Yarndale is fast approaching! If you’re local then you’ll be there – of course! If you’re NOT local I would encourage you to book yourself a weekend away in wonderful Skipton NOW. It is not to be missed. We’ll be there with our beautiful new Scylfing yarn base – a blend of Bluefaced Leicester and Gotland, spun especially for Triskelion Yarn. And everybody else will be there too – the event gets bigger and better every year with an amazing range of stalls and workshops. Have a look at the Yarndale website to find out more.
We’re really looking forward to going to the Chester Wool Open Weekend. Some of our most popular Triskelion yarn bases come from Chester Wool Company, so come along and see! As well as Triskelion, there will be other amazing yarns and fibre products from Coopknits, Truly Hooked, Bluefaced, Felt Studio UK, Coastal Colours, Lottieknits and Fyberspates. You can find more details about the Chester Wool Company, and the Open Weekend here: Chester Wool Company.
Starting on Sunday 28th April and finishing on Monday 6th May, we’ll be having a sale for Calan Haf – the first days of summer. All 4-ply/fingering weight yarns will have 20% knocked off of their usual prices, and DK yarns will have up to 25% off. Beltane bargains!
So, yesterday was the first time I took Triskelion out in public. Up until now, all my sales – both yarn and batts – have been on Etsy, through guilds or sold to friends, so it was good to really get the show on the road and meet my customers face-to-face. And it was great. Actually, it was pretty damn fantastic.
“Shop At Mog’s!!”
Firstly, it was a wonderful opportunity for me. I’m pretty much an unknown outside my little backwater of the internet, and for Brenda Dayne and Amy Singer (the organisers and hosts of P3) to take a risk on an unknown was very generous. Plus, that they also picked two small yarn and fibre vendors – Triskelion and Squeaky Elliot (more on Estelle and Mark later) – local to the venue deserves recognition. We need support and patronage in West Wales, and they did us proud. So, yeah, I’m pretty grateful for that, and I’m really pleased and proud that their risk paid off. I sold the majority of the yarns I took with me, and all of the fibre batts. Given I had no idea of what to expect in terms of sales, I would’ve probably been pleased if I’d sold a quarter of what I’d taken. So, thanks are also due to the knitters and spinners who liked my products enough to spend a good deal of money on them. One knitter literally left my table with her arms full – eight skeins of yarn and three batts. Thank you.
I got loads of excellent feedback, both on the yarn bases and my colour range. Lots of stuff to think about, much of it corroborating my own thoughts about future directions. Again, many thanks for everyone’s feedback and thoughts. Sophie Durlacher of Twist Yarns deserves a special shout-out, as does Brenda herself. It was also great to meet US folk who I know from Facebook, but never met. It was particularly good to meet Betty Hoffmann – such a shame I couldn’t spend more time with everyone, but the day was a whirl for me, let alone the retreat folk.
And then Squeaky Elliot. What can I say? Estelle and Mark made the day that much brighter. Great fun, full of life, and really proud of their products – and justifiably so. Really, go check out Estelle’s Etsy shop and fill your boots. Their Gower wool line – from sheep owned by Mark’s family – is the most gloriously squishy, characterful, soft BFL blended with Black Welsh Mountain. And the most beautifully dyed heavy laceweight linen yard in softly intense colours… I couldn’t keep my hands off it, and kept going back to leer. We settled on a trade in the end, and Estelle had some of my yarn, and I came home with four skeins of Bubblegum. I’m not sure whether to go for a knitted shawl or a woven one, but for now I’m just going to gaze at it sitting on my desk. Thanks, Estelle and Mark, for really being the cherry on the cake of the day.
A great day for me and Triskelion, topped by the website going live. We’ve made a great start to the year.
I’m attending the P3 retreat in Pembroke as a vendor this weekend. Around thirty or so knitters will be there, all being taught by the revered Brenda Dayne and Amy Singer. It’s the first public outing for Triskelion – everything I’ve been selling has been either to local friends and relatives or online via Etsy. Kind of nerve-wracking, but exciting nevertheless.
Over 100 skeins have been dyed. The last two skeins of Gofannon Lace will be on the stove tomorrow, and the last sweater-quantity batches are drying on the rack as I type. All that’s left to do is some reskeining, and then the mammoth undertaking of putting on over a hundred skein bands. That’ll leave me free for all the angst over whether I made the right colour choices and wishing I could go back and choose again, and the fretting and fussing over how to display the skeins.
At least I get a break from dyeing for a week. I feel like I’ve been slave to a timer for the last three.
