Blog
EYF and Merrie Dancers
Hello everyone! We are back from a very successful and busy weekend away at Edinburgh Yarn Festival. Me (Ella) and Kharis headed down to the capital last week and spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday selling all the Shetland wool to all the knitters! I didnt get many photos because we we so busy - A great problem to have of course but it means not many pictures for you, we are so pleased with how it went so we hope any of you who bought from us enjoyed yourselves too! We have posted all the orders we took at the show today so if you placed an order its on its way to you now, EYF is now also the place where the Shetland Wool Week hat and patron is announced so this year Elizabeth Johnston of Shetland Handspun is this years patron and her Merrie Dancers pattern is this years hat, we have already seen lots of projects popping up on Ravelry and lots of people were buying the yarn for it at the show. photo pinched from shetlandwooladventures So if you would like to pick up a kit for the hat you can do so here, we will try and include a copy of the pattern if we can but you can download it here. I put together a little video of our trip away, so you can see our journey to Edinburgh and get an idea of how busy it was on the J&S stand, we had a great time away :) happy knitting!
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2017 Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate
We're just about to start Day 3 at The Knitting & Stitching Show in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. (We're on Stand B270) We've had a great first half of the show, it's been really lovely to meet and chat with both first-time purchasers as well as familiar faces and J&S devotees. Last year I wrote a little round up of a few of the other stands at the show which myself (Kharis) and Sandra particularly liked so I thought I'd do a bit of the same again today. When we have a lull in the crowds then we take turns to go for a look around the show for ourselves. A stand we both love is Judith Mansfield Books (stand TG250) As well as books they have an amazing selection of vintage notions! I seem to have gone with a bit of a sewing theme with pattern and fabric buys from The Avid Seamstress at CoolCrafting (stand C130), and Sew Me Something (stand C125). Both have really beautiful selections and helpful staff. Also, I couldn't resist 'Knit the Rainbow' by Joy of The Knitting Goddess! (stand B620) Directly opposite us is The Makerss (stand B170) who specialise in needle felt supplies and kits. They also offer workshops and Monthly Makerss Project Boxes which are such a great idea! Sandra chose a couple of their kits as they'll make great Christmas gifts. So, we need to head off to the show now. Hope to see some of you there. We still have plenty of wool left, quite a few kits and a special show offer on our books - Knit Real Shetland for only £5 when you buy our recently launched book, J&S A Shetland Story. See you soon! (Stand B270)
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Christmas Gift Additions and Posting Dates
Hello everyone, happy Monday! I cant believe we are just over a month until Christmas! I thought I better pop in here and remind you of the last posting dates for Royal Mail, obviously these are just a guide and we cant guarantee if you order after these dates that you will receive your order in time: UK Delivery Wed 20 Dec 2nd Class Europe and Rest of the World Sat 16 Dec Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg Fri 15 Dec Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland Thur 14 Dec Canada, Finland, Sweden, USA Wed 13 Dec Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland Sat 9 Dec Greece, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand Thur 7 Dec Caribbean, Central and South America Wed 6 Dec Cyprus, Malta, Asia, Far East, Eastern Europe (except Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) Sat 2 Dec Africa, Middle East I just added our cardboard kit boxes to the Online Shop which are perfect for adding to kits, they come in two depths and are stamped with the J&S logo - I'm always keen on anything which turns a present into something easier to wrap! We also added a small range of our hand knitted items to the online shop over the weekend too, if you are looking for something a bit smaller but still says Shetland you can go wrong with some hand knit gloves/mitts - we couldn't be without ours here and they really keep your hands warm. We have a number of Ladies who knit these for us and we pay them so you are supporting traditional skills too. You can see them here. So if you want your order in time for Christmas remember to check the above dates, there is still a bit of time but the earlier you get it in the better! Happy Knitting x
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Come Visit Us in Harrogate!
