A Rather Jolly 2025 Round Up!

So a little late in the day, but I thought I would do a round up post for 2025, because it was a bloody amazing year!!

Obviously, the biggest thing for us was opening at the new and shiny shop on January 7th - yes that's right, it has been an entire year of making Halstead our new home, and we have been made so welcome :)

We've had parties galore, starting with our 'Better Late Than Never Grand Opening' at the beginning of April!

We then had our Birthday party in August (12 years of being a Yarn Shop, woohoo!), which didn't disappoint! And this was shortly followed by the Yarnstravaganza Launch at the end of September. We love a party haha!!

And speaking of Yarnstravaganza, what a week that was! It was the first time that we decided to have things running every day, and we LOVED it (and of course loved that you all came out in your droves to support the event all week!)

As well as all of the parties, we also managed to squeeze in a trip out to the Summer Wool Festival in July! Much yarn was purchased!

And of course, our fabulous classes started again!! We kickstarted them with a sold out class with Claire Montgomerie, and then we continued with sold out classes with Anna Nikipirowicz, Suzanne Strachan, and of course little old me! From crochet socks to beautiful Finishing Techniques in knitting to learning Tunisian Crochet, we taught so many wonderful people new skills.  

And Craft'n'Cake came back home to the shop! This was a big one for us, having built our entire community up with our craft groups, it was a big hole not having the groups meet in the shop. It's been wonderful seeing the Tuesday group grow, and catching up with our Saturday group on the last Saturday of the month.

Of course, our Thursday group at The White Hart is growing too, and we have just reached a whole year of meet-ups with this lot! Here we are at one of our first!

And we've had so many communtity make-a-longs!

Spring/Summer saw us making Top Down Sweaters, Autumn/Winter saw us tackling Mosaic Knitting and Crochet, and Christmas Eve we were casting on our Brioche Cowls. Phew!! We can't wait for this year's MALs!

Make sure you are in our Facebook Group for details of the next MAL (or to start one we've recenlty done - some of us (cough er, me...) are still finishing off last years' so there plenty of time to join in!

And of course the poppies!

We made a whopping £417.48 from sales of our knitted poppies!! And as for poppies made by you lovely lot...well, be prepared to be blown away!

1270 poppies!!

Obviously a huge number of those were used in our amazeballs window display, and they have all been carefully put into storage for next year, when we hope to go even bigger with our poppy display and brooch sales!!

And Granny Squares! Yes, the trees of doom (!) for the Halstead Christmas Tree Festival and for our window came in in literally hundreds! I was dreaming about granny squares by the end, but it was so worth it. We came a respectable 5th in the Tree competition, and 1st in the Braintree Council Window Competition for Halstead (and 3rd overall for the whole district!).

We also had our first ever Book Launch and it was amazeballs! The wonderful Anna came to talk about her newest book, The Crochet Stitch Companion for Blankets and Afghans

And we relaunched our Luxury Yarn Boxes after a very long hiatus, and they were more popular than ever! Our Spring Box featured gorgeous mohair with a wool and silk blend, and then our Christmas Sock Box featured a lush merino sock, with gorgeous patterns from Anna Nikipirowicz and Christy Houghton - I'll be doing a separate blog post on that, so keep your peepers peeled!

So, not a bad start to our new home in Halstead I think? I'm excited for what this year will bring us, with new classes already launched (Visible Mending with Suzanne being up there on my favourites list!) and familiar faces returning to us with Anni Howard back teaching knitting classes for us again.

And of course we'll have parties, because, prosecco...

What a wonderful job I have, and I honestly couldn't do it without the amazing extended Sconch Team behind me, and of course all of our wonderful customers.

Here's to an amazing 2026 :)

Mwah xx