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Introducing Mama Qucha

Recently, I took the opportunity to try out some Peruvian Highland wool yarns from Chester Wool. And I’m in love.

Peruvian Highland Wool is a non-Superwash wool sourced from small farms in the mountains local to the mill in Peru where the yarn is spun. The sheep are merino/Corriedale crossbreeds and the fibre has a 27 micron count. As it’s not as fine and soft as merino, the fleeces would otherwise just go to waste – everyone wants the superfine merino. However, Andy and Jeni at Chester Wool have bought up the clip and given the local farmers a source of income they wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Whilst it may not be as soft as merino, the yarn is actually perfect for socks, and indeed for any garment or accessory that needs a bit of extra wear. It’s comparable to any other Corriedale yarn I’ve come across: smooth spun, with a beautifully crisp and squishy handle, and is wearable next to skin for me. The sock yarn (4-ply/fingering weight) isn’t high-twist, but has a sturdy twist suitable for socks – I’ve knit a pair up at a 8 sts per inch gauge, and they’re very durable and cosy.

The yarn is *incredibly* bouncy and springy, with a lot of body – masses of squish – and the staple length (from what I can see from pulling fibres out) is fairly long, which means less pilling. Also, the Corriedale side, with its lustre longwool heritage, yields wonderfully luminous, soft colours with my acid dyes. The stitch definition is superb, making for lusciously smooth stocking stitch and spectacular cable definition.

In addition to supporting the incomes of the Peruvian farmers, we’re also donating 10% of all profits from this yarn base to a selection of ocean-based environmental charities, with a spread of education, science, conservation and activist organisations. As many of you know, marine conservation and protection is close to my heart, with a proportion of Triskelion Yarn’s profits every month going to the Sea Shepherd charity. Given these links, we chose the name of the Mayan goddess and protector of the oceans and marine life to be the name of the new base: Mama Qucha.

I’m also currently testing out the sport, DK and worsted weight versions of this wonderful fibre, but the sock/4-ply was just too good not to do at least a small initial release of it for Triskelion customers to try out. The inital release is of ten oceanic colourways, some reworked old favourites, some new colour additions. I hope you’ll love them as much as I do!

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Triskelion Rewards

We’ve reinstated a major, much-missed feature to the website as of today: Triskelion Reward Points.  It’s a points-based system, like Airmiles and other store/credit card type rewards, that gives you a discount on any future Triskelion products bought through the website (and hopefully in-person at shows, in time). We did have a system running in 2013-2014, but due to circumstances beyond our control, the whole thing went belly up and took everyone’s outstanding points with it. Rest assured, that won’t be happening this time, as the same people who power our website have provided the framework for the new Rewards system.

Initially, it will operate pretty much as a 5% discount, i.e. for every twenty pounds you spend, you’ll get one pound off of your next order. £1 spent on the website earns 10 Rewards points, and you get a £1 discount for every 200 points. As a caveat, there may be times when the baseline £1 = 10 earned points rule may vary, so selected product lines *may* offer a lower rate, whilst others may operate at a higher rate.

Triskelion Reward points accumuate and can be cashed in at any time – when you go to the checkout to pay, it’ll give you the option of using your earned Rewards points against up to one third of the total order value. The product pages and the cart all show how many reward points you’ll get, and you can check how many reward points you’ve earned by going to the Reward Points tab on the My Account page once you’ve logged in. Triskelion Reward points are redeemable against anything in the shop except for shipping.

In a nutshell:

  • You get around 10 Triskelion Reward points for every pound spent (usually)
  • 200 Triskelion Reward points equates to £1 discount (usually)
  • Points can be used to discount up to 33% of an order’s value

Anyone registering with Triskelion as an online customer from now on will also get 600 points thrown in for free (i.e. £3 off your first purchase from us if you want to cash your points in straight away) and, if you review any products you buy from us, you’ll get 1000 points for your first review as a thank-you. If you want to register with us as an online customer and haven’t, you can register here.

At the moment, this only applies to online customers buying through the Triskelion website. We want to be able to offer Rewards to customers buying at shows, so we’re currently assessing the feasibility of this. We’re hoping to have something in place by the time we get to the Fibre East show in July.

And now for the really good news…

If you’re an online customer of Triskelion Yarn, all of the orders you’ve placed with us since we started our online shop are now retrospectively eligible for Rewards, and we’ve assigned a large proportion of those points to your balance. If you go to your Rewards page, you’ll find a tasty stash of points ready for you to splash out on your next order (or more!) with us. This would pretty much recover any losses during the Great Points Catastrophe of 2014, and ignore any points you redeemed. So, a bargain!

The points scheme is just one part of a more comprehensive Triskelion customer loyalty program coming in the near future. The full Triskelion Rewards program will require being a newsletter subscriber, so please do make sure you’re registered and have opted in. To be clear, the basic points scheme doesn’t require you to be a newsletter subscriber; only the full Triskelion Rewards program will have that requirement.

If you have any questions about the scheme, please do get in touch with us via email or any of our social media channels.

Happy shopping!

Caerthan

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Suri Sport at Alpacas of Wales

Alpacas of Wales Suri & Baby Alpaca sport weight yarn. hand dyed by Triskelion Yarn

Now this is something really special! Take a look a this gorgeous yarn from the wonderful welsh alpacas of Alpacas of Wales! It is 70% Baby Alpaca and 30% Suri Alpaca so is incredibly soft, with a superb handle and a silky suri sheen. It is a completely unique, designed by Caerthan (Triskelion) and Susan (Alpacas of Wales), and dyed here at Triskelion with its own set of colourways.

Suri Sport is a beautiful knitting experience – ideal for small projects and accessories, and would be a perfect Christmas  present for the discerning knitter, although once you have your hands on it you won’t want to give it up!

