We got Meg from The Border Collie Trust when she was two, having not cut it as a working sheepdog on a Welsh farm.

Meg was very shy, timid and submissive when we first took her home and it took a lot of time and an abundance of patience to gain her trust but ultimately she became the beating heart of our family.

Sadly, her health had been failing over the last few months. She had developed masts on her abdomen that couldn’t be operated on due to her age and arthritis in her hind legs.

Where once we used to hike up hills and mountains, short, leisurely strolls with plenty of time for sniffs became more Meg’s cup of tea.

Then one evening we were eating dinner when we heard a crash and found Meg splayed at the bottom of the stairs. We think she had attempted to go upstairs but hadn’t managed to get very far before her legs gave way.

From that point on, Meg didn’t get up again and the following morning, the vet came. Our gorgeous gently girl passed away peacefully surrounded by her family.

Meg’s favourite place to sit used to be in a patch of wildflowers in the garden. We plan to plant a pink cherry blossom tree in the middle of the flowers and scatter her ashes there.

To say thank you to The Border Collie Trust for placing their faith in us nine years ago and entrusting Meg to our care, we have launched a new Charity Yarn, ‘In Memory Of Meg‘.

The limited edition yarn is a 100g skein of Chunky Roving hand dyed 100% Bluefaced Kerry Hill yarn and £5 from every skein sold will be donated to The Border Collie Trust to support the fabulous work they do with Border Collies and Collie cross breeds throughout the UK.

RIP lovely Meg.

Recently, someone that I care very dearly for, was made the subject of a campaign of hatred, lies and intimidation, due in no small part to a lack of understanding, compassion  and empathy by those old enough to know better.

Perhaps if they had received a more inclusive education which celebrates diversity and undoubtedly leads to emotional maturity, they may have stopped to think twice before attempting a character assassination which could have potentially destroyed a young person’s life.

So, in the wake of the inaugural Trans History Week, at the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week and as we rapidly approach Pride Month, it gives me great pleasure to launch our new yarn which will hopefully help to challenge unacceptable thoughts and behaviours towards a marginalised group of society that wishes for nothing more than peace and equality.

Baa Baa Brighouse will not turn a profit from this yarn and £5 from every skein sold will be donated to the charity.

The yarn itself, Karma Not Drama, is a 100g skein of hand dyed 4 ply yarn comprising 80% Falkland Wool and 20% Mulberry Silk. It combines pale pink, blue and white tones with gentle bright pink and blue speckling in each skein, giving you 400m of woolly loveliness to craft with.

However, we are working on making the experience easier for customers by adding pictures of knitted samples of our hand dyed yarns. So, you will have the benefit of seeing how the colours interact with each other, whether pooling of a particular colour in variegated yarns is likely and how subtle variations in shade come to play in our semi-solid ranges.

Pictures of knitted up yarns are now available to view for all of our Bronte inspired Literary Greats and Classic Characters Sock Yarn ranges. Below is Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Villette.

You’ll also notice we’ve used a range of stitches including garter, stocking and moss stitch to demonstrate how this can also affect the way a particular garment may ultimately look using our beautiful hand dyed yarns. Don’t forget, though, tension can play a role here too and even the most experienced knitter with the very best of intentions may find their tension fluctuates from time to time.

Below are Cathy, Heathcliffe, Jane, Mr Rochester, Helen, Gilbert, Lucy and Paul from our Classic Characters Sock Yarn range. These are all sumptuously soft semi-solid hand dyed yarns designed to complement the variegated Literary Greats pictured above.

Initial feedback from customers on the new pictures is that they have found them particularly helpful when choosing one of our Literary Three Skein Shawl Sets (which incidentally are always cheaper than buying the skeins individually), the Bronte Sisters Mini Skein Collection, Bookish Bundles or Bronte Sisters Little Books Bundle where they are able to view samples of all of the yarns featured alongside each other.

Below is our Emily, Charlotte, Anne and Bronte Three Skein Shawl Sets.

