Yarn Shop Day!

We had a great time at Yarn Shop Day on the 3rd of May and it was lovely to meet so many wonderful knitters 🙂

So what did we get up to?

Well, we had Andy from the Chester Wool Company here with his beautiful luxury undyed yarns and some yummy Fyberspates too:

And in the afternoon Louisa Harding arrived with gorgeous samples from her latest collections, including her new book; Knits From An English Rose.

We had demonstrations of knitting techniques too, in Kitchener stitch, magic loop, Judy’s magic cast on, cabling without a cable needle, fixing a dropped stitch, mattress stitch and Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy cast off.

….. And for those who were in need of refreshment, we had lots of yummy cake!

Thank you to everyone who came along, we hope you all had as much fun as we did!

Hope to see you all again soon 🙂

Happy Knitting!

Louisa Harding Charity Trunk Show Success

So we held our Louisa Harding Charity Trunk Show event here last Wednesday and the whole thing was a HUGE SUCCESS! Yay! The event was for ticket holders only and raised £400 in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support and to support Louisa with her rough trek in Nepal.

Louisa giving a talk

All attendees received 15% off the Louisa Harding range throughout the day.

For those that don’t know, to help Louisa achieve her fundraising target she has designed a series of hats asking only for a donation to the cause. The patterns are called ‘Himalayan Hiking Hats’ and she aims to get a photograph of herself wearing each hat on the first 6 days of her trek with the 7th hat being knitted during the trip and photographed on the 7th day. The staff here at Stash and our regular customer have all been very excited for the last couple of weeks to meet the lovely Louisa, have a root in her stash, get help and advise from her, and all show off our Himalayan Hats!

Louisa and Donna with their ‘Himalayan Hiking Hats’

The day was full of cakes, knattering knitters, and book signing the atmosphere was great. There was a raffle held with two prizes where Louisa and Helen Probert drew out the winners. The winners were two lovely ladies who had even come to the event together! Julie McCoy from Handforth, Wimslow won a bag of Louisa Harding Amitola yarn with a signed copy of the Amitola pattern book and Hazel Illingworth from Cheadle, Cheshire won a bag of Louisa Harding Orielle yarn and a signed copy of the Orielle pattern book. All the prizes were kindly donated by Designer Yarns Limited.

Hazel Illingworth, Louisa Harding and Julie McCoy

The day was ended on a high with lots of full bellies, happy customers, and very busy staff! For more photographs of the event visit our website here.

or our Facebook page here.

For more information about Louisa Harding’s fundraising, patterns for her Himalayan Hats, and donating visit her website here –

http://www.louisaharding.co.uk/macmillan/

For Louisa Harding yarns visit our website here and pattern books here.

Thank you to everybody that attended on the day and thank you to all who donated!

Feary Wings

Faery Wings was hand delivered to us today by Jenny from Fyberspates. We are very grateful as we didn’t expect it this quickly especially as we knew that she is going on holiday tomorrow! But being so lovely she dropped it off with us whilst doing her other pre-holiday chores! The yarn is beautiful! All the staff here are choosing which skeins/colours they want for themselves. So much colour to choose from, it’s great! Which would you choose? I’m sure it will fly out the doors so must get in there quickly!

  

Workshop!

Just a little reminder that we have this wonderful workshop taking place on 6th July! To book your place please call us on 01244 389310. Thank you x

Beginner’s Knitting/Brush up your knitting!

Beryl has been working with wool for many years including dyeing, spinning, weaving, knitting and felting. Teacher Beryl introduced many young children to the joys of knitting and crochet. She has taught many new and inexperienced adult knitters the basic techniques and helped more advanced knitters master more complicated techniques.

 

Spend the day learning to knit or brushing up on your skills. Cast on, cast off, knit and purl to start with, then progress to end the day with a hat.

 

All yarn required for the workshop will be supplied. Skill levels: Beginners

 

All workshops will be held at Stash and run from 10.30 till 16.00. Cost £40 including drinks and cakes/biscuits, and 10% discount off all purchases on the day.

