Yarn, birthdays, books and food - and a free pattern!

Anyone who's read this blog will have gathered that supporting British wool is very important to me. Our heritage as a great wool-producing nation is ingrained in our landscape, architecture and language. British wool has been in something of an intermittent crisis since the Industrial Revolution ( half sentence summary of substantial chunk of history - try Counting Sheep by Philip Walling for the full story), but in the last few years some dedicated people, with the help of the Campaign for Wool, have been working really hard, and really enthusiastically, to put Britain back on the map as a woolly nation.

Preserving rare breeds - paying a fair price for fleece - spinning British wool in Britain - all of these have for the last 10 years been key aims of Sue Blacker of Blacker Yarns and their milling arm, the Natural Fibre Company. As well as producing their own range of super gorgeous yarns, often from their own sheep, their mill in Cornwall has also been spinning for other producers. This year they're celebrating their 10th birthday and have produced a wonderful yarn, Cornish Tin, in both DK and 4-ply, to mark the occasion.

It's spun from a positive smorgasbord of interesting fibres, each one has some meaning for the company (it's all on Sue's blog about the yarn). There's a natural grey shade and some lovely dyed colourways, each named after a Cornish tin mine. What I love about the combination, which range from the soft and easily-dyeable to more textured and naturally coloured fleece, is the depth and interest it gives to the colour - the little flecks of cussed Jacob's or tough Welsh Mountain give the yarn a distinctive, and very British, character.

I was lucky enough to get sent some - photographed above, in Botallack Blue - to have a play with before the launch, and naturally my thoughts drifted along Cornish lines. Being a Northerner, it's not a county I know too well, but it exists for me in books - not Poldark as far as I'm concerned, but Susan Howatch's splendid historical potboiler Penmarric - and in food. Cornwall makes great cheese, delicious beer, and, of course, the famous Cornish pasty, which is inextricably linked with the tin mines as it was the traditional snack of the Cornish tinminer. The literally mine-proof pastry case protected the wholesome filling, to make sure the miners had enough sustenance to cope with an arduous day at work, and essential to this was the special crimped edge which sealed the sides of the pasty and which is still a sign of a genuine Cornish product today.

You can find out more about the history of this versatile and tasty product from the Cornish Pasty Association, which is also where I learned that the Cornish tinminer's lunchtime snack was called a crib or croust (which I guess must come from the crimped crust of the pasty). Being a knitter, these crimped edges then took my thoughts to cables and the obvious answer to what to do with my Cornish Tin yarn - knit my own pasty!

So what I came up with isn't quite a pasty - it's a fingerless mitt, which in warm, hardwearing Cornish Tin should have the same insulating effect on my hands as the pastry case on the pasty - with a cabled i-cord cast off on both the hands and the thumbs.

You can knit a pair of Croust Fingerless Mitts from one skein of Cornish Tin DK. And, to help get the yarn and the birthday party started, you can get the pattern FREE for the first two weeks! The offer will end at midnight UK time on October 3rd. Just enter the coupon code Penzance when you buy the pattern from my Ravelry shop.

Please feel free to tell people about this offer - but please share this blog post rather than the coupon code, as I really would like people to understand the story behind the yarn and the pattern! I will change the coupon code from time to time during the offer.

And in the meantime if you like a pattern bargain, don't forget my Scarf Season special offer is still on - ten scarf patterns for a fiver - take a look at the previous post for all the details.