It’s available in the following colourways, but with limited stocks, so don’t hang about …  Alpacas of Wales Online Shop

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Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are now available in the Triskelion shop, as requested.

When you buy the vouchers, I’ll send you a pdf certificate with a coupon code on it that can be used on anything in the shop. If you want the certificate either emailed or snail-mailed directly to the recipient, just specify at the checkout (postage is free).

When you buy the vouchers, the reward points will go on the buyer’s account, not on the voucher recipient’s account. If you want them transferred to the recipient (i.e. you’re buying for your partner and you don’t knit, etc.), just add a comment at the checkout.

When you buy with a voucher and don’t spend up to the value, you’ll get another coupon code sent to you for any remaining money. In other words, you don’t have to spend the whole of the voucher all at once!

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The Next Stage

Well, the time to get a dedicated workshop has come a bit sooner than I anticipated. The kitchen stove and outside laundry room just aren’t cutting it anymore. Triskelion has grown so quickly over the last six months – I’m spending most of the day going in and out of the house, carrying pots of dye and yarn, and the rest of the day in the garden room (my ‘workroom’), pre- and post-processing it all. Horribly inefficient. So, we’re going have to bite the bullet, gut the garden room, and turn it into a proper dyeing studio. Only to what we can currently afford, but still… five-burner gas hob, double drainer sink plus associated plumbing and drainage, extractor, new worktops, all that good stuff.

Rick is a bloody star. He’s doing all the building and plumbing work himself, in between his own stuff, just so I can keep on top of the orders coming in. Some hard budgeting is going to be necessary, and some reuse of stuff we have sitting around in the barn. It’s not going to look like ‘Homes and Gardens’, but it’s going to save me so much work, and enable me to plan my time much more efficiently. I can’t wait. Studio ahoy!

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Triskelion ‘Winternights’ Collection

After setting out my first unofficial stall in the Triskelion ‘Croeso‘ collection, ideas were coming thick and fast for the next. Given that ‘Croeso‘ was all about vibrant summer colours for me, the natural follow-up would obviously be a collection of colours for autumn and winter.

My starting inspiration for the collection was an accident, a misreading of my ‘Red Dragon‘ recipe that resulted in a smouldering yarn of rich, fiery reds, oranges and russets – hearth colours.

Once reworked, I decided that the yarn, dubbed ‘Cofgod‘ after the hearth gods of Anglo-Saxon folklore, would become the model and centrepiece of the developing collection – yarns that had the same ’ember’ quality to them. Caramelised colours. Darker, more shadowy, saturated colourways for winter, yet still retaining the Triskelion character.

The result is the Triskelion ‘Winternights‘ collection: ‘Sloe‘, darkest blue-violet dusted with frosting; ‘Winternights‘, umbral, inky blue-blacks; ‘Elf King‘, cool Otherworldly grey-blues; ‘Nicor‘, deep water teals; ‘Wodwos‘, bole-shadowed wild green with hints of gold; ‘Beowa‘, aged barley yellows; ‘Cofgod‘, the fiery hob of the hearth; ‘Idisi‘, vibrant dark rose and crimson; and finally, the slumbering dark winter earth of ‘Landwight‘. Nine ’embers of colour’, inspired by the cofgodas, given an Anglo-Saxon articulation and made ready to be knit and crocheted into cosy pullovers and shawls, hats and scarves, mittens and socks.

 

The yarns are all kettle-dyed using resist and multi-glazing techniques to yield highly detailed semi-solids with a superb depth of colour. Additionally, the colourways have been developed alongside the Triskelion Neutrals range, so that there are cooler foils for the ‘Winternights‘ embers – ‘Landwight‘ being a shared colourway. Both collections are available immediately in Taliesin DK (shown above), Emrys Aran, Gofannon 4-Ply, and Amaethon 4-Ply. In a week or two, they’ll be followed by Gofannon DK, Rhodri Sock, Emrys Lace, and Ceridwen Lace and 4-Ply.

Just in time for Winternights itself!

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Triskelion Neutrals Collection

In addition to the forthcoming Triskelion ‘Winternights’ collection, I’m introducing a more formal collection of Triskelion Neutrals that will be available in the full range of yarn bases in the Triskelion portfolio.

The initial selection of four greys, three browns, a beige and a rich cream have been carefully formulated to provide complementary foils for the stronger colours of the Triskelion family, with some in particular developed alongside the ‘Winternights’ collection. Additionally, groups of the Neutrals themselves can be used in tonal projects as they’re formulated using identical proportions of the same base pigments. Depending on the yarn base, the Neutrals are all dyed as semi-solids, using techniques that give an elegantly detailed, almost ‘heathered’ look to the yarns.

‘Rime‘ and ‘Anvil‘ join the popular ‘Graphite‘ and ‘Coal‘ to make up the initial selection of greys. ‘Rime‘ and ‘Anvil‘ are brighter, cooler greys, whereas ‘Graphite‘ and ‘Coal‘ are slightly creamier, more complex greys.

Taliesin DK Greys

The browns and beige are neutral in temperature, tending slightly toward the cool side. From light to dark, we have ‘Pebble‘, ‘Woodcut‘, ‘In That Quiet Earth‘ and ‘Landwight‘.

Taliesin DK Browns

Finally, we have a rich, warm cream – ‘Buttermilk‘ – which is a very slight darkening and enriching of the natural colour of the Blue Faced Leicester used in the Taliesin and Emrys yarns.

Taliesin DK Buttermilk

I hope you can find something to suit you, and more are definitely being planned. Triskelion greys, in particular, have proven to be very popular, so you can definitely expect more of them. Also, more cooler and warmer browns are on their way in the early New Year. As always, if you have any specific needs or variations on the colours available, just ask.

Enjoy!

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