Our new website - we're getting there!

Building a new website is a lengthy and quite tedious process, there seems to be endless decisions on the general look of the site, whether it is eye catching and most importantly efficient and easy to use. Then there are the endless array of photos needed to support the stock for sale. Still it is good news because we are getting there, slowly but surely. I just love our new 'look' and design - I am sure you will be impressed when you see it too.

For the moment we have a holding page showing our new Cornish Wools logo,contact details and there is a link to the blog where you will be able to find out what is happening at Cornish Wools.

Right now, in the Cornish Wools gallery shop our selection of knitting wools is continuing to grow. We currently stock, Sirdar Crofter DK, Sirdar Eco DK, Sirdar Escape DK, Lang Merino DK, Lang Superfine Alpaca, Lang Mille Colori. And then there is the gorgeously soft Sublime Cashmere merino silk aran which is currently featured in this week's 'Peoples Friend' where the latest knitting pattern is a man's jumper.

Expected into the shop on Tuesday next week will be our very first order of Bergere de France, we have splurged out rather on a vast selection of beautiful shades in the following yarns,Angel, Magic, Ideal, Ciboulette, Caline, Cotton Fifty and Jaspee. We have also ordered a selection of Magazines and knitting patterns and Baby knitting Kits to support all of these yarns. So on the Bergere de France front there will be lots to choose from later on next week.

Ethnic yarns are very much a favourite with our customers, we are currently stocking Sari Silk yarn, Banana fibre yarn, Sari Silk ribbon yarn all in lots of exciting colour ranges.

Our range of needles and knitting accessories continues to expand and shortly we will be stocking Knit Pro needles and lots of other knitting goodies.

So watch this space - our website will be up and running soon and if you can make a visit to our Cornish Wools Knitting Gallery in Perranuthnoe then it will be well worth making the trip. Bring your boots and the dog and while you are in this extremely beautiful corner of Cornwall you can not only treat yourself to some gorgeous yarn but you can take a walk along the coastal path with all its stunning views of St Michael's Mount and to the East Cudden Point and The Lizard.

So do come and find us in Perranuthnoe or give us a call if you have any yarn queries or if you would like to order yarn, we will be very pleased to hear from you.

So until next time - 'Happy knitting'

New Website for Cornish Wools

Fantastic news! - at long last we have been able to give the go ahead for our new website to be built. It will have an online shop and will hopefully be operational within the next 6 weeks. Everyone then will have the opportunity to buy our own locally produced Cornish Yarns, throws and scarves. We will also be offering a selection of other branded yarns, patterns and accessories.

If you have read my earlier blogs you will know that last year we sent our raw fleece off to the Natural Fibre Company to be processed and this year we have been working with the Halifax Spinning Mill near Goole. Our next batch of fleece will either go to The Cold Harbour Mill in Devon or to Farrlacey Mill in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, so that we can assess the quality of spinning from each Mill. Ideally I would like to keep the processing in Cornwall but we do need to try each of the Mills for quality and service.

So - to date we now have our Merino Sock Yarn ready for sale - it has 10% nylon added to it for strength. It is lovely and soft and a joy to knit with. It will shortly be in the Gallery Yarn Corner at Village Crafts, Perranuthnoe and when the website is up and running you will be able to buy it there too.

420kg bagged and ready for the Mill

It has been a very busy few days but now everything is ready for collection. Bev, Kev and I have been sorting, bagging and weighing loads and loads of raw sheep fleece in readiness for collection by the woollen mill.

We have sorted through all kinds of different fleece, Manx Loughton, Blue Faced Leicester, Portland, Lleyn and Jacob to name a few and now we have a huge pile of bags all tied up, weighed and marked 'Cornish Wools'. It is not an easy job, its heavy and very smelly and oily too (lots of lanolin in some of the fleece) but it is very satisfying to have finished all the preparation.

All we need to do now is wait - until it is all processed into knitting yarn. So watch this space for more new shortly.

Off to the Mill with a load of Merino fleece!!

One week ago after a long convoluted and exhausting journey 35 Merino fleeces were delivered to the Mill for processing. The mill is situated on an old airfield near Goole in East Yorkshire where the Halifax bomber planes were kept during the last war. The reason for making such a long journey was twofold, one reason was that as I am fairly new as a manufacturer of knitting yarns I am trying different mills to assess the finishing quality of the yarns.

The last batch of yarn processed was taken to the Natural Fibre Company in Launceston, much nearer to home and the journey to deliver the fleece to the mill was certainly a a lot easier. Secondly, as yet I am unable to find any Cornish farmers with Merino sheep so I it was necessary for me to visit Yvonne who farms and keeps a Merino flock near Lydney in Gloucestershire and pick up the fleeces I had purchased from her on my way up north. To make the whole thing easier I broke the journey and spent a few days with my family in Bolsover near Chesterfield. So certainly not the most straightforward of journeys but most definately a very interesting and enjoyable one.

Earlier today I called Paul one of the mill owners to find out how things were progressing and I am extremely pleased to report that now all the fleece has been carded (see photo above) to remove debris etc and the fibres are all laying the same way in readiness for spinning. However firstly before any spinning takes place it all needs to be washed, spun and then dried for 2 days in the drying room at the Mill. Then its all systems go towards the finished product. It is just so good and extremely pleasing to see the big machines working again after being sold off for scrap when the old yorkshire mills closed down. Recycling at its best!!

As of right now the mill is waiting for my next batch of sheep fleece which after, sorting, scouring and carding will eventually be spun and turned into yarn. The decision is however, just what kind of yarn are we going to make with the fleece. It's really hard to decide how much of each aran, double knit and 4 ply to produce and then again what do we add to the merino fleece to give strength when processing it into sock yarn. Do I go with nylon or silk or for that fact any of the other alternative 'green' options such as bamboo or soya, its quite a puzzle.

