Episode 40 - with Julie Asselin

Hello Pomcats! Things are warming up here in London, and we are gearing up for Pomfest! But in the meantime we have our 40th episode of Pomcast all ready for your listening pleasure, featuring one of our Pomfest vendors, and favourite dyers, Julie Asselin. We also have all our usual knit-chat and giggles, news, reviews, and classic top 3. Let's go! 

Make sure to download the Soundcloud app if you want to listen on a mobile device, or if you subscribe to Pomcast on iTunes it should appear on your device now! All episodes of Pomcast are also now available on Stitcher too. And while you’re having a listen, why not rate us or even leave a little review – thanks!

A huge thank you to The Wool Kitchen for sponsoring this podcast. The Wool Kitchen create fun and colourful yarns, all hand dyed in East London. They say ‘embrace the colour’ – check out their variegated yarns, from punchy poolparties to sophisticated zips of colour, including British breeds and luxury merino silks. There is yarn for all!

NEWS

There is so much going on at PPHQ we can hardly keep up with it all! But let's give it a go!

Wool Journey - we are excited to announce the next book coming this summer from Pom Pom Press. We’ve been working on Wool Journey: Shetland, our collaboration with Jaime and Amber of Fancy Tiger Crafts, Malia Mather, and Stephen West of Stephen and Penelope. Along with Ysolda Teague these yarn fans took a trip to Shetland, and brought back a wealth of inspiration and knowledge. The book came out of this woolly adventure, and explores the knitting community and culture from the Shetland Islands. It’s part travel guide, part travel book, and of course features 5 patterns inspired by and knit in Shetland yarns. Keep an eye out for more information and sneak peeks coming very soon!

Our other main news is that we can reveal most of our vendor line up for Pomfest! And what a line up it is! We can't wait to have all these brilliant yarns and haberdashery all under one roof.

TELL + TELL

Soph is working on her Tinea, and sticking to her new year knitolution of maintaining monogamous relationships with her projects. Whereas Lydia is experiencing some project insecurities, but as always, planning to knit all the socks. Her most recent sock yarn crush is Mondim from Rosa Pomar.

REVIEWS

We have some mega jazzy Wool Kitchen Sock to review, in the colour Heterochromia. The yarn is a 4ply, and is 80% BFL, and 20% bamboo, which gives it a subtle sheen, as well as making it stronger, and bringing its antibacterial qualities to the mix! This yarn is everything you could want from a sock yarn, and the way it knits up makes it fun to work with. The background of semi solid dove grey is interrupted by little zips of speckled colour.

We have a skein of this yarn to giveaway, hooray! To win comment below letting us know who you are looking forward to seeing at Pomfest. Make sure you enter before midnight GMT on Sunday 11th June as any comments made after this date won’t count – good luck!

We also had fun with a Gleener, which is keeping our knits looking fresh and pill free! The lovely folks at Gleener have given you Pomcats the code POMPOM10 to use on Amazon UK or here at Gleener.com to give you 10% off any of their fuzz removing products - hurrah!

We also had a chat about Within by Jane Richmond & Shannon Cook - a must for cosy autumnal knits! Plus Flotsam and Jetsam by Ash Alberg which features gorgeous cables accessories and garments inspired by ocean-bed debris.

INTERVIEW

We were so excited to speak to dyer, Pomfest vendor, and Pomfestkal sponsor, Julie Asselin. We love Julie's yarns, and we talked to her about her journey to yarn dyeing, her inspiration, and her knitting and exercise routine. Trust us, it's impressive! Julie's Leizu DK was used for the Boum tank and Shindig shawl in our Anniversary Issue:

And her Hektos was used in our Issue 1 reboot for the Skipworth Mitts:

Julie also discussed the process behind Nurtured, which is created in a different way to her other hand dyed yarns! And lastly her desert island yarn was Shibui Twig (not twill!).

We can't wait to see more of her yarns in person at Pomfest!

TOP 3...

... cities! This one was suggested by inesversusthewool on our ravelry forum. Listen to find out which cities we chose!

Thanks for listening! We'll be back next month with more, and very soon after that we'll be bringing you Pomcast Live! We can't wait!

xxx Pom Pom

Thanks again to Wool Kitchen for sponsoring!