some simple, contemporary cabling and options to make it a tighter, shorter hat or more of a slouchy beanie. I particularly like this one as a gift for a man, although it is unisex and of course great if you have a Torchwood fan in your life :)

And finally, for those of you whose hearts sink at requests for "a pair of socks", we have our wonderful Swedish Raggsock yarn. This is thicker and much quicker to knit than regular sock yarn and makes fantastic, hardwearing slipper or boot socks. It is our only yarn with a little bit of man made content, meaning that it can be reliably machine washed and will last and keep toes warm even in wellies. Again, pattern is free with the purchase of 3 balls (required for adult size socks), just leave us a note with your order. 

So there we are - I hope these give you a few ideas and reassurance that Christmas knitting needn't be stressful - we despatch all orders within 24hours so all you need to do is settle down with a mug of hot chocolate and enjoy the making. Oh, and to help you along a little further, we're also offering 10% off everything in store for the whole rest of November with coupon code GIFTMAS15 . We are good little elves like that! 

A busy start to the beautiful season

My favourite season is here. The misty mornings, the glorious colours, the smell of wood burning stoves in the evening...nothing compares to autumn in the country.

I am a little sad to see summer go this year. It's been a special one with so much of our wedding being centred on light, summery, joyful things but I at least know that even though the big oak tree under which we got married will soon lose it's leaves again, Mark and I will be back in that spot a month from now, watching the bonfire, clutching mugs of mulled wine and enjoying a whole different kind of warmth to the summer sun.

For Midwinter Yarns, autumn got off with the most scenic of starts: the phenomenal Yarndale wool show in Yorkshire.

Ever since we started doing yarn shows, we've heard Yarndale talked about not so much in hushed tones as with gasps of excitement. Our fellow yarn professionals couldn't say enough good things about it, about the scale of the show, the vibrancy of the organisation and the hordes of excited visitors. They. were. not. kidding.

It was fantastic - we were so busy from the minute the doors opened, with so many passionate knitters to speak to.

The lovely Karina Westermann stopped by the stand on Saturday morning to introduce the Hygge collection she designed for our yarns, advising fans and customers on colour choices...and threatening to make off with all our mustard yellow yarns!

Left to right: Fika, Skovtur, Brygga and Top Hygge

Mark was very busy holding court over the Ullcentrum table - with great success, I must say. By Sunday afternoon, so many Linus on the Line sets had gone off to new homes that we barely had enough yarn left for a single more combination.

Somehow he also managed to finish off his Shine scarf over the weekend - a pattern that he's really happy with. With the current trend for triangular or crescent shaped shawl, he'd struggled a bit to find a pattern for a modern "manly" rectangular scarf that would be exciting to knit, but the diagonal shaping and variety of stitches was just right for what he wanted, and works so well with the Lithuanian linen.

Sunday afternoon was a little calmer and I finally got a chance to have a look around the show itself. It was huge! Even though it is all housed in one building, the rows are really really long and there was so much to see that I had to break it up in to a couple of trips, not wanting to stay away from our stall for too long at a time.
It wasn't just the stalls that looked amazing, although you could tell that every vendor had done their utmost, the whole venue had the touches of a truly passionate knitting and crochet team behind it. The crochet bunting in the entrance was truly a sight to behold, as were the crocheted mandalas in the cafe area. I didn't see much of the outside myself, but you can spot some of the lovely decorations in the trees outside in this video courtesy of Just Another Crafty Stuff. You may spot a familiar face 55seconds in, too.

We also had the privilege of being invited to stay at Triskelion Yarns' secret hideaway in Haworth - a stone farmhouse from the 17th century on the path to Brontë Falls and Top Withens, the supposed inspiration for Wuthering Heights. Staying in Haworth also meant we had to endure the terrible terrible hardship of dinners at the Old White Lion Inn...a hardship so terrible we ate there both nights and could probably have come back a few more times had our waistbands allowed it!

Wanting to make the most of our stay in Yorkshire, Mark and I stayed until Monday rather than head back on Sunday evening, not least because we wanted to take a little walk around the Moors and see a little of this very special landscape.

On a perfect misty morning, we put on our best picturesque knitwear and headed off towards the Brontë Falls. I have a tracker on my phone for hikes, and whilst I can normally keep a reasonable walking pace, on this walk the pace absolutely plummeted as we stopped very couple of meters to take pictures of moody ravens in the mist....moody sheep in the mist...moody mist in the mist.

Perhaps the most lingering thought for me from Yarndale, our last big yarn show for the year, was that despite having just spent a few fairly intense days of working and being surrounded by yarn and talking about yarn, just as we have every month this year, I still came away feeling inspired and buzzing with ideas for more projects! I also realised that I seem to getting inspired for particular types of projects from different shows - at Proper Woolly it was all about spinning and fibre even though it is one of the things I normally do the least of. At Yarndale, it was crochet blankets!

I have finally learned to curb my shopping at shows, as I just can't keep up with all the lovely yarns that are waiting for me in my stash, but I managed to pick up a book on crocheted blankets by Amanda Perkins (previously of Natural Dye Studio) which I think will work well in the rich colours of our Thin Pirkkalanka.