However, before the fleece can be shipped off to the mill there is more sorting still to do and so currently some 250kg is waiting for me to find a nice dry couple of days to get out there to finish the sorting - mainly little bits of vegetation, straw and grotty daggy bits from around the bottom area!! Not a very nice job I must say but you do get used to it and if the weather's nice and the sun comes out then it can be quite a good job to be doing. In fact to be able to just sink my hands deep into the beautiful fleece is really very therapeutic - I suppose it is just that I am as close to nature as I can be at that moment and of course the lanolin is very good for my hands!



Next week I am off to collect the last batch of alpaca fleece for this year. First and better quality second cuts are what I am looking for to add to the batch of alpaca fleece which went off to the mill earlier in June. The alpacas were sheared in May 2009 and all live within a five mile radius of Perranuthnoe, Cornish Wools and Village Crafts.

Cornwall in the rain

Rare breed Manx Loughton and Leicester Longwool flock raised on the Lizard Peninsula near Manacan by Sue and Geoff Howarth.

Today as forecast it is raining! and it seems that the forecast for the South West of Cornwall and in particular the Mounts Bay area was correct, it often is completely wrong but not today. Here we have a micro climate which seems to stem from the fact that there are only some twenty plus miles across the peninsula from the English Channel and the Gulf Stream on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other side. It has been known that on hot windy days in the Summer we can get a red desert dust all the way from the Sahara Desert and then the next day we can get the coldest of winds from over the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. Sometimes it is full sunshine in Penzance with mist and rain in St Ives, quite bizare in fact. An old Cornish saying is that it can be 'a coat colder in Camborne' - often very true.

My dogs Sharna and Layla have not yet had their long morning walk across the cliffs and they are getting fed up with waiting, I can see that there will be nothing for it but to put on full waterproofs and get going, it seems there will be no rest until we do.



It is too wet today for any work to be done on the fleece sorting which is still going on - we have to fit this job in and around running our other business 'Village Crafts of Perranuthnoe' http://www.perrancrafts.co.uk a craft shop which my partner Kevin and I have run for the last five years. There are not many people around today, although it is the first weekend of the Summer season, yesterday was the last day of school this year for many children.



Earlier this week Kevin managed to find a break in the weather to get into the tractor shed to sort fleece, the fleece is now piled high awaiting sorting and it is quite a daunting and strenous task. He did manage to decant five huge wool holding bags (holding around 25 sheeps fleece in each) in to smaller more managable bags and away from vermin, moths and the weather. This is the start of the process, then the next job is where I am involved, as chief fleece sorter, to check each fleece for quality and to remove unwanted fleece, vegetation and the grotty, claggy bits. At this stage the fleece is full of lanolin and it makes for a very greasy job, but its very good for the hands, excellent hand softener.







Cornish Wools also produces Alpaca yarns and right at the moment we are putting together the next shipment of fleece to go off to the Mill. Here are Bev's boys, I took this photo of them in their field near Helston when they had recently been sheared and were looking rather trim. Their fleece is now waiting to go off to the Alpaca Mill where it will be processed into wollen yarn. 100% natural Alpaca knitting wool, a wonderful deep tan colour, undyed and so beautifully soft. Later this year the finished yarn will be available to purchase from our Cornish Wools e-commerce website (more news on this later).





More anon

This is what it is all about!

Today is looking good! at the Woolshed in Perranuthnoe - and for the moment seems to be stretching out before me, a never ending allotment of time for me to choose how to fill it but if it goes the way of all my days it will suddenly be jam packed from beginning to end with a miriad of interesting and must do issues.


The weather is against us at the moment which is a shame because there is such a lot to do, lovely sunshine mixed with very heavy showers. Most of the fleece bought from the 2009 wool clip has been delivered coming from farms and small holdings within a 25 mile radius of Perranuthnoe and much of what we have bought has come from The Lizard and Roseland peninsula in particular. Lovely Cornish Wool!


Now comes the back breaking job of sorting out the grotty and poor quality fleece from that which will be sent off to the mill for processing. So much sheep and alpaca fleece to be sorted and every time we try to get started it decides to throw it down with rain. Due to the lack of inside space (currently all crammed and stuffed with fleece) we need and must work outside, which is wonderful when the sun shines and we can feel the sun's rays on our backs but impossible when it is raining.


It looks like it is going to be another difficult day, weather wise, I can hear spots of rain now on the Conservatory roof whilst I am writing this diary and contemplating the day ahead.


Yesterday, I spent some time taking photos for the diary and the Cornish Wools website (yet to be built but on the current working agenda), the images were of 50g balls of Lleyn Shearling knittng wool in double knit and 4 ply thicknesses which I produced from the 2008 clip and which are on sale at £3.75 each in our craft and gift shop, Perrauthnoe Village Crafts. The fleece for this knitting wool came from a farm belonging to some friends of mine at Ruan High Lanes on the Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall and after 5 months processing time and a steep learning curve for me (a total experiment on my part) hey presto we had knitting wool and we had throws and scarves which I will tell you about another time. The mill we used to process the fleece and to produce the knitting wool is based in Launceston, Cornwall so the whole process was kept within the County of Cornwall. A totally Cornish product!


I could waffle on all day but neither you nor I have the time - must get on now with the day, first because they are sitting here just patiently waiting I will take Sharna and Layla, my two collie cross labrador dogs for their morning walk along the cliffs towards Marazion and St Michael's Mount. Then the day will begin for real -