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Hi folks! How is it nearly August??? I always find that summer is a great time to make socks, wouldn’t you agree?! They are quick, portable, lightweight and always useful! So with that in mind I have some sock-related news for you.

Vikki Bird’s fundraising Seed Head sock pattern is now published. Until 14th August 2020, £2 from the purchase of this pattern will go towards The Flower Power Fund (for Marie Curie UK). You can buy the pattern on Payhip and LoveCrafts. We have an update coming next week of the yarn that Vikki used – Tempo 4ply. This is our PROPER sock yarn – by that I mean it’s a nice tough Merino (more coarse than in our other yarns, but still soft) with nylon added. It’s incredibly hard wearing in my experience (I have socks in it that I’ve been wearing a LOT for nine years now!!). The update goes live on Tuesday the 28th of July at 7pm UK time.

On the subject of Marie Curie, our Flower Power yarn raised a grand total of £1667!! So thank you ever so much to everyone who bought some – and I have to give another big shout out of thanks to YarnUndyed for donating the yarn. This is the kind of awesome thing that can happen when people work together. ????

Going back to socks… we still have a great selection of sock yarn from the latest update. Brimham High Twist is perfect for socks as it is machine washable and hard wearing. If you like your socks with a bit more interest, why not pair a skein with a contrasting mini skein? They’re also available in Brimham High Twist as well as other bases, including sparkly silver Nateby 4ply and sparkly gold Rosedale 4ply. There is also a good selection of Harewood Fingering still available from our last update so you should find plenty in stock for any project.

For the crocheters we have stocked the latest book from The Crochet Project! The Shawl Project Book 5 features five designs using laceweight yarns and we are totally in love with it! Each design has a different construction method with a combination of join as you go, granny stripes and more! We have a new post on the blog introducing you to all the designs and providing our suggestions for which of our yarns you could use. Our Titus Lace, which would be the perfect pairing with this book, is out of stock but we have plans for another update very soon. We will let you know when that will be as soon as we can!

Next up, a little bit of housekeeping. There is a new episode of The Wholly Irregular ECY Shedcast on the Eden Cottage Yarns YouTube channel and it has captions! (We are working to add captions to all episodes so please do bear with us!) This one is a nice quick one showing you the yarn for the update after next which will be a singles special — featuring Keld Fingering and Coniston Fingering. In the Shedcast I say that the update will be on 28th July but that is the Tempo update (OOPS!). Keld Fingering and Coniston Fingering, which are both fingering weight merino singles blends, will be coming on 7th August!

Other future updates in the plan include Hayton DK, Titus Lace and a Summer Stash Box!

We ship worldwide but have recently had to increase shipping charges to the US due to increases in the costs to us. Our free shipping offer has ended but we have replaced it with a 10% discount to orders with a pre-tax value of over £100. The discount only applies to products purchased and not to the shipping charges. To take advantage of this offer enter the code 100THANKS during checkout.

Long before the lockdown, we started planning for two brand new yarns to add to the ECY stable (actually there are more, but these are the first two!). Rosedale 4ply, a new gold sparkle 4-ply yarn is coming later in April. But first we have Lowther Lace which is coming to the website on Sunday 12th April at 5 p.m. UK time. To see the colourways that will be going live on the website on Sunday you can find an album of these over on flickr.  

Lowther Lace is a sumptuous blend of baby suri alpaca and mulberry silk. The alpaca fibre gives this yarn a wonderful cloud-like fuzzy halo and offers a great alternative to mohair. This yarn is ideal for using on its own in both knitting and crochet and can also be held double with other yarns to add a wonderful soft, fuzzy halo. It does not have great stitch definition due to the fuzziness of the fluff so complex lace patterns might get lost in it.

I have recorded a YouTube video about this yarn – I did lots of swatching and stuff so that’s all included. It’s just gone online, so you can view it on the Eden Cottage Yarns YouTube channel. This will be followed up with a blog post with some pattern inspiration and lots of other information about the yarn.

