Thank you to every single person who came to visit us at our Mill Open Weekend … it seemed to be a great success and we have had lots of positive feedback.
We hope you had a fab time being shown around the mill and have more of an idea about what goes on behind the scenes here!

There was tea and cake aplenty! We were very lucky with the weather, and it was great to see lots if happy knitters, spinners and crocheters not only visiting but enjoying the sunshine outside the marquee whilst partaking of their crafts. Thank you.

Lovely guild member’s Brenda and Jean spent the weekend spinning up our fibres on their wheels and answering many a spinning query!

John and Sara did an amazing job of showing everyone around the mill and letting people in on a few secrets! I’m sure the biggest gasps come with the splicer demo – it’s like magic, not a knots in sight!

Here are some photos of John giving tours and explaining how the fibre process works…

John shows how the machine with no name works…. Clint is working on the Daughter of a Shepherd yarn, Hebridean with a hint of Zwartbles.

Going on to explain how Ralph works, he is working on blending The Little Grey Sheeps Gotland yarn. Yum!

We had lots of entrants to the goody bag raffle! We look forward to sharing the photos of the entries with you! Everything was spectacular! The winners will be drawn when John and Juliet return from there holidays, so keep your eyes peeled and we will let you know if your a winner!

A special thank you to the mill folk who made the machines look so sparkly and were willing to share some of the their tips! And also a big thank you to the extra helpers we had come along (you know who you are)! And to Andy of Wooltops who came along to share his undyed white yarns. And for Amanda Perkins for putting 2 of her beautiful crochet blankets on display for all to see.

We had such a lovely weekend sharing our Mill with you all … and are now feeling more inspired than ever, so lets get spinning!

Lots of love, The John Arbon Textiles weekend team!

John, Juliet, Frankie, Daisy, Sara, Becky, James, Lorraine, Judi, Ginette, Sandra, Pat, Alan, Rowan, Julia & Lewis. X
And thanks to Amanda, Andy, Pauline, Amy, Brenda & Jean! X

Beautifully spun Corino Top

A beautiful cardigan made from a Alpaca and Silk blend.

Hand spun Light Steel Alpaca Supreme yarn.

A lovely cardigan made from Alpaca Supreme, and with other Alpaca yarns.

A fab hand spun and hand knitted shawl by charming regular Russell.

The cutest Russet Bear, hand spun and crocheted.

Little Mitts made from Blueberry Alpaca Delight yarn.

At hat made using Viola, modelled by her super cute dog.

Katies beautiful cardigan, near enough finished made from last years special Open weekend yarns in Bluebell.

A denim style waist coat using Knit by Numbers denim shades.

Hand dyed and knitted lace shawl.

Hand spun and hand woven fabric.

Juliet is presented with a hand spun skien made from Merino / Zwartbles Bracken, formally Fibrestarter. By Brenda who also entered…

A great story of this ladies first attempt to knit and felt something. It didnt turn out quite right! The second attempt is a successful beret!  Made from hand spun Blue Spruce.

Hand spun sections of this lovely scarf using Merino Silk Siren.

This lovely lady had used her time in hospital very well knitting her Powdered egg Excelana Balero.

Incredible little felted sheep. The lady has been trying really hard to create a Herdy sheep, she now has a whole flock she jokes. I would say she is there!

Incredible hand spun and hand knitted shawl.

Hand spun The Three Supremes. The blend looks just incredible when all spun together.

A lovely sock and mitten set made from Alpaca Sock yarn in Avocado.

Lovely Knit by Numbers jumper, good colour on you!

Two lovely girls who had knit hats for their bunnies!

And finally, and hand felted shawl using Siren.

Good luck to everyone!! We look forward to drawing the winners, thank you all for putting hard work into your projects and willing to share them with us.

Love John & Team X

As part of our bustling Mill Open Weekend on the 15/16th May this year, we invited you lovely woolly folk to bring along anything you had crafted using something we made at the Mill – be it hand spun, knit, crocheted, felted, sewn, or everything all at once!

The winners were not based on our favourites (cos lets face it, that would be all of them), but were drawn from a hat (or should I say fibre can!). So, when John & Juliet returned from their holidays we set up the special prize draw fibre can and John plucked out 10 lucky winners (there were only supposed to be 8 but we loved everyone’s entries so much we thought we would pull another winner from each day, Saturday and Sunday, to make it a round 10).

The lucky winners will win a lifetime Mill Membership which comes with a needle gauge, button badges, access to a secret web page and discount opportunities on for future purchases. However, if you are a winner and already a Mill Member, you will be receiving other treats in your goody bag.

