Reflecting on 10 Years of Ewe Ewe Yarns

Hello! It’s me, Heather, owner of Ewe Ewe Yarns.

Welcome to my weekly feature on the Ewe Ewe blog about living a creative life. Here you’ll find a few things that have inspired me lately. I love to knit and crochet but I also enjoy gardening, cooking and photography. I’ll chat about where I’m knitting, what I’m cooking, and much more!

Hi, hello!

It’s Wednesday again and we have a giveaway winner… The randomly selected knitter is Julia Paradine-Rice! 🎉 Julia has been notified and we’ll be sending her prize this week.

In the giveaway, I asked how many yarns, colors and patterns you thought I started with here at Ewe Ewe. We had a wide range of answers with guesses like 2 yarns in 6 colors with 5 patterns up to 100 yarns in 10 colors with 15 patterns!

The answer is —

One yarn in 7 colors!

I started this yarn company with Wooly Worsted washable merino yarn in the 7 shades shown here – Berry, Saffron, Pistachio, Teal, Indigo, Vanilla and Chocolate.

Now Wooly Worsted is available in 25 colors PLUS an additional 10 colors of the new heathered collection!

And, patterns? I went to that first trade show with these 9 knitting patterns.

2 baby sweaters, 2 cowls, 3 hats, a pair of wrist warmers and a pair of boot socks.

They are:

1. the Beach Bum Pullover all in garter stitch

2. The linen stitch Café Latte Cowl

3. The Fair Isle Friends wrist warmers

4. The lace Penpal Hat

5. The sweet Adoracole Cardigan & Hat

6. The best-selling Happy Cowl with a spiral rib stitch

7. The big and cozy Wellie Warmers

8. The crazy colorwork Timber! Hat

9. And the Cross Country Ski Cap earflap hat.

Now we have over 100 designs for Wooly Worsted yarn! You can see the entire collection with this Ravelry search. There are some real gems in there!

There we go! That was the first collection of products here at Ewe Ewe Yarns. It took all of my savings to start this company with the mill having a minimum order of 1200 skeins per color!

It took me a while to sell that first batch of yarn and I may have been a little crazy to just say, “Hey, I’m going to start a new yarn brand now!” But here we are 10 amazing years later.

I’ve had a lot of fun thinking about this original lineup compared to what we offer now.

Today the Ewe Ewe collection is 4 yarns –

1. Fluffy Fingering merino yarn in 18 colors

2. Ewe So Sporty merino yarn in 25 colors

3. Wooly Worsted in 35 colors including Heather’s Heathers

4. Baa Baa Bulky merino yarn in 22 colors

And look at that… 10 years later we have 100 SKUs! An unplanned but nice, round number.

Thanks for following along on my small business journey. It’s been an investment from not just myself but from my husband, his mum, my sister (who gave me the idea in the first place!), my parents and many friends along the way. It’s been long but also fun; hard as hell and also completely gratifying.

I try to develop yarns and patterns that I want to knit and that bring me joy. It’s wonderful that you like them, too. Thank you!

💗 Heather

In more current, knitting news — I bound off my Cat Lady Crop! 🎉

Those sleeves went so fast since they’re only 5.5” long. So fun!

Next is to weave in the ends and get her on the blocking mat. Hopefully a photo for next week’s newsletter?! These Wednesday updates are really keeping me on track.

See the Cat Lady Crop pattern and yarn kits.

Here’s a big field of status flowers from my walk. I always thought these papery blossoms were fake when we got them in flower arrangements. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I realized they’re real and they’re awesome!

Now the question on my mind is what am I going to knit next?! I know I’ll be working on the Switchback Socks for the Socks on Saturday KAL but I’m also really considering this sweater by Annie Lupton using Heather’s Heathers yarn. 🤩

I hope you enjoyed this update and it possibly sparked a bit of your creativity. Simply reply to this email if you want to share a project or give me an update on what’s happening for you!

Happy Wednesday,

💗 Heather