Unwind with Blacker Yarns

Sue Blacker will be joining Unwind as a vendor so we asked her to answer a few questions about Blacker Yarns and share some of her crafting experiences with us...

image (c) Blacker Yarns

Please introduce yourself and your business in 2-3 sentences.

Blacker Yarns are 100% pure, British, natural yarns, all spun at our specialist traditional wool mill in Cornwall.  I have run the business for the last nine years though I inherited a great deal of our knowledge when I took over in 2005.  We launched Blacker Yarns in 2008 and now have the largest range of individual British Breed yarns available, together with our luxury Falklands merino Blacker Swan, pure British Blue-faced Leicester Classic blend and our last Elegance range.

image (c) Blacker Yarns

What treats can we look forward to seeing at your stand during Unwind?

We will be featuring our new 20% alpaca/80% Falklands Corriedale soft stylish woollen yarns which use the alpaca colours to create a range of five natural shades in 4-ply and DK.  We will also have tasters of our Westcountry Tweed and possibly our limited edition Jazz (provided the dye vats finish in time!).

image (c) Blacker Yarns

What do you enjoy most about working in the knitting industry?

The people – our customers are just so inspiring!  Also I don’t need to worry about a yarn stash as it’s actually my job to try out all our new yarns …

What are your favourite fibres or fibre blends?

I am always being asked this and it’s a really difficult question as our yarns are designed carefully with end projects and results in mind, so it really depends on what I want to make … but I have a soft spot for my own sheep which produce the lovely Gotland yarns, and it’s very hard to resist Blacker Swan or our rare Boreray blend Lace-weight.

Tell us about your involvement with Campaign for Wool

We support the Campaign for Wool and have been accredited to it virtually since the beginning. They were very supportive of the Woolsack Olympic wool cushion project in which we were involved and we also were able to display some of our yarns at the Wool House exhibition at Somerset House last year. We are sure it is helping to promote wool worldwide.

What are you looking forward to the most about Unwind?

Again, it’s the people and their ideas as we really love to meet and listen to! Also the venue is great and the classes are really impressive!

A big thank you to Sue for taking the time to share some insight into her woolly world. You can find Sue on Ravelry or see Sue’s website by visiting www.blackeryarns.co.uk . To keep up to date with all of the latest Blacker news, keep an eye on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and the blog