Meet our Newest Machine!

We’ve had a new addition here at the Mill, we’ll give you a clue to her name… she helps create our lovely new Shade Cards and she’s definitely a smooth operator…

Hehe, introducing Sade (pronounced ‘Sha-day’)! Ain’t she a beauty?!

We’ve uploaded a brand new YouTube video, where the lovely Laura shows you exactly how Sade works.

Right now, she’s living in a very fancy dust-proof enclosure under the stairs at the Mill – only the best for our little star! She’s been here for a while, but as she came with no instructions, it took a wee while for us to get to know how she works. Now we’ve got things down to a fine art, we’re ready to show her off properly and reveal our beautiful new Shade Cards.

Sade allows our Shade Cards to really shine and show off our yarn to its full glory. Instead of tying one strand of yarn around the card, Sade wraps many strands of the yarn around a strip of card, giving you a much larger area to properly see what it looks like. Much better!

Cones are set up at the back of Sade and then, much like a skein winder, the yarn slips between tension rods and wraps around a pre-loaded card many times.
There’s nothing quite like a shade card to really understand the feel of a yarn and the rainbow of shades that make up its delicious palette. Our new and improved shade cards use recycled materials and are printed locally too.

We all know how tricky it can be to pick the right colour for your project from your computer or phone screen. So this handy shade card, made with the help of a handy little machine, will allow you to view all the colours of our ranges and get a proper feel for the texture, all in the comfort of your home. We can just imagine our shade cards proudly displayed on bookshelves and brightening up a crafting area – it’s not just us who love collecting shade cards, right?