Take a tour of our swanky new place!
Video transcript:
Hi guys,
we figured we'd better show you the new shop since it's been closed more than it's been open so far. We thought you might want a little tour.
You'll come down this road into a massive carpark. There's lots and lots of parking and you can park right outside the shop if you need to.
There's a ramp and double doors, so it's totally accessible. If you have a wheelchair or pushchair you'll be fine.
Coming in on the right is the till area, and then the needles and the crochet hooks. We have a few different ranges of crochet hooks, project bags, tape measures and all the accessories you'd expect, and then a few different ranges of knitting needles too. Wooden ones, metal ones, interchangeable ones, small circulars, whatever you need we've probably got it!
Over here we have the bathroom, with a fully accessible toilet with everything you need and a baby changing area as well.
On the back wall here is the hand-dyed wall. We've currently got yarn from 13 different hand-dyers, soon to be 14 so watch out for that. Firstly we've got RiverKnits here, then Needle and Fred, a whoooole bunch of Truly Hooked, we've stocked Verity's yarn since we first opened our original shop so it's nice to be able to have more now we have more space. Moving on we have HeyJay Handdyed yarn, just look at that pink!
These yarns here are a little bit special, you can only get them from us. What we did is every time we get a new hand-dyer we ask them to dye an exclusive based on our logo colours and it's really interesting to see the range of yarn you can get from a base of two colours. It really shows the different dyers styles. We all love all of these and we've knitted from several already.
Moving on we have KnitMeSane here, then Fruitful Fusion, Cookston Crafts, West Green Loft Yarns, Jo.Knit.Sew, Made By Penguins, Claire Nettleship yarns and then in the corner a whole bunch of colour from Dye Candy.
Over here we've got Signature 4ply from West Yorkshire Spinners, we stock pretty much every shade they sell. This is great if you're a sock knitter but people also knit shawls and things with it as well. There's lots of variation and it's a really durable yarn. We have a bit more 4ply over here, this one here is Merino and then there's a cotton blend.
Moving on to the DK sections, we have a range of mannequins up there showing off some things that we've made and over here we have the DK yarns. We've got lots of different types of yarns here, from yak to camel, to wool, some merino, some alpaca, and then over here we have Stylecraft Special DK, ALL of the shades, there's 97 of those and we keep them in stock all of the time (as much as we can). It's 100% acrylic, it's a really good versatile yarn, really good for crochet blankets as well.
Then we've got the new Naturals Bamboo + Cotton from Stylecraft, there's 43 shades of that and it's really soft and really nice. It's going really well so far.
Up here we have Bo Peep from West Yorkshire Spinners which is Falkland Wool and then down there we have some Highland Heathers from Stylecraft, Batik from Stylecraft as well and then up into the new Stylecraft You + Me and then onto some arans over here. This is Lily Sugar'n Cream which is cotton.
Turning round you've got Stylecraft Amor up there, Zebrino which we all love. The thing about this one is the grey is constant throughout so you can mix and match any of these colours that you want. If you take a look on our social pages you can see a sweater that I knitted with all of the shades together and it looks really cool. Caron Simply Soft there which is a 100% acrylic and really really good value. Then we've got some New Zealand from Adriafil, we have quite a few shades of that. It's got really nice stitch definition and it's a wool acrylic blend.
Down there at the bottom we've got Stylecraft Special Aran, again we stock all the shades of that, there are 50 of those now.
Up here in this corner this yarn was new to us during the last lockdown. This is Malabrigo Rios, its 100% superwash merino and it's really bouncy. Look at those colours. Can't wait to knit a jumper with those!
Then we move onto the chunky and superchunky zones. So again we have a mix of blends here, we've got some llama, some wool, some alpaca, we've got various combinations of fibres. Some acrylic, this Retreat from West Yorkshire Spinners which is kinda roving, that's really nice. And then some super chunky yarns in there, including this new to us Peru.
