Tuesday 29 January 2013

ragamuffin loves...a good old round up!

Hello all! Happy new year, we can't quite believe it is now the end of January and we haven't blogged yet...eek! So what have we been up to since the festive season ended and January well and truly set in? Mainly buying knitwear for the shops is the answer!

Breege's gorgeous mitts!
First stop was Dublin and seeing all of our fabulous Irish suppliers! We got to take Islay, from Skye, to her first ever trade show where she met some of our favourite people, including the lovely Breege Walsh (who many of you will remember from the Edinburgh shop) with her new hat & mitts designs for the coming season, Branigan Weavers and their gorgeous matchy-matchy capes and caps, Bebhinn Marten and her wonderful handmade knits, Irelands Eye and Fisherman out of Ireland for the chaps, McKernan's supersoft handwoven scarves...the list goes on and on.

Jamieson's fabulous Fairisles!
We were also delighted to see Jamieson's of Shetland and Harley of Peterhead across in Ireland and bought many fairisle and nordic inspired knits (our obsession with Scandi-crime drama continues!)

A quick flight back through a blizzard and we were off to Glasgow to see lots of our Scottish and English knitwear suppliers at the SECC. All of the usual suspects were there - The Quernstone, Scott Officer, Sophies Wild Woollens - along with some fabulous new makers which always keeps us happy!

Ah...our expressive language!
It has all started to roll in already. Skye have had a delivery of witty, Scottish slogan aprons and tea towels from Couthie, who are also good customers of ours. The Couthie gals have also designed a range of greetings cards with a collection of auld Scots word magnets on the front - words like sleekit, bahookie and besom are surely a must for any fridge! Jonny Kimber has just sent a box of his beautiful cotton scarves to Edinburgh - they will be on Skye by the end of the week - and Susie, from Pappu Mama will be delivering our new Indian textiles later this week.


Nautical stripes & swallows from Jonny Kimber!
Add to that our ongoing SALE and new clothes deliveries from Privatsachen and Yaccomaricard, we are beginning to see where the month has gone! Also, we are so enjoing connecting with everyone over on Facebook and Twitter, so if you are that way inclined please Like/ Follow us! We met a lovely new customer in the Edinburgh shop today, Kym Lloyd, who we hope to see on Facebook soon. Kym is a novelist and we can't believe we haven't come across her books before - they sound right up our street and are now added to our Amazon wishlist!