New workshops at Loop and a beautiful new kit!

New workshops at Loop and a beautiful new kit!
Hilja Mitts designed by Aleks Byrd. ©Aleks Byrd

You may have heard we are re-opening our shop on the 1st of May, this coming Saturday! We are super excited to welcome you back and have been very busy getting ready for your arrival. We have some more detailed information for you about shopping with us in person at the end of this post.
In the meantime, we thought we’d share a little round-up of some lovely new things at Loop to keep us inspired and creating through the next few months and beyond.

To start with, we have scheduled some new Autumn workshops with the lovely Aleks Byrd. Aleks is a knitwear designer with a heritage tied to three countries – USA, Estonia and Canada.
For inspiration, Aleks likes to draw on her Estonian roots in particular, in creating new patterns to produce modern and unique designs with a connection to the past.

Two of her most recent designs include the stunning Seli Sweater & Cardigan featured in Laine Magazine’s issue 10. She is also the designer of the beautiful Halliste Shawl you may have seen in 52 Weeks of Shawls, Laine publishings latest book.

Aleks’ designs often incorporate the wonderful Roosimine technique. Roosimine is an Estonian inlay technique that creates the appearance of embroidery through intentional floats in contrasting yarn on the right side of your knitting. It is a beautiful and straightforward technique. It is also a much simpler method compared to creating motifs or patterns with intarsia.

Aleks will teach the Roosimine technique used in the Seli and Halliste patterns and a baltic braided technique used in Latvia and Estonia to add interesting details to mittens, gloves, socks, and sweaters.

The Roosimine technique workshop will take place in the morning of the 23rd of October, followed by her Baltic Braid workshop in the afternoon.
Why not make a full day of learning some beautiful new techniques and enjoy tea, coffee and cakes with us in the shop!

Aleks will also be teaching her Roosimine workshop on Sunday the 24th of October at Loop if you can’t make the Saturday. And for those of you who can’t travel to us in London, we also have a ZOOM class scheduled for the Roosimine workshop on the 30th of October. For more information regarding all workshops visit our website.

£5 Fridays

Starting on the 4th of June, we’ll be bringing you some great new one hour classes that will show you some standard techniques to help you with your knitting. Learn how to use the “Magic Loop“, basic methods for increasing and decreasing, knitting cables and understanding how to read charts. Learning the ‘language’ of knitting will build your confidence and help you on your way to creating customised knitwear. Each hour lesson is only £5 on a Friday evening from 6-7 pm and taught by our lovely and super knowledgeable Loopette, Emma. You can book directly through our website. Hope to see you there!

New Kit!

We have a gorgeous new kit for you featuring Keseran Pasaran designed by the very talented Eri Shimizu. Keseran Pasaran is a beautiful and delicate sweater featured in Laine Magazine Issue 11 using Ito yarns.

The sweater combines two yarns that are held together throughout the pattern-ITO Kinu and ITO Sensai. The result is an incredibly lightweight, warm design. The fabric looks nice on both sides, making it reversible! The kit has all the yarn you’ll need and a lovely Loop project bag. Available as a pre-order now, it will ship towards the end of next week. Laine Magazine issue 11, which has the pattern, will be launching on the 7th of May!

Recent Arrivals

If you are looking for some inspiration for embellishing your knits and accessories, some lovely new bits and bobs have made their way to our shop in the last few weeks.  

From Ito Yarns, Ito GIN has arrived along with San.  Gin is an incredible thread metallised with real silver giving it a super luxe and beautifully warm and clear hue.You can use it for both machine and hand sewing or embroidery.  Ito San comes in shimmery gold and silver shades both on its own and on a black thread.  It’s so beautiful and we can see this being used on all sorts of projects for an extra special piece. If you are looking for more colour we also have the Ito Iki silk threads in 25 shimmery colours.

New Daruma yarns

From Japan we have the Sasawashi grass fibre from Daruma. Made of bamboo grass that grows only at an altitude of 1000 m or higher, Sasawashi is a very strong material for making accessories like hats or bags. We have five neutral colours ready for making summer accessories.

Another yarn from Daruma that has arrived recently is ‘Tube.’ Tube is a nylon yarn in eight bright and vivid colours with a tube-like construction, making it strong and not easily stretched. Being waterproof makes this another perfect yarn for summer accessory knitting or crochet.

Welcome Back!

Just a little reminder that we are opening our London shop tomorrow, the 1st of May! We can’t wait to welcome you back. We just have a few things to mention to make sure everyone is safe and happy with their shopping experience.

Our opening hours from May 1st are: 12-5pm Wednesday – Sunday

We respectfully ask that if it is busy (if there is a queue outside the shop) that you try and limit your time in the shop to no more than 15-20 minutes. Please read our safety measures on the London shop page. The main things are that you must wear a face-covering properly during your visit, we continue to limit numbers in the shop, and we are cashless (card or ApplePay only).

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