Welcoming New Yarns from Biches & Bûches

We’re overjoyed to welcome two delightful new yarns from Biches & Bûches this week. The carefully curated bases from this brilliant brand never disapoint — Le Petit Organic Cotton and Le Lambswool are no exception!

There is something fundamentally honest about Le Petit Organic Cotton. It feels earthly, and with good reason. The fibres used to create this yarn are grown with the utmost care for the environment, using no pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilisers. This is good for the ecosystem, of course, but it also makes it that much more enjoyable to stitch with, knowing there’s nothing bad hiding in your skein.

We’re so happy to have Le Petit Organic Cotton in the shop now, as it’s the perfect yarn for summer knits (and projects for babies and children too!) Biches & Bûches has some beautiful designs using this yarn. The Toscana Sweater and Celia Blouse are beautifully airy long-sleeve pieces, the perfect extra layer to bring on summer adventures. The triangular Alba Scarf is also wonderful for summer and shoulder seasons. It looks just as at home over jeans and a t-shirt as it does over your best wedding guest attire!

As if this gorgeous cotton yarn wasn’t enough, we’ve also received Le Lambswool from Biches & Bûches. This is a variation on Le Petit Lambswool, the yarn that started it all for Biches & Bûches founder Astrid. She was looking for the perfect yarn to knit the kind of sweater that would be worn for years, and ended up making one herself. Fingering weight Le Petit Lambswool is a dream, but we absolutely adore DK weight Le Lambswool. It has a lofty texture that makes it very light despite its warmth, and a lovely tweedy feel.

Le Lambswool runs a bit warmer than Le Petit Organic Cotton, but there are still some beautiful things to make with it that you’ll want to wear straight away. We love the No. 86 vest, which can be layered over long sleeves or worn on its own, and the Seaside Shawl, both by Biches & Bûches.

One Biches & Bûches pattern we love is the River Jumper, which has a version in Le Lambswool and a version in Le Petit Organic Cotton held with silk + mohair. We’ll be knitting up a shop sample of the Le Lambswool version so you can see it in person!

New Myak On the Spice Market Kits

We are utterly thrilled to unite the creative beauty of two of our favourite makers in the form of the mYak On the Spice Market Kit. Designer Melanie Berg’s (aka Mairlynd) brilliant shawl pattern is the perfect match for mYak’s ultimate silky soft mYak Baby Yak + Silk. Melanie is the queen of inventive shawl designs, and when you pair that with mYak’s incredible cultivation of high-quality fibres produced by nomadic farmers, there’s just nothing better. The kit comes with all the yarn you’ll need to make this shawl, plus a limited edition 20th anniversary Loop project bag with artwork by Tabby Booth. The pattern is available to purchase separately as a PDF from Melanie Berg’s Ravelry. This special mYak version of the On the Spice Market is simply stunning!

Vintage Darning Tools

If there’s one thing we love at Loop it’s a unique piece of craft beauty. Whether a piece of art that has come from one particularly imaginative mind or an ornate tool that has been used and formed by the hands of generations of crafters, there is something so fundamentally human about the objects shaped by the meeting of creativity and necessity. So you can imagine how special it is to have a small collection of Vintage Darning Tools in the shop. These mushroom and egg shape pieces have the patina of the years on them, and the memory of mends past in their grains. By picking up these tools, you’ll be carrying forward a legacy of care that goes back through the ages.

Lilly Brushes

Nothing is worse than spending loads of time, attention, and care on making a beautiful knit or crocheted piece only to have it grow pilled with wear or get covered in tissue pieces you forgot to take out of your pocket before a wash. Luckily, this is where the Lilly Brush comes in. More effective than a sticky roller but without the fear of snagging that comes with a wire brush, the Lilly brush is the perfect tool for keeping natural fibre garments looking their best. Whether handmade or not, everything in your wardrobe will look ship shape thanks to this nifty little tool.

North Wind Knits

This gorgeous book of quiet joy through stitch sold out in a heartbeat when it first launched last month. We’re thrilled to have received more copies! Annika Konttaniemi’s North Wind Knits is an ode to the wool of Finnish sheep, to walks through the woods, and to the stories that are shared between knitters. A gorgeous volume.

Happy crafting!