It's that time of year again! The Knitting & Stitching Show takes place from 23rd-26th November at The Harrogate International Centre on Kings Road. At stand B270, Sandra and I (Kharis) will be there along with Adam, from our parent company Curtis Wool who are based in the area. Last year we focused on kits but this year we will be bringing all of our yarn ranges, with a few select kits and accessories. 2ply Jumper Weight - stand B270 We'll have our recently released book, Jamieson & Smith A Shetland Story! Which includes 10 brand new patterns by designers from Shetland and further afield. Keep a look out on our social media over the next week for more snippets of what we'll be bringing to the show all the way from Shetland! The Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate - stand B270
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British Craft Awards 2018
Hello everyone, happy Friday! Just a quick post today to tell you about something quite exciting! We have been nominated in The British Craft Awards 2018 in the Knitting Brand of the Year category!! isn't that amazing?? According to the website 'Celebrating the crème de la crème of the crafting world, the British Craft Awards 2018 are the most highly prized awards for excellence, so make sure you have your say and put your favourites in the spotlight! Whether it’s an amazing designer or blogger who gets your creative juices flowing, or a retailer or product that’s transformed your crafting in the last 12 months, this is your chance to tell us who you think deserves extra special recognition for what they do! So if you think we deserve it we would really appreciate your vote which you can do here, Happy Knitting!
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The Croft - Shetland Tweed
Hello everyone, something which arrived just before Shetland Wool Week was a new yarn which was launched a couple of months ago. The Croft Shetland Tweed is an Aran weight wool made from 100% Shetland Wool from us! We worked in association with West Yorkshire Spinners who developed this wool which is very different to anything that we have here at J&S so we were very excited to see the yarn in the flesh and it doesn't disappoint. It comes in a range of 8 different speckled shades and each colour has lots of different shades within it, this is the Stonybrek colourway .. the shades available in the range are: The yarn is sold in 100g hanks and contains 166m/182yds, I think it would work best in something quite plain or with an all over texture pattern. It is certainly coolling down in Shetland now and a hat would be great in this yarn - something like this, this or this! You can find The Croft Shetland Tweed on the website here, happy knitting!
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Shetland Wool Week 2017 at J&S
Hello everyone! thank you for your response to our last post, we are so pleased with how many of you are picking up the book, the digital PDF version is now online too. Today i'm back with some photos from Shetland Wool Week, every year that it gets bigger I get less photos but I still got a good selection from what was happening in the shop.. We had classes every weekday alongside some free drop in events and it worked really well. We always have an excellent response to Hazels Fair Isle class.. Fair Isle with Hazel Tindall knitting, cutting and steek relief! And Felicity Ford was back again with her inspirational Mitts-a-long, this year everyone left with a full 8 balls of Jumper weight to finish their project started in the class inspired by a group of photos and a colour palette picked by Felix Mittsalong Class with Felicity Ford (and a fetching neepheid!) more nice knitwear in Felix's' class - a Cruden and Laebrack We tried to fight the losing battle of keeping shelves filled up (if anyone can do it, its Sandra!) And we had more classes like Drop Spindling.. Drop Spindling with Deborah Gray And a great evening event which was a trunk show for Jen and Jim Arnal Cullifords new book - A Year of Techniques which features a couple of projects in J&S yarns. It was great to see them again and celebrate the new book! A Year of Techniques Trunk Show We loved this hat which features the motif's from the Baable Hat, Crofthoose and Bousta Beanie! Felicity and Sandra say cheers to J&S! We also had a launch event for our new book, and had all the designs on display. It was so good to finally have all the projects out and the book available. yippee! Friday Morning was a bit quieter which was good as we had a lace class with Elizabeth Johnston, something which needs a bit of concentration I reckon! Shetland Lace with Elizabeth Johnston Felicity's amazing wedding bunting! Oliver's last tour of Wool Week But Friday afternoon was so busy! We had Oliver's last tour of the week and a trunk show for Felicity's next book, and everyone seemed to come for a look.. I don't know how I had time to get the above pictures! The Hub After work on Friday I crawled to the museum to visit the Hub and admire the knitwear on display and the merchandise, I love the sweatshirts! (I bought one, of course!) On Saturday Me, Kharis and Sandra were at the shop but i nipped over to Gremista farm where we were holding an event together with Eric at the farm and Vispring. Unfortuantely the Flock Book event fell outside Wool Week so we decided to have an event with sheep, food and farmers which went down really well and we are already thinking about how to make next year better! Aah, all in all another successful Wool Week. There is such an amazing range of events on all week and this is just a small slice of what happened at J&S, happy knitting!