Of course, there is more than enough yarn in a shawl set to make more than one shawl, depending on the pattern, but possibly two or even three at more than 1,000m of yarn per set. Our Literary Sock Sets combine two of the above yarns – one variegated, one semi-solid and are a great option if you’re looking for a smaller project.

Below are our Bronte inspired Literary Sock Sets – Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Villette.

These gorgeous bundles combine a 100g skein of Literary Greats Sock Yarn and a 25g skein of a contrasting Classic Characters Sock Yarn, perfect for heels, toes and cuffs.

We hope our new photographs make choosing your favourite yarns easier. We will be continuing to add new images of knitted samples for all of our permanent ranges of yarns across the entire site.

There are a few reasons that account for my absence from the the knitting scene – I had grown disillusioned with my regular knitting group, social media conflicts had spilled over into friendships, the state of the world post-Brexit was taking a toll on business but the one thing that really did for me as a knitter was lockdown.

That sounds weird, I know. For many, the scary, quite often solitary, period was a time when they found comfort in knitting and for some were able to take up the craft for the first time. But for me things went the opposite way.

Overnight, I went from being a self-employed business owner on the cusp of opening her own own bricks and mortar shop to being a full-time primary school teacher with responsibility for a class of two and the one responsible for getting a third, post-16 student, through college. Everything else fell by the wayside.

And when I say everything, I mean everything. I literally lost interest in all of the things that had previously held some significance for me and instead became a total expert on the primary school curriculum. I threw myself into my new role with history quiz nights involving the whole family, elaborate art projects linked to a The Chronicles of Narnia which we read as a class and geography topics based on Around the World in Eighty Days. I made it fun, engaging, educational and I know the children look back on ‘Mammy School’ with nothing but fond and happy memories.

But though it has taken quite some time to write it, I probably pulled the whole thing off so well because inside I was frightened. We had and still do have a totally incompetent government running the show (which to be fair I probably could have written hundreds of blog posts about and tied into creating charity yarns for all the communities, organisations and people that they have screwed over), life was uncertain, nobody was able to see friends or family and really all I wanted to do was keep my children safe during a horrible time.

Once the lockdowns were over and the world gradually returned to some semblance of normality, knitting still refused to call to me in the post-pandemic age. I still liked dyeing yarns and creating new ranges and concepts for yarn clubs but nothing could induce me to pick up my needles again. Strange, because knitting is what got me through years of very bad post-natal depression.

Life has become stressful of late for a number of reasons which are too complex to go into in detail here but I think I may have felt a faint spark of motivation. So, this week and for the foreseeable future, I am going back to basics and will be knitting dishcloths until I regain my confidence.

Please note that an extra charge may be levied as import duty or other taxes for products shipped outside the UK.  Custom, duties and taxes are the buyers responsibility and we cannot be held liable for any shipments held or quarantined at the border, or any other issues as a result of import legislation.

We have no control over these charges, and can only apologise for the inconvenience caused by the lack of foresight from the UK Government.

Please note we will not mark items as ‘Gifts’ as this would be a breach of Customs & Excise rules.

Due to the ongoing illegal occupation of Ukraine by Russian military forces, we’re afraid that also means no yarn for you Russia and Belarus!

We hope we’ve made the site easier to navigate by adding your favourite Monthly Yarn Clubs and Special Yarn Boxes to the drop down menu. We’ve also split the yarns that we sell into three simple categories – Baa Baa Brighouse, Rowan and West Yorkshire Spinners, making it quicker to find what you’re looking for.

You’ll see that our Charity Yarn tab is back in the header and is now also given a special mention on our landing page. Please do consider purchasing in support of Mermaids, just one of the charities that supports trans youth, arguably one of the most marginalised and oppressed minorities in UK society today.

We’ve updated the Yan Tan Tethera Yarn Club, getting rid of the gallery, which was becoming outdated and cluttered but you’re still able to view all of our past Yan Tan Tethera creations over the past nine years in our archive.

We’ve added some fresh product photography too, giving an overall cleaner, brighter look. We hope you like the changes – happy knitting!

