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Another big life-change has paid off – and we are loving the clean air, wholesome food, online biz and new wonderful friendships in this Scottish corner.

So now why the row??

Well, mainly because I fell head over heals and completely in love with it when we sailed it. It might have been the best 22 days of my life.

And I always felt it went too fast.

And in all honesty, despite the two and a half near-death experiences out there (stories for another day), it felt too easy. Too comfortable.

It wasn’t the growth moment that I imagined it to be.

If you follow us over on Instagram, then the cat was probably out of the bag and screeching at the top of its lungs long before you read this blog post – we’ve moved! 

That’s right; we’ve uprooted from our leafy Thames-side home in Richmond, London and relocated ourselves (plus our team and  lots of lovely yarns) to the stunning coastline of East Neuk, Fife.

Here are some more reasons to board the mohair train:

• It's smooth non-scaley surface means that it can't be felted like wool...

• ...but's elastic like wool, so easy to work with!

• Dyers love it because it can deliver super vibrant, glowing colours.

...and think about how the cheap, big online web-sellers might affect the future of your Local Yarn Shops. You know the type of websellers I’m talking about – continuous SALES, Discounts and Offers up the yin-yan. Massive inventory, super low margins, don’t really care where it all comes from...

I would say that 90% of the customers that come into the shop will say something like this within the first 2 minutes “Oh, I really don’t need any more yarn” or “I already have so many projects on the go” or “I really shouldn’t buy yarn”.

Here’s the thing. Good yarn isn’t cheap. And nobody knits anymore to save money on clothes. But that’s the beauty of it. We don’t knit because we have to. We knit because we want to. And the benefits of knitting are priceless.

...it was time to look at what to stock.  This part was tricky. I went from panicking about not having enough choices to fill a shop (more about that later) to having waaaaaaayyy too much that I wanted and loved, but not enough space nor $$ for all of it.

But my guiding principles never changed, and never will:

• Do I love it? Would I buy it, cherish it and knit with it myself?
• Are they assholes?

You’re going to run a wha??

Rewind a few months… We moved back to the UK when Hurricane Irma decided to shred a large portion of the Windward Island in the Caribbean back in September 2018.  We left England’s sunny shores in search of adventure in 2004, and had been living on beautiful Virgin Gorda, a teeny-tiny island in the British Virgin Islands for the previous 5 years. We had had every intention of returning to VG after dropping Indi off to school in London in September and the empty-nesting-consolation-trip to Hawaii and Fiji in October. 

Well, Irma had other plans.