 

Website: http://www.stashfineyarns.com

Blog: http://celticove.wordpress.com/

Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/groups/stash-fine-yarns

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/StashFineYarns

Phone Number: 01244 389310

Exciting new yarns

We have been in talks with the lovely Amanda and Phil, of Natural Dye Studios and soon we hope to have some of their scrumptious yarns for the shop.  So watch this space….

Helen is now the proud owner of an amazing hooded Kogarashi jacket called Enjoy, knitted by one of our customers Karen, and here they are.

‘Afternoon Tea with Debbie Bliss’

We spent an amazing Tuesday afternoon with Debbie Bliss and over 45 of our lovely customers. Debbie was delightful, taking time to chat to everyone, sign books and generally be a star!
We all went away with long wish lists or projects for our queues for those on Ravelry.  It was lovely to watch our customers try on Debbie’s garments and for the colours and shapes to be perfect.  Sometimes a garment has to be seen and tried on before we can decide whether or not it is suitable for us.  Having the designer on hand with advice was an added bonus and gave everyone a bit more confidence with their choices.
 As usual Helen and Steve provided an extraordinary array of home-baked cakes which we were much appreciated by all.  We hope to be able to host similar events in the future with other top knitwear designers…

We’ve put together some of the pictures from the event here…

Stash welcomes Debbie Bliss back!

We are delighted to announce that on Tuesday 26th October we will be welcoming Debbie Bliss to our shop, to spend time with our customers and sign her books.  We will let you know the details closer to the time but make sure you put this date in your diaries – Remember Tuesday 26th October 2010.  Don’t miss it!

Weobley Women Crash Stash!

We had a lovely time last Tuesday entertaining 18 lovely ladies from the Weobley Craft Group from the beautiful village of Weobley in Herefordshire. They arrived at approximately 11.15am and spent their time browsing through all the new seasons yarns and publications only interupted by tea, coffee, biscuits and cakes!

After an hour and a half it was time for Patricia Baggot the group organiser to wake up Bob (the coach driver) from his slumbers, round up the ladies and head off to Knutsford for lunch and a visit to a local craft shop in the afternoon. Patricia later said that the ladies wished they had have had longer to spend with us at Stash Fine Yarns. We look forward to welcoming Patricia and the Weobley Craft Group again in the near future.

Rowan Workshop Dates for 2008

Heike Gittins is a mobile Rowan Consultant based in Ruthin near Chester. A German national with fluent English she has been knitting and crocheting since childhood and has a keen love for all things textile. Most workshops are project based with emphasis on accessories for body and home, and try to incorporate different yarns, buttons or beads in a fun and flair like manner.

Workshops 2008
Sat 8th August – Exploring colour and texture
Friday 12th Sept – Felting
Saturday 4th Oct – Learn to knit ‘continental style’
Friday 24th Oct – Beginners crochet
Saturday 8th Nov – Knitting with textures
Friday 21st Nov – Knitted and crocheted gifts
Sat 13th Dec – Intermediate crochet

For further details and to book your workshop click here

Hazy, lazy days of Summer with Jen from Fyberspates

What a lovely afternoon we had yesterday with Jeni and Andy from Fyberspates.  It was so good to finally meet up with Jeni after many failed attempts, and what a lovely person she is.  The yarns that I saw were SO gorgeous that I just had to order some!  We are going to have a sock yarn with tencel (paper) in it, that had such a beautiful sheen on it and had taken Jeni’s beautiful colours so well.   I have ordered 3 colours in that.  Then Jeni showed me her new kit for a silk/kidmohair scarf that just had to be bought!  We now have more colours in the space dyed silk “scrumptious“, and more shawl kits on their way.

The day had started off well with an email from one of our very good customers, Lena in Israel, who was thanking us for our service to her as her LYS!  Thank you for that Lena, we do try our best to get things right, but when we hear it from as far afield as Israel it makes us realise that all the hard graft is worth while and most importantly, – appreciated!

Happy knitting Everyone, Helen x