British Wool for Knitting and Crochet: Five Yarns I Love

When I was young, the only yarn craft I ever worked on was wrapping yarn around plastic clothes hangers to help protect delicates like my grandmother’s church dresses. My dad’s mother crocheted a lot. We had a granny square afghan across the back of our couch, but I never saw her work on it. It simply appeared one day.

I never had much of a relationship with her, but I know she had the craft bug out of necessity. When we think of people as being “dirt poor,” we usually think of it as a colloquial term for extreme poverty. But for my father and his family, the house they lived in in Arlington, North Carolina, had a compacted red clay dirt floor. In their case, the description was literal.

For my dad’s mom, crafting meant using everything she could find to make things the family needed. These weren’t decorations. They were tools for survival.

The yarn she used was cheap acrylic and tended to be quite hard to the touch. The crochet stitches were tight and never felt comfortable. The pattern had natural spaces between the stitches, so it wasn’t the best cover for keeping warm. But it did look nice on the back of the sofa. We kept it until our house burned down in 1987. After that, we moved on to the machine-made throws that were ubiquitous at the time.

My own foray into yarn crafts came simply out of curiosity. I love a nice, soft sweater. When I received my first Irish-made sweater, I was hooked. I taught myself how to knit and crochet. I find crochet much easier, but I love the look and smoothness of a classic knit and the beautiful artistry of cable knitting.

I admit that I am a yarn snob. When I choose yarn, I want something unique and of craftsman quality. While we have carried hand-dyed yarn from several different yarn studios since the store opened, I wanted to include yarn from Ireland and the U.K. in our selection.

I found the perfect yarns to add to our collection.

Coast

Coast was one of the yarns that immediately caught my attention because it reminded me of what first attracted me to traditional knitwear.

It is a traditional Aran yarn made from 100% British wool. The wool is worsted spun, hank dyed and treated with an organic softener after dyeing. You still get the character and structure of British wool, but with a much nicer feel in the hand than the coarse wool yarn some of us remember.

Each 200-gram hank contains approximately 336 yards. That makes Coast a substantial yarn, and it is one I can easily picture in a classic sweater. It has the structure and stitch definition for cables and other textured patterns where the yarn needs to show off the work rather than hide it.

We currently carry Coast in Conch, Kite, Oyster, Harbour, Tide and Cliff. I particularly like the way these colors work together. They have a natural, somewhat subdued quality that suits the yarn itself.

Pip Colourwork

Pip Colourwork is a very different yarn, and that is exactly why I wanted it.

These little 25-gram balls contain approximately 127 yards of 100% British wool. Pip is a 4-ply yarn made in the U.K. and is particularly well suited for Fair Isle and other stranded colorwork.

One of the things I like most about Pip is that the colors aren't perfectly flat. There is depth and variation within them, which becomes even more apparent when several shades are worked together.

The smaller balls also make sense for colorwork. If you need several colors for a project, you don't necessarily want to buy a large skein of every one of them.

We currently carry Aire, Parkin, Bluebell, Pickering, Chevin and Bantam. I chose shades that could be mixed and matched rather than a collection that dictated exactly how they should be used.

Eden DK

Eden DK appealed to the yarn snob in me for an entirely different reason.

It is made from 70% certified organic British wool and 30% Peruvian alpaca. The British wool is grown in the U.K., hand graded and then scoured, spun and dyed there. The wool comes from non-mulesed sheep, while the alpaca comes from Peru.

The addition of alpaca changes the personality of the yarn. You still have the substance of British wool, but the alpaca contributes softness and a different feel in the hand. Each 100-gram hank contains approximately 223 yards, with a suggested gauge of 23 stitches per four inches.

The colors are also beautiful without being overly polished. Bedrock is a medium gray with tonal variation. Prairie is a deep, dark green. Dune is a pale beige and much more consistent in color. Magma is a deep red with purple and magenta tonal variation. Grove falls somewhere between gray, brown and taupe, while Snowcap is a creamy off-white.

There is something very natural about this entire palette. These aren't colors that have to shout to be interesting.

Woodnote DK

Woodnote DK may be the yarn that best demonstrates why I wanted to bring more British wool into the store.

Instead of simply saying "100% wool" on the label and leaving it at that, Woodnote tells you what wool you are actually buying. It is a blend of 34% Bluefaced Leicester, 33% Masham and 33% Merino, all British wool from non-mulesed sheep.

That matters because different sheep produce different wool. Combining those fibres allows the finished yarn to take on characteristics from each breed rather than trying to make every wool yarn feel exactly the same.

Woodnote comes in 100-gram hanks with approximately 223 yards and a suggested gauge of 24 stitches per four inches.

We carry four colors. Honeybee is a mustard shade with golden and brown tones. Hare is a warm off-white with natural-looking brown tones running through it. Willow is a muted mint with brown striations, and Puddle is a soft Carolina blue with subtle variations running through the yarn.

Woodnote looks natural because it is allowed to look natural. That is part of its appeal.

Mowool

Mowool is something else entirely.

It is made from 100% brushed British wool. The longer fibres used in this worsted-spun yarn allow it to develop a soft, fuzzy appearance similar to mohair. It has wonderful bulk and loft without the weight you might expect when you first look at it.

Each 50-gram ball contains approximately 257 yards, which gives you some idea of just how light and airy this yarn actually is.

This is also a good example of why I don't think the words "100% wool" tell us nearly enough. Coast, Pip, Woodnote and Mowool can all be made from British wool and still behave very differently. The sheep, the fibre, the spinning process and the finishing all matter.

We currently carry Mowool in Thatch, a warm, natural shade that suits the character of the yarn beautifully.

Why These Yarns?

I didn't bring these yarns into Pisgah Needleworks simply because they were imported or because I wanted to put British wool on the shelf. They had to earn the space.

We already carry beautiful hand-dyed yarns, and I didn't want another collection that simply duplicated what we already offered. I wanted yarns that gave our customers something genuinely different.

That might be the breed-specific blend of Woodnote, the British wool and Peruvian alpaca combination in Eden, the light brushed texture of Mowool, the traditional structure of Coast or the small, practical balls of Pip for someone who wants to lose an afternoon playing with color.

More than anything, I like that these yarns haven't had all of their individual character engineered out of them. They don't all feel alike, look alike or serve the same purpose. You can pick them up, compare them and begin imagining very different projects.

And for someone who freely admits to being a yarn snob, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Connecting Traditions

My dad’s mom passed away about twenty-five years ago. I regret not having a better relationship with her. I think she could have taught me a lot about working with yarn.

These new additions excite me because my family on both sides came from England, Ireland, and Wales. When I knit or crochet, I feel a connection to my family’s heritage as farmers, merchants, and artisans. The older I get, the more aware I become of how quickly time moves through our lives.

Sitting down with a smooth set of birch knitting needles and a ball of fine British wool connects me to hundreds of years of craftsmanship and the pride that came from creating remarkable things from what the land and farms provided. There is something meaningful about taking a simple natural fibre and using my own hands to turn it into something useful and beautiful.

It connects me to the past, but it also points me toward the future and my hope of passing down my love of crafting to my own children.

Visit our Yarn Collection at https://pisgahneedleworks.com/collections/yarn