So, without further ado…
Drum roll please…
The lucky winners are…

no.64 – Christine – A lovely cardigan made with a Alpaca and silk blend yarn

no.44 – Isobel – A crocheted hat for a very cute toy

no.43 – Honor – A crocheted hat for another very cute toy

no.49 – Megan – A sunny yellow bolero

no.61 – Judy – An intricate intarsia Alpaca Supreme cardigan

no.46 – Susan – The beginnings of a herd of fantastic needle felted Herdwick sheep

no.63 – Gillian – Lots of hand spun yarn, which will become a hand knit fairisle jumper

no.48 – Christine – An array of hand spun / hand knitted yarn and shawls

no.59 – Russell – Hand spun, hand knit hap shawl

no.56 – Katie – A cardigan using last years mill special yarn

A massive congratulations to all the winners and a huge thank you to everyone for making it such a special weekend … as always, we love to see your finished wares so please feel free to share them with us!

Rightio, back to packing for WOOLFEST this Friday and Saturday (hope to see you there).

Love John, Juliet & the whole team

Earlier this year we were featured on BBC’s Sunday evening tv programme Country File. They told the tale of our lovely Stanbury Walker Walking Socks, a trusty hard-wearing cushion-soled sock, which we are proud to say is named after our local farmer, and friend, John Stanbury who rears the very sheep that produce the fibre for the socks!

In celebration we have now released a selection of limited edition colourways in our Stanbury Walkers.

You can find them here in the specials section of our website.

As these are limited edition colour combinations, we will not repeat them, however we are aiming to stock up our regular 8 shades for the autumn. The Mill is busily spinning more yarn for the socks right now so it can then be knitted up like crazy into a huge mountain of socks.

Other new things this week on the website include the Knit by Numbers range in 4ply! An incredible feat took place to get all 91 colours spun into a beautiful fully worsted 400m per 100g yarn. Go team! And it wonderfully compliments the original double knit range in the same shades.

We also have a few new Fibre Tops for hand spinning, felting, or any other fibre craft … including Corino (a cross breed of the Merino and Corridale sheep) and Perendale.

And, if you are a Mill Member, you will have first look at our Stanbury Walker Sock hand knitting yarn in natural white, and brand new Corriedale Cross Top which is in a rich natural brown colour.

Lots of new treats to share…
Enjoy!
Over and out!

We had a busy time between us at the beginning of July here at John Arbon Textiles… John and Juliet went up to Durham Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers, whilst over the same weekend Becky went to the Exeter Guild who were hosting their annual fleece fair (she is a member of the guild but this month she took lots of treats in the form of fluff!) Becky was exhibiting with lots of other talented Devon fibre crafters and John was giving a talk to the guild in Durham, explaining how he began his life in the textiles industry and eventually became the master of spinning at his Mill that he is today. A lovely weekend at both ends of the country.

Other exciting things … new to our secret Mill Members page on the website we have the natural Brown Corriedale Top, and also a new Top which is a blend of said natural Brown Corriedale with 20% Mulberry Silk which makes a super classy, silky, dreamy Top. They are currently only available to Mill Members, however will make their way over to the main website after a period of time when a new run is made up at the Mill.

OK, so we are currently busy preparing lovely woolly things for Fibre East, our next show at the end of July.

Ampthill, Bedfordshire, MK45 2NU – 30th and 31st July 2016
Saturday 10:00-17:00, Sunday 10:00-16:30

Find there website here!

We hope to see you there!

Drum roll!

After 2 years of waiting, we have managed to locate the perfect fibre to produce a beautiful Devon bred and processed Bluefaced Leicester Top. And we hope you will agree it was worth the wait!
It has been selected from breeders on Exmoor and then graded and sorted at the South Molton Wool Board depot. Our wool agent, and close associate, Andrew Bowman of Wooltops, has then sorted the wool again removing 20% of unwanted kemps and inferior fibres.
The result is an exceptional BFL at 26 micron with superb lustre and a handle, unlike any other BFL on the market at the moment.

We took this magical Bluefaced Leicester Tops for its first outing to Fibre East, and it went down a treat!

We had a ball at Fibre East as always. So, thank you to everyone who came to see us there and all those who worked so hard to make the show happen! We had a fab time!

Our next show is Yarndale at the end of September, more info nearer the time!

But, for now though, you can find our lovely Bluefaced Leicester on our website here. And here are some lovely images of the actual sheep the fibre came from. Aren’t they just adorable!?

Last week was a flurry of organising and tidying in the Mill before the arrival of two special Italians! One was human, and one, not so much.

So, without further ado, let us introduce you to out newest member of the team… GINO! He is the non-human Italian and is our first ever brand new piece of machinery (all the others being 2nd hand and re-furbished). Gino is a lovely and shiny new cone winder. He goes super fast and is very clever. And he came with the human Italian – an engineer who came to install Gino for us and teach us all the finer points on how to use him to his utmost! We have let the human go now (thanks Massimo!) and Gino is now settling in quite nicely.

So, here are some photos of him being moved into his new home.

But, never fear, Rupert Lee (our current cone winder) has been temporarily retired (but only for a sabbatical) until John gives him the spruce, polish and detailed re-furb he deserves. He will back with us, all systems go, before we know it!

Thank you so much for everyone who came to visit our stand at Fibre East! We had a wonderful time.