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J&S and Dries Van Noten
You may have heard about a recent Instagram post linking Jamieson & Smith with hip hop artist, Lil Uzi Vert. Funny how these things come about! We had been in communication with design house Dries Van Noten since around this time last year when they ordered some 2ply Jumper Weight for sampling. They were great with asking us about using our original logo, designed by Oliver Henry, on the sweaters they were planning to knit using our yarn. Initially, we thought they wanted to use this in the garment care label, inside the sweater, so we explained that maybe they would prefer to have our current J&S star logo. A reply by email confirmed that because they were interested in heritage brands the original logo suited their design better. That was fine by us, then we noticed the attached image - our logo in HUGE print directly on the front of a sweater! Not what we were expecting at all but brilliant for us! So the big yarn orders, in a selection of 2ply Jumper Weight shades, came in over last winter from DVN and to be honest it was a little difficult to keep up. Especially at that time of year when the previous clip had mostly been sorted and allocated for yarn or other customers. But we got there and the final cones were sent out to Belgium in the spring of this year. We had seen photos from Paris Fashion Week in January, our main contact at Dries Van Noten kept us updated which was really lovely. Dries van Noten at Paris fashion week last winter Occasionally, we'd be tagged in a post during the process of the collection coming together, for example, the photographer Jonnie Craig working on Selfridges look-book. Photograph: Jonnie Craig for Selfridges We also had a visit from Milou van Rossum, fashion director at Netherlands publication, NRC. She contacted us as she was writing an article on Shetland wool based around the Dries Van Noten collection. The day she arrived was cold, dull and rainy, not ideal conditions for being in the hill attempting to photograph Shetland sheep who will run to a safe distance just as soon as you think you've got the perfect shot! She asked lots of questions and was able to get a feel for the wildness of the landscape where Shetland sheep thrive best as our manager Derek, and myself (Kharis), took her on a tour up north to crofts at Collafirth. I guess none of Milou's photos turned out too well because of the weather as she chose to use a photo by Tom Barr (below) in her final article! Then just a couple of weeks ago Celebrity_Vice tagged us in an image on Instagram... and so it began... A bit of Googling was in order... we will readily admit, we had no idea who Lil Uzi was! Anyway, it was great that our name, that of Shetland and Shetland wool was getting out to a different audience. A few shares on social media later and we had quite a few comments - customers, Shetlanders, friends and family - some asking, 'Where can I buy one?!', others concerned that this may be another example of a big designer misappropriating another's design. Chris Cope, for Shetland News, gave us an opportunity to put Shetlanders minds at rest and explain a little bit about it when he contacted Ella asking for a quote after seeing the social media (peerie)storm. You can read his article and Ella's quote here. If you're interested in purchasing a Real Shetland Wool jumper by Dries Van Noten you can do so at Selfridges or Barneys. Thanks to Fashion Cost for a pretty nice schematic of Lil Uzi's outfit...
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Walls Show 2017
Hello everyone, happy Friday! I'm back with the final installment of our trips to the Shows - this time the Walls Show - there are others which we wont make it to but these are the three which have the Colourbox in it so we always go! Last Saturday was not too bad a day weatherwise, there were a couple of showers while we were there (you can see some offending clouds above!) so me and Sandra had a fine drive out to Waas. Me and Sandra judged the Colourbox and the most of the knitwear at the show, this is only the second year we have done the Colourbox at Waas so it is still small but growing so we were pleased to see the entries, there was a good amount of entries in the other knitting so we had our work cut out for us. There were lots of amazing Fair Isle and Lace to be seen.. Again once we had done our judging thing we went for a look around at all the animals and other entries.. This was a very friendly kitten in the pets section..i think Sandra would have taken it home if she could! And then we also made friends with the Goats (there is another version of this photo in the Shetland Times today - just know I set it up and the photographer swooped in!!) I really enjoying going to the different shows and seeing whats similar but also different about them all. We were quite lucky with the weather this year but for our judging we are always inside so its fine for us! I hope you've enjoyed the photos from the shows, we have already chosen the colours for next years Colourbox and people have been buying them already so it bodes well for next years entries. Happy Knitting! PS>> Have you started your Bousta Beanie yet? We are 5 days in our KAL and lots are on the needles on Ravelry already!
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