Over here is the pattern area. So we tried to make this as comfortable as possible, there's a few armchairs and then there's a higher backed, more adjustable chair back there as well. So you can sit down and really take your time and make sure that you're choosing the right patterns for you. On this side here is the knitting patterns. We've got lots and lots of binders with all the different patterns in from various different manufacturers and then some books and leaflet patterns as well down there.
On this side is the crochet side, these tend to be more books as there are fewer patterns made by British yarn manufacturers. We have a few patterns there but lots and lots of books.
Again, we've got a heigh-adjustable, back-adjustable chair here, so if you've got mobility issues or you struggle to get in and out of low chairs that's for you.
There's a range of buttons in the corner there, a whoooole bunch of DMC embroidery threads here, we've got about 600 colours of individual threads, and then some kits and accessories in the corner over there as well.
Over here we have some accessories, so we've got KnitMeSane project planners which are really really nice, we all use these personally, they look really good and they've got room for lots and lots of information in them, there's loads of pages and you can keep a really good track of all your projects in there.
Down here we have Knitting: The Card Game. It's a board game for knitting, it's brilliant. It's really good fun. You don't have to be a knitter but it helps and you get bonus points if you're knitting patterns that you get cards for in the game as well.
Down there we have some crochet kits.
Then over here we've got our table. We all fell in love with this table as soon as we saw it. We could picture knit and natters, big classes and things like that on there. Obviously that's not happening at the moment so it's mostly where we sit and do website stuff and things like that but once we're able to we'll definitely be having classes and we'll definitely be having knit and natters and we'll get some people in this place, it's gonna be amazing.
I've got one last thing to show you, the cake stand. We've stocked the original Caron Cakes from the very first opening of our first shop and we all really like them. We've pretty much got every type of Caron Cake that you can get in the UK now. So, original Caron Cakes there, Big Cakes down here which are great for blankets. Sprinkle Cakes which are super chunky and they've got this kinda tweedy effect. Chunky Cakes, which despite the name are actually super chunky. This jumper here is made from Chunky Cakes. Then we've got Latte Cakes, which look like mohair but are actually 100% acrylic so if you like the look of mohair but you can't deal with it or you don't like the tickliness that might be an option for you. Down here we have Tea Cakes, which tend to be darker or more neatral shades. Caron Swirl Cakes, which are the new marbley effect ones. We've also got Batik Swirl cakes from Stylecraft. This is double knit and each yarn cake has five different colours in it. Some which kinda go better go together and then some which are more contrast like this rainbow one here. We've got Caron Skinny Cakes as well which is their DK version of cakes and some Bernat Pops as well which is 100% acrylic. So the original Caron Cakes have wool in them but these ones don't.
Over here we've also got Whirls and Whirlettes. These are 4ply cotton, they're really really good for crochet. Lots of people make blankets with them, also things like shawls and stuff like that but if you like bright colours then this is for you, look at that! It's amazing. Rosie is borderline obsessed with this one but again the grey and the black are interchangeable so you could mix these together if you wanted to. The Whirlettes down here as well which are the solid smaller cakes. They're all paired with the Whirls as well so if you want a solid contrast yarn then you can get that.
Up here we've got these Soft Fun Colour Packs. They're 20g balls, you get 12 in each pack, so if you're not particularly good with putting colours together this is a good option for you. If you're making smaller projects and don't want to end up with loads of leftovers or have to buy 100g balls to make something when you only need 10 or 20g these are a really good option. We've got a few different ones of those as well depending on what your colour pallette is.
What we've tried to do is make sure there's lots of space like I said before so you can get around here with a wheelchair. If you want to see a video of Rosie doing just that you can see it on our Facebook page but if I come and stand over here you can see just how much room there is to get around. We don't have to worry as much about social distancing there's plenty of space but also like I say if you're in a wheelchair or have pushchairs and things like that there's plenty of room and you want feel squashed or have to move anything. It's all really easy to move about.
That's us, if you can come and see us please do, we'd really appreciate it. If you need to have the shop to yourself let us know and we'll sort that out as well but hopefully we'll see lots of you soon.
Thank you, bye bye.