Shop review- Great British Yarns

Since I have done a little yarn shopping I have a shop to review- hurrah!

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This one is an online shop, Great British Yarns is currently online only and describes itself as a shop selling lots of British knitting and crochet goodies. This is ironic really, as I went there because they are the only UK shop I have found that stocks Knitpicks (which is very much not British), and I really wanted to see what it was like.

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So, the good- A nice range of yarns, including some indie dyers and interesting yarns like the water wheel spun organic British merino. Obviously the Knitpicks is a huge attraction.

The website is fairly good, the side menu makes it easy to navigate.

The prices seem normal, no real surprises either way there. There is a good clearance section with a lot of Rowan and some other yarns.

I didn't really delve as I was just looking for yarns but they sell some accessories, books, magazines, fabric and kids stuff too.

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The not so good (because bad seems like a strong word and maybe I am demanding)- Some items needed a lot of clicking to get to the actual buy this bit.

The indie dyer range was somewhat limited in terms of colours available, although this might just have been current stock levels.

For me the thing I liked least was the postage- there is a flat rate of £3.50 for UK shipping, I looked this up and even allowing for a postage bag it is enough to ship over a kilo of yarn. If you are buying a single skein it is rather steep as you are considerably over paying, of course the flip side is that if you are buying A LOT of yarn you may get a bargain, but I can't afford that much yarn in one go. They do suggest splitting the cost by combining your order with others but this seems a bit like pushy selling.

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The summary- I would shop there again, especially if I was after Knitpicks or something interesting, but only if I could afford a decent amount in one go, or convince someone else to split the shipping with me (without bullying them).

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And since it is an online shop I don't have a picture of the shop, so here is another photo of the lovelies I bought.

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I am having a dilemma about what to make with the undyed one, I might do a post looking for opinions soon. The red is already wound into a ball for socks.

Yarn diet- free pass 2

I have worked out (probably I am a little slow here) the five free yarn diet passes from the 1st January to 1st June is one yarn purchase a month. So this is the yarn purchase for February, if it were a food diet this would be much like having a large slice of tasty chocolate cake (I was going to take a photo of some cake, but I ate it before I remembered!).
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Mostly I would like to say omnomnomnomnomnom

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I did have a good reason for this lot, most of my A-Z sock patterns need single colour or subtle changes, and what I have in my stash could well be described as a riot of colour. There is little point spending hours on cables and lace if neither can be seen through the colours, so plains it is.

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I also had a bit of a dilemma about where to order from, there were three yarns I wanted to try and no shop seemed to sell all three. In the end I settled on Great British Yarns, because they are the only place to get Knitpicks over here and I really wanted to see what it was all about (shop review next week).

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The two blue skeins are Knitpicks gloss, 50g in each, it is a merino and silk mix.

The red is Knitpicks Stroll Tonal, it is shades of tasty red and a superwash merino and nylon mix. I actually prefer this to the Gloss, although it is the slightly cheaper of the two I think it is smoother, maybe a result of the superwashing (both very nice though).

The other two are UK yarns, the charcoal is an Alpaca mix for socks made with alpaca merino and nylon.

The undyed is the most gorgeous organic merino 4 ply, spun by waterwheel in Cornwall. I bought it to be socks, but I think it is not really spun tightly enough, to be honest I could just sit petting it, it is softer than a very soft fluffy bunny!

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I also managed to not buy yarn, despite going to two places where it is sold and driving past a third. I think I may not even need to do a March purchase!