Shilasdair

Before we went to Skye, I had come across a snippet about Shilasdair Yarns in The Knitter magazine, so of course I managed to squeeze in a visit once I got to Skye.

It's a small but wonderful hand-dying yarn company that produces some amazing yarn combinations of cashmere, alpaca, cotton etc. in a whole rainbow of colours. Their secret is that they use local natural dyes for most of their colours, which they find on the beach and in the hills around the peninsula where they are based, such as wild-flowers and lichens.

Some recently dyed yarn:

They kindly showed me their dye studio, where some blue socks were bubbling away in one of the vats:

Here's a shot of the shop, where you can see the many hues they produce, in various types of yarn (sorry for the blurred photo):

I couldn't just leave all that yarn there by itself, so of course managed to fill my basket! Here's some luxury DK in a cashmere/angora/lambswool blend that I plan to use for a sweater:

And some lovely greeny Aran lambswool for a blanket. The colour doesn't show up well here; I'll try to take a better photo:

Finally some silk in a lovely raspberry that I'll make into a tie for DH:

If you're ever on the island it's well worth a visit, but they also ship (oh dear, sounds dangerous!).