If you couldn’t make it here are some photos of our stand to show you all the woolly treasures we took with! And a close up look of a few of the Tops we took along too.

Harvest Hues Top in Pomegranate

Temptation

Devonia Top in Ocean Rain

Alpaca Supreme Top in The Three Supremes

Alpaca / Polwarth Top in Cappuccino

Jane Rumsam visited our stand and kindly brought along her beautiful shawl knit in our Alpaca 2-3ply yarn in kingfisher – she has made this gorgeous lacy shawl…

Thank you so much to all the organisers of Fibre East who made it such a wonderful show.

Our Knit by Numbers range is what we would consider our most show stopping display. We are, therefore, going to share a brief history of KBN before we tell you the really exciting news, (by the way, it’s small and cute.)

A small idea with big potential created by John almost 7 years ago. The Knit by Numbers range is named after one of John’s fun pastimes when he was a child – Paint By Numbers, whilst at the same time being a homage to the celebrated Pantone colour charts.

Paint By Numbers, for those too young to remember, were essentially painting kits – drawings of light blue or grey lines indicating areas to paint … each area had a number written in it and a corresponding numbered colour paint to use.  This very activity inspired the naming system of our Knit By Numbers colours … each shade being allocated its own number, rather than a name.

Meanwhile, in John’s later youth, the Pantone colour charts became one of his staple tools – a gorgeously elaborate colour matching system depicting samples of colour after colour, with tonal matching shades alongside.

And this colour selecting delight inspired the tonal colour variation that Knit By Numbers has become.

John and Juliet took their new concept to Unravel 2011 where they revealed their Knit By Numbers 100% Merino DK gradient range for the first time. Back then there were only a modest 9 base colours in 6 different gradient shades. This photo is from the outing and we are happy to say we have improved our presentation a bit since then.

We are now up to 17 different solid base colours all in 6 different gradient shades, plus white (a total of 103 different colours).  But there is always time for a new set of colours – a constant expansion to supply every colour the heart desires!

Last year we had the excitement of spinning the entire range in a 4ply / Fingering weight in all the same shades – which now sits proudly alongside the DK range (both available in 100g hanks).  This opened up so many more possibilities taking it from a stash jumper or cardigan staple to the potentials of light weight shawls and garments!

And now for the grand unveiling…

Adding a new dimension to our Knit by Numbers range, we now have the long awaited KBN mini in 4ply weight!  These super cute little bundles of joy are sold in 25g / 100m mini skeins, with the idea you can create your own gradient sets, fades and Fairisles!  We have photos some of our favourite combinations to give you an idea how the colours can work together, where accents are great and how understated neutrals can be.

We have taken these out to a couple of shows so far this year (they travel in a trusty rustic apple chest)

But now you can find them on our website here.  Each skein is £4.25 or a selection of any 6 for £24.  There are currently 103 colours to choose from.

Here are some of out most favourite patterns that use gradients to get you inspired… We cant wait to see your colour combo’s, be they crazy medleys or modest gradients.

Aranami Shawl

© olgajazzy

Winterlight

© AtelierMeg

Spearmint Tea

© Kateryna Golovanova

Changing Light

by Jennifer Weissman

Changing Light
by Jennifer Weissman

Fragmentation

© Amy Gwatkin

Nakarra Wrap

© Ambah

 

As the Autumnal weather takes hold and start preparing our Christmas knits and socks (dare we say it!?). This means it is also the time of year where we begin to send out our new catalogue.
We thoughtfully approach every yearly catalogue to best show you our sock styles, yarn ranges and tops blends. We won’t ruin the new catalogue by sharing to much but here are some behind the scenes photos (and a couple of tasters) to give you a glimpse of this year’s feel.

The new catalogues should be landing on your door steps within the next couple of weeks. If you are already registered with us you should receive one automatically. If you are not and would like one, you can request one here.

This year, however, we have done things slightly differently… this year there are 2 catalogues – one dedicated only to socks, and the other featuring all our yarns and tops!  Don’t worry, the come together as a pair, so you will get both.

Here are some behind the scenes shots of our photo shoot!

Juliet expertly placing yarn, playing with colour combos and tweaking, and the photo turns out like this…

Thats our Knit by Numbers Minis!

Frankie skilfully placing toes and dress here…

To get the back cover shot…

We look forward to sharing with you our latest news and fluffy adventures.  

Ray going to dizzy heights to get the perfect shot.

Enter Juliet doing more tweaking…

Enter John making the Tops sing…

Thanks to the whole team for a fun couple of days shooting photos, modelling socks, making the perfect skein, twiddling the perfect yarn poo, and standing very still.  Especially Juliet for her vision,  Ray for taking incredible photos,  Adrian for graphic designing,  Frankie for modelling socks and Tash for being sock and yarn assistant extraordinaire!  And not forgetting, everyone at the mill for all they make (without them we would have had nothing to photograph!).

We hope you love our new catalogues as much as we do!