Blog

This has been a long time coming, at least four years, but as a business and also from a personal perspective, I and Baa Baa Brighouse have decided to bid goodbye to Facebook. This graphic was shared on Facebook recently and it struck a chord. For too long I have allowed 'friends' to enter my life and home via social media only to later reveal themselves as being not very good friends. The reasons are many - differences of opinion on Brexit, underlying racist or homophobic attitudes, a tendency to support politicians or those in a position of power who subscribe to such attitudes and more recently, Covid-19 and their opinions on face masks, social distancing, the necessity of lockdowns - the list goes on. One by one, I've quietly unfollowed or blocked people and, if I'm brutally honest, there are now just a handful of friends and...

As we are sure you are aware by now, as of Thursday November 5th, it is planned for the UK to enter another period of national lockdown due to the escalating number of Covid-19 infections. Please be assured that we will continue to operate Baa Baa Brighouse online as normal. If our supply chain becomes adversely affected by the new restrictions, we may be forced to suspend production of some of our specialist yarn boxes and clubs. However, we will endeavour to keep these running for as long as is possible. We continue to abide by guidance with regards to frequent handwashing and sanitising of surfaces in order to mitigate the spread of any infection. Please do continue to support small businesses if you are able to do so, be kind to yourselves and each other and above all, stay safe.

With the changing global situation with regards to Coronavirus, we wanted to give an update to our customers with regards to how Baa Baa Brighouse is responding to the situation. First of all, we hope you are all staying safe, looking out for yourselves and each other, adhering to the advice that has been offered and using your common sense by not taking any unnecessary risks. The scale of this pandemic is inevitably going to impact upon us all in our personal and professional lives. With regards to Baa Baa Brighouse, the opening of our bricks and mortar shop will be delayed. With shops, cafes, restaurants and non-essential businesses closing in other countries to prevent the spread of this outbreak, it seems like the logical course for us to follow at this point in time. However, as of Sunday March 15th, small independent businesses...

Following the UK's departure from the European Union, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our valued EU customers for their support in enabling Baa Baa Brighouse to grow as a business over the past six years. We are personally very saddened to have left the EU but we would like to reassure all of you that we remain committed to trading with our EU friends as far as is possible in the future. During the 12 month transition period from now until December 31st, 2020, there is expected to be no change to customs duties between the UK and EU, which means that EU customers will not incur any additional fees by your country's customs agencies when you receive a parcel from us. Details of future trade arrangements have yet to be finalised and we will keep you updated when we are made aware of them. International orders from...

It's late. The house is asleep. But my mind won't let me rest. So, I'm writing. Sometimes it helps to get the words out. Yesterday, I had no words. Today, I have too many. There is no sugar-coated way to say this, so I'm just going to say it because as one of my Facebook followers reminded me, I'm 'one feisty lady', and that's definitely a label I can be proud of. Unhappily, the label I'm about to give the Tory voting public isn't. If in Thursday's General Election, you voted Tory, then I'm afraid you voted for a racist and a homophobe. By enabling Boris Johnson, you too are a racist and a homophobe. There, I said it. It's not nice, is it? But there it is. In the very same way that those who voted for the Nazi Party in Germany were Nazi enablers, those that voted for the Tory Party have enabled racism and homophobia. I guess there...

Guest Blog By Julie Turner of TurnAcre Ryeland Wool   Like many people living in West Yorkshire we knew of Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice but didn’t know much about it. At Christmas 2017, that all changed when our grandson, Irvine Jack Turner, was born sleeping. Irvine passed away before being born at 31 weeks and his mummy and daddy, Jack and Leah, were put in contact with Forget Me Not who helped them plan for his birth and beyond. Thanks to the excellent Snowflake suite at the hospice, we were able to spend precious time with him as a family making memories before we had to say goodbye. Forget Me Not have continued to provide support and help to all of us over the past 2 years. Helping us to get through the early days of grief, the anxiety and emotions of being pregnant again and the birth of our rainbow baby, Iris...

The knitting website, Ravelry, which has over 8 million members worldwide, has taken the bold move to ban posts in support of President Donald Trump and his administration. The announcement has been made on the site's homepage in response to the Trump administration's blatant support of white supremacy. Ravelry, like Baa Baa Brighouse, promotes an inclusive environment which cannot be maintained if hate speech of any kind is allowed. That is why today we applaud Ravelry's stance and fully support its actions. At Baa Baa Brighouse, we strive to make our website and social media pages a safe place for all people of colour and those belonging to minority, marginalised groups. Last year we voiced our protest at Trump's presidency during his visit to the UK with our yarn, 'Carnival of Resistance', which raised funds for the American...

June is Pride Month, a time which commemorates the Stonewall Riots of 1969, considered to be the most important event for the gay liberation movement leading to the modern fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Baa Baa Brighouse is an inclusive business which welcomes people of all sexual orientations and in order to show our support for the LGBTQ+ community at this time, we changed our logo on our social media pages to Baa Baa wearing his Pride jumper. Unfortunately, a rainbow sheep appears to have upset a few people and although we haven't directly received any negative comments ourselves, we see you leaving our Facebook page. We see you unfollowing our Instagram account. We see you unsubscribing from our newsletter. We see you. It saddens us that still so many narrow minded individuals inhabit our planet. Love is love after all. In these...

Throughout June, we will be fundraising for Deafblind UK, with our monthly charity yarn. We have named the exclusive limited edition yarn, 'Deafblind Awareness', as Deafblind Awareness Week also takes place in June. Deafblindness is the loss of sight and hearing to the point where your communication, mobility and ability to access information are impacted. This includes ‘progressive’ sight and hearing loss; where your sight and hearing may deteriorate over a period of time. Deafblindness is often also referred to as ‘dual sensory loss’ or ‘dual sensory impairment’. It is estimated that there are nearly 400,000 deafblind people in the UK. This is expected to increase to over 600,000 by 2030 due to our ageing population. Deafblindness affects people of all ages, including children and young people, but it is more common in...