Stylecraft weekend and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The other weekend I had another great Stylecraft bloggers trip over to the other side of Yorkshire. We took in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Friday afternoon before heading to the local hotel on top of the hill overlooking Huddersfield. Last time we were there in February it snowed and this time we were in the middle of a heatwave here in the UK.

The picture from the hill was very different – instead of being covered with a sprinkling of white, the green of the trees were set against a backdrop of scorched yellow fields and that was really apparent walking around the sculpture park too.

But, in the way that these things go, when were had our guided tour, we actually walked through the first rain shower in about 60 days. It was so lovely! Who would have thought that we would welcome the rain back like a long lost friend.

New vlog review on my YouTube channel

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park

A few days ago I published the vlog that you can watch by clicking the window above and I talk about the visit quite a  lot there. Its a really interesting place and I found it very relaxing to walk around lovely parkland, with its lakes and trees, with modern art and sculpture set against the greenery. Even if it was cloudy and a bit dull for the photos!

One thing that I didn’t talk about on the vlog (only because it was getting a bit long) was the chapel within the grounds of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the art installation that we saw. I can’t remember any of the details of who the artist is but its a very intricate web of wool yarn that is suspended all around the chapel. Caught within the web are pages and these are copies of the original chapel registers. I love the skeleton piano but imagine the hours of work!

As well as the female hare that I talked about quite a lot in the vlog, we also saw two other sculptures – the family by Barbara Epworth and some other figures. I can’t remember the artist but I remember they were made after his experiences in World War II and the series are called the Geometry of Fear. I thought that was really powerful. Its not far from where I live to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, so I’ll definitely be going back.

After a lovely meal at the hotel and a bit of crochet, knit and chatter time together, we met up again to go over to the Stylecraft mill to hear all about the new yarns. We all made a log cabin square for a joint blanket and had a bit of a tutorial on colour pooling. I can’t show it yet but Stylecraft are brining out a new colour pooling yarn in the autumn so we had a little play with some samples.

Stylecraft new yarn review

We came away with another ginormous goodie bag of new yarns and the review I’ve just done is ONLY the ones from July. There are plenty more to talk about in August and September. I’ve put loads of information about each one in the vlog but here are the important details about colour names and yardage/metreage.

I had a lot of fun squishing all of this not least because these yarns all have a significant wool content – the Stylecraft Life range is really lovely to work with and I can’t wait to get started on a new project. That purple!!!!!! xxx Kathryn