Also over on YouTube you can still find the video recorded going through all the designs in Cat Knits by Marna Gilligan, discussing the techniques, yarns used and possible alternatives. If you missed that, or prefer to read through information in a leisurely fashion, we have also published a blog post with all the same information plus a few extra bits which you can find on the home page on the website. Yarn packs are still available for all designs in the book along with project bags, pin badges and copies of the book, all of which you can find from the home page of the website.

PLEASE NOTE: This Friday and Monday are bank holidays and as such we will be closed. I know it won’t make a difference to a lot of people at the moment but in all honesty I am knackered and ready for a four day break! I’m setting up auto-posts for social media in case I am not online over the weekend, but I’m sure I’ll dip in to the ECY Garden FB group now and then. If you have any questions that’s probably the best place to post them, as the community is very lovely and helpful. I will be back on Tuesday, full of the joys of spring. ????

I wouldn’t normally go for the “Keep calm and…” trope but on this occasion it does fit in perfectly here, I’m afraid! I do hope that wherever you are and whatever your situation, you are staying safe and well. It’s such a weird time, isn’t it — being cheerful and talking about lovely new things seems a bit off, but at the same time being negative is hardly helpful either.

ECY is still going — Laura works from her bat cave at home in Cambridgeshire anyway, and obviously I work from home anyway too, I just now don’t have any physical help. I called our post office this week to ask how they feel about me continuing to send post (David drops it off on his way to work and he’s still working full time, so it’s no extra travel) — they asked me to please keep sending post over as often as I can (I did ask if it would help to bring it in on fewer days per week), as they are a small self-employed business and really need to keep afloat for as long as possible — and I am their biggest customer. So I’m still sending post at the moment — obviously if that changes I will let you know. It will take longer for me to dispatch orders though now as I’m packing them in between dyeing, processing yarn, photographing said yarn, and doing all my usual social media and stuff. Again, if anything changes I will let you know!

With all that out of the way I wanted to tell you that we have a VERY exciting update happening on Saturday at 8 a.m. UK time! Now… we wouldn’t have planned to have a huge update right in the middle of a pandemic, especially not one that involves a lot of investment in yarn, merchandise, books, and so much time… but it’s been in the offing for 12 months and we couldn’t possibly have known what would happen!

This weekend sees the launch of Cat Knits by Marna Gilligan of ‘an caitin beag’ (she of sinister cat fame!). Cat Knits is a book of 16 knit designs all featuring Marna’s signature kitties on a mixture of garments and accessories. It’s a wide-ranging book actually — it feels like there’s more than 16 items in there. Each chapter covers a different yarn weight, so there’s a 4ply section, and DK section, an Aran section, and a Chunky section, all using our yarns. Each section has a garment AND matching accessories included, and they range from nice simple textures, to stranded colourwork (like sinister cats), to intarsia.

With everything that is going on globally, plans for the launch have changed many times over the past few weeks and may still change again, but the CURRENT plan (correct as of the time of writing!!) is that Marna, Laura and I will be going live online on Instagram at 2 p.m. UK time on Saturday. We really hope that you will join us as together we talk through each of the designs, the yarns required and other items that have been produced to accompany this fantastic book. If you can’t join us don’t worry — I think the video will be available for playback (I am a bit clueless about live streaming if I’m honest), and we will turn it into a blog post too for better accessibility.

In the update we will have:
– copies of the book
– yarn packs for each of the 16 designs in the book
– Eden Cottage Cats project bags
– some of Marna’s items (tote bags, stitchmarker sets and pin badges)
– plus our own exclusive Eden Cottage Cats enamel badge (due for delivery next week so we might have a slight delay on those).

There will also be a few additional colours of Pendle Chunky that can be used in place of Silver Birch for the Chunky chapter. We also have an option for you to buy all the merchandise with one click. The “very catty merch” bundles are limited so get in quick if you want to get hold of them!

Although this update has taken a large proportion of our focus that hasn’t impacted other yarns being added to the website. Only last week we added a selection of colourways in our alpaca/silk yarns Askham 4ply and Askham Aran.