We are a traditional wool shop, a face-to-face place where you can see the colours for yourself and feel the yarn’s weight and texture. Every yarn is unique and so is every maker. We want you to be able to choose the materials you like best for your handmade projects.

It’s a bit of an old-fashioned idea, prioritizing the physical experience.

We like that.

We aim to make our shop a beautiful, old-fashioned real-life sort of place, filled with natural light from the Morgan Arcade’s glass roof, the sound of shoes on our old wooden floorboards, and the tactile experience of shelves and shelves full of beautiful yarns.

Because this is our goal, we don’t sell online. Instead, we want to be a destination. A special place to visit, a well of colour and texture, a spot of softness in the heart of Cardiff.

We also want to be a place of inspiration and learning, where we can explore and celebrate traditional skills together and share new ways of thinking about fibre.

This newsletter is an extension of that goal. It, too, will be a place where we share stories, tips and techniques, tool and yarn reviews, and thoughts about the role that real-life crafting can play in our constantly evolving culture. In this first issue, you’ll also find staff profiles and a little bit of silliness at the end: Woolly Welsh Fun Facts.

Thanks for reading – and we hope to see you in the shop soon.

Warmly,

the AWS team

Penblwydd Hapus!

In May, we celebrated our first birthday to much fanfare. When Siân and her daughter Harad first opened the shop, they dreamed it would become a social hub for knitters and crocheters where a vibrant crafting community could take root and grow, and the response to this milestone was certainly the proof in that pudding! So many regulars and locals popped in to offer their best wishes, and our social media was flooded with messages. It was wonderful to mark the day with so many kind words.

We also ran a series of free beginner birthday workshops for both knitting and crocheting which proved very popular. Since then, we’ve hosted other beginner workshops, and there will be lots more ahead. Mena, who has recently joined our team, is our new workshop co-ordinator and will be sharing more news about this soon – watch this space!

Tutoring

Recently, we’ve started offering personalised individual tutoring sessions. These are tailored to your curiosity and skill level. So far, tutoring sessions have included fair isle colourwork, beginner garment construction, colour crochet and crochet ribbing. Our staff have a wide range of experience and are keen to share their knowledge. If there is something you would like to learn one-on-one, please get in touch. We’d love to support your crafting journey.

Our team:

Stacey is our new shop manager. Her nan taught her to knit when she was four, and 15 years ago she taught herself to crochet, with amigurumi and free-form crocheting becoming one of her favourite things to make. She loves combining crochet with her love of anime, fantasy and all things Lord of the Rings. A keen traveller, Stacey also loves collecting yarn from the places she visits — because no trip is complete without bringing some home!

Rebecca loves knitting and crocheting colourful garments, especially stripey jumpers. She will soon be studying a design for performance degree at uni and loves historical costuming. Her dream project is a 1940s inspired colourwork slip-over, which she will eventually get to, after using up her yarn stash of course!

Katie is a Canadian knitter and crocheter with three kids and a messy vegetable garden. She’s also a novelist and creative writing tutor at Cardiff University. Always happy to talk colourwork tips and mending tricks, Katie is drawn to natural fibres and earthy tones. She’s currently working on a cable cardigan in Baa Ram Ewe’s Woodnote Aran.

Harad co-owns the shop alongside her mother. As a Welsh speaker who loves to crochet, she enjoys creating unique garments without a pattern, with the classic granny stitch being her absolute favourite to use. She especially loves working with variegated yarns in rich, autumnal colours—there's nothing quite like watching a surprise palette unfold with every stitch!

Mena is a knitter and crocheter who grew up in Wales. She learned to crochet when she was fourteen and picked up knitting three years ago. She has knit a ridiculous number of socks and loves trying out new techniques on small projects like these. She enjoys finding the perfect yarn for a project and will often be drawn to the softest wool she can find. 

Chloe is a crocheter turned knitting-fiend for the past year She was taught how to crochet by her mother at age 13 starting with amigurumi which as a style still has a very special place in her heart. She studies Neuroscience at Cardiff University and is in an indie band playing the saxophone and singing. She enjoys cable work as well as colour-work using natural fibres, especially when knitting socks.

New in Shop: September

Seasonal Kits: Each month, we will be offering a new kit with yarn and pattern (and sometimes extras, too!) Our current kit is the Crochet Me Scarf by Stylecraft. It’s perfect for the autumn and available in a range of colour options. Be sure to pop into the shop to see what we have. And keep and eye on social media for new kits soon!

News for Ewes: Woolly Welsh Fun Facts

-     One in five Welsh residents list knitting as their preferred hobby – the highest ranking of any other UK region. With 10 million sheep and three million people, the source of our inspiration might not be surprising.

-    The Welsh word for wool is gwlân.

-     Wales has a 4,000-year history of wool production, with the oldest known woven wool fragment in the region dating back to the Bronze Age.

-    Many Welsh placenames reflect this heritage; pandy means a fulling mill and melin means a mill.

-    A sequence of stitches in which each stitch is suspended from the next is called a wale. (which honestly is not at all connected to Wales but it still a fun fact!)

Thanks for reading! See you in the shop!