The rest of my shopping included some chunky needles and buttons for the Brygga cowl , a vintage project bag, some his and hers British wool socks, and a solitary hank of Alpaca/Silk/Linen yarn from Five Moons...which doesn't count as shopping as it was obtained with bartering, and as Sharon *needed* some of our Raggsockyarn, it would have been rude of me not to accept a hank in return!

An introduction to the Hygge yarns

When we first started the company, some friends a little concerned about my choice of name. Midwinter. In English mostly prefaced with "In the bleak". Why chose that as a name?
Because I'm Scandinavian. Our winters last longer and are darker than here, but instead of complaining about them, we wallow. We pull on our raggsocks and curl up, surrounded by tea lights and cute lamps , with mugs of hot chocolate and have it "mysigt". We bake cakes and take them to friend's houses with our knitting and have it mysigt with them. Once the darkness creeps in in the autumn, we place lamps on our windowsills to make our homes look inviting from outside...and show off how mysigt our house is. 

So midwinter is not negative or bleak. It is a time to enjoy and indulge in some posh tea and beautiful yarn - to ignore the wind and weather and lose yourself in an exciting knit, be it a challenging one full of texture or a simple one that will make a warming gift come Christmas. 

So when Karina Westermann approached me with the idea to create a truly Scandinavian collection of patterns, it didn't take long for us to agree on the theme of "Hygge". You see, "hygge" is the same  thing as"mys"...just in Karina's native Danish as opposed to my Swedish. 

And as the patterns are about to start being released - starting with Fika on Monday the 31st of August - I wanted to take a moment to introduce the yarns featured in the collection.

We wanted to use yarns in a variety of textures and thicknesses to best reflect our shared Scandinavian heritage. Some are finer, for a more delicate wear-everywhere fabric. Some are big and chunky for a quick, satisfying knit. What they all have in common are natural materials and deep rich colours. 
Some people think that Scandinavian style is all about muted neutrals, but that is far from the truth! Some of our best known designers are all about colour - Marimekko and Gudrun Sjöden. Their palettes are bright, but never shouty, and that is what I love about our Pirkkalanka range. Finnish Pirkkalanka produce a wonderful, crisp hard wearing wool yarn in glorious colours full of depth - the trick being that they are dyed on to a natural grey base rather than a bleached white, bringing life and variety to the colour. 

Hygge features both thicknesses of Pirkkalanka and I think Karina fell a little in love with the Deep Orange featured in the Fika shawl as it comes back a couple of times in the collection. Indeed, it is the perfect Hygge colour - warm like autumn leaves or embers in a wood burner. 

Ohut Pirkkalanka - fingering weight in 314 Deep Orange and 3734 Moss

Vahva Pirkkalanka - worsted weight in 314 Deep Orange and 308 Teal

We also wanted to include some yarns anchored in Scandinavian knitting traditions, namely the chunky Lovikka yarn. This thick singly ply yarn is traditionally used for making mittens in Lapland and is designed to slowly felt with use in snow, wind and rain - I have a pair that my grandmother wore in her youth and they are the warmest, most windproof mittens I own. 

Ullcentrum, who produce our Lovikka yarn, are a company close to my heart. They collect wool from their local farms around Öland island and the neighbouring mainland which would otherwise be incinerated as a waste product (much the same problem we have here in Wales) and turn it in to their beautiful rustic yarns. Along with the Lovikka, they also produce a stunning range of gradients - a yarn that has proven a firm favourite at shows - and we couldn't possibly produce a collection without including one of these proper, woolly, sheep-smelling, lovely yarns....in Autumn, of course!

I do hope that you will enjoy discovering Hygge over the next few weeks, and creating things that will bring you pleasure both in the making and the wearing, and perhaps find a little hygge of your own. 

Fika will be released as a stand-alone pattern on August 31, but you can pre-order the Hygge: Knit the Things You Love to Wear collection now. It’ll cost slightly different things depending upon where you live, but it is 25% off from now until August 31.

Very exciting announcement!

Midwinter Yarns are very proud to announce our collaboration with the designer Karina Westermann:

Hygge (Knit Yourself the Things You Love to Wear) is a mini-collection celebrating a truly Scandinavian concept. It is a concept that can be difficult to translate, but essentially it means “a feeling of comfort, cosiness, and happiness”. It is what I would call "mys" as I am Swedish, but as Karina is Danish, she calls it "hygge". The mini-collection contains five small projects all relating to aspects of hygge – from spending time with good friends to drinking a mug of hot chocolate after a long, cold day. 

The knitting patterns are all small accessories knitted from a selection of our favourite yarns. All patterns use between one or two skeins of yarns. With hygge being the overall concept, Karina wanted the patterns to give joy and comfort – both in the process of making and in wearing. The projects are also designed to make great little gifts for people you love. Spread the joy, the warmth and the happiness.

What is next? The five patterns will be released over the next month and you’ll be able to see more at our stall at the Yarndale wool festival in Skipton this September.

Karina is now taking pre-orders for the collection and will be releasing the first stand-alone pattern very soon, so head over to her blog for all the news!