Twirl ~ A Very Special Yarn

Now that Edinburgh Yarn Festival is over, we can rest and catch-up on some other yarny business. We have a very special new yarn in stock, that we are dying to tell you about ~ Twirl!

Thank you to everyone who visited us in Edinburgh, we had a great time! Later in this post, we’ll announce the final winner of our “On the Road to Edinburgh” Prize Giveaways, a Blink Kit!

We’ve been eager to get Twirl into our shop for some time! This is a really special yarn. All the fibres are gathered from animals raised by Mary Pettis-Sarley on her California ranch.

Mary raises sheep: California Variegated Mutant (CVM), Romney, Blue Faced Leicester (BFL), Wensleydale, Shetland and other cross breeds.

She also keeps white, red, brown and grey goats, as well as Alpacas.

She raises her animals to graze on the land, and they in turn produce incredible fibres that she washes, and blends together. These go to her local wool mill, to be spun into gorgeous balls of wool, mohair and alpaca blends.

Mary utilises the unique characteristics and colours of each animal’s fibres to create yarn with exceptional luster, strength and softness.

The spun yarn is either left in a beautiful range of natural colours…

or dyed with commercial or natural dyes, with the raw ingredients often coming from her own farm.

We carry Mary’s Ditto base, which is two strands of Twirl Petals plied together. The gauge varies from 16 to 24 sts per 10cm with 180 to 200 yards per 50g cake, depending on Mary’s fibre combination.

We have three varieties of Twirl Ditto: Undyed in a natural range of six colours, Lily Too; hand-dyed with natural dyes and six more saturated colours of hand-dyed.

Twirl Undyed yarns are named after the animal who contributed the most colour and character to each yarn: Audrey, Brussel Sprout, Buddy, Lollipop, Meatloaf and Urubamba!

You can read more about each blend and the animal on the label.

All of Mary’s coloured yarns are hand-dyed on her Audrey fibre base, a blend of Audrey, a red angora goat orphan from the hard winter of 2016, and her lamb, baby alpaca and kid mohair playmates.

The Twirl Lily Too yarns, made with natural dyes use six different groups of dyestuffs: Brazilwood for pinks and oranges, Cochineal for vibrant reds and pinks, Logwood for violets, Madder+Logwood for lilacs, Marigolds for yellows and Umphalotus+Sukumo for soft greens. Umphalotus is a dye made from mushrooms and Sukumo is an Indigo paste made from Indigo that Mary has grown on her ranch.

Mary either grows or gathers most of her plant dyes from around her own ranch. She then collects seawater which she uses as a natural fixative.

Each dyestuff group creates a range of shades. We show the range of shades, in each colour way, on our website. If it is important to you which ones you receive, either leave a note in your online order or phone the shop to specify.

Finally, there is a range of six, more vibrant hand-dyed Twirl colours that are made with acid dyes. These are great if you are looking for less subtlety in your yarn.

We hope you love this special yarn as much as we do and look forward to seeing what you create with it!

Winner Of Our Blink Kit

Thank you to everyone who played along with our Prize giveaway for the Blink Kit. We’ll be releasing the pattern and making more kits available very soon.

We had a lot of fun with these giveaways and hope to do some more soon.

Our final prize winner is “aprairiemermaid” on Instagram. Congratulations! We’ll be in touch to get your mailing address and find our which kit colour you would like.

We are delighted to announce that we’ll be have a Blink Knit-Along, starting near the beginning of April. We’ll give you more details, once the pattern has been released.

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