As a business, we have decided to change direction. We will no longer be stocking new lines or re-stocking older lines from our commercial yarn, pattern and knitting accessories suppliers.

Instead, moving forward, we will be concentrating solely on producing our independent hand dyed yarns and specialist yarn boxes.

Please note, we have taken this decision as a direct consequence of Brexit and the increased costs and administration practises associated with it.

Therefore, we are now offering all of our remaining Rowan and West Yorkshire Spinners yarns at half price and all patterns and books by Rowan, West Yorkshire Spinners and their associated designers at half or less than half price.

You will also find discounted patterns from Erika Knight, Debbie Bliss and Louisa Harding as well as half price knitting needles and crochet hooks from Brittany. We look forward to providing you with a range of quality hand dyed yarns in the future. Happy Knitting!

However, these rises were necessary given the soaring costs of raw materials as well as an increase in the cost of dyes, packaging and a rise in price of many of the items included as gifts in our specialist yarn boxes.

We hate to be the bearer of more bad news but unfortunately as of March 1, 2022, prices of Rowan yarns will be increasing by 5% and in the case of Rowan Kidsilk Haze 15%.

Our supplier informs us that this is due to an increase in the cost of raw materials, pressures due to the global supply chain and the increased costs at ports post Brexit. Unfortunately, these increases are too large for a small retailer like ourselves to absorb in any sustainable manner and we in turn will have to pass on these rises to you, the consumer.

Therefore, we strongly advise you to order any Rowan yarns this month before the price increases come into force.

So, away from Baa Baa Brighouse, I have raged at the ongoing incompetence of our leaders and the injustice we all feel at their actions – Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Dominic Cummings – I’m looking at you. That’s even before the gravy train stops at No. 10 ‘Party Central’ Downing Street. And whilst millions upon millions were frittered away on dodgy PPE, a useless test and trace system and copious amounts of cheese and wine, my little business like thousands of others across the UK suffered.

There is no good time for a pandemic, but this particular one couldn’t have had worse timing, coupled as it is with the onslaught of Brexit. As you may know, we stopped shipping to the EU in July following changes to VAT rules which incurred increased costs and paperwork. This has meant a loss of around 20% of all sales but more than that, it has meant no longer keeping in touch with what were once regular customers in France, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and beyond.

Back in 2017, many of these customers supported our Kickstarter campaign to convert a room in our house into a bricks and mortar yarn shop. Sadly, it now seems unlikely that they will see that idea come to fruition. As a small online business, I relied on sales abroad as well as at home to reinvest and replenish stock but I am now not able to do this on the scale necessary for a bricks and mortar store. The loss of EU sales has not been replaced by an uptick in UK and other international sales as the world’s economies grapple with Covid. Fewer businesses surviving inevitably means fewer people in employment with far less income to spend.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, given the spiraling number of positive cases in the UK, is the attitude of some people towards vaccination and mask wearing. Opening a bricks and mortar shop in what is essentially my home was ideal pre-pandemic but now it poses a major concern. The one place myself and my family (particularly my children – two of which are not yet old enough to be vaccinated) should feel safe is at home. However, inviting customers into our home who may not be vaccinated, may be unwilling to wear a mask and may actually be confrontational if challenged is not something I am willing to deal with.

I already have to send my youngest two into an unventilated school every day where the few mitigations that were in place have now been removed. There have been cases of the virus affecting pupils at their school with some hospitalised and absent for months. Given that there were more than 500 children in England admitted to hospital in the week leading to Boxing Day, I don’t think I am being over cautious.

So, while the fabric of the building has been altered to accommodate retail premises, the idea of opening a bricks and mortar shop is being shelved for the foreseeable future. With Covid raging, people unwilling to behave responsibly and a government intent on doing the maximum amount of damage because they can’t bear to accept their populist ideology is fundamentally flawed, remaining as an online shop, at least for now, seems the most sensible option. Perhaps one day we will be in a position to revisit the idea but unfortunately it won’t be anytime soon.