End of year Review 2025

Here in Highland Perthshire we have had our first snow of winter, so I think it’s time to ‘coorie doon’ and look back on another year at Moulin Yarns.

The studio opened a week later than usual due to a visit to the Woolly Good Gathering taking place in Edinburgh on the first weekend in April. It was split over 2 venues close to the centre of the city with the marketplace in the Central Methodist Halls at Tollcross and workshops and lectures a short walk away at the Edinburgh Printmakers Gallery. As always it was a chance to meet up with old friends and make new friends in the yarn community.

The studio opened for the season on 10 April and over the weekend nine customers went away happy with bundles of yarn, with some heading to Austria, Norway, Italy and even as far as Melbourne in Australia! What a great start to the season and it was to continue like that over the course of the season.

A  major investment I made at the beginning of the season was to purchase a catering oven to allow me to dye larger quantities of yarn at a time, and what a worthwhile purchase it was, being able to dye larger quantities of the same dyelot meant that there was more likely to be a sweaters worth of yarn in the same dyelot.

Craft fairs and markets all start up in April and I took part in regular monthly events in Aberfeldy and Pitlochry, with the studio remaining open thanks to my wife, the wonderful Knitting Mayhem!  The markets are always different, some being busy and others which can be quite low on footfall. Saying that at Pitlochry there are often tourist as it is located close to the train station and tourist coach drop of point, as proven by customers from New York and Australia at the April market.

Towards the end of April a group of knitters from North America on a tour called ‘Knitting Round Scotland’ came to the studio where I demonstrated the process of yarn from fleece to finished, dyed yarn. There were twenty one people on the tour who had already visited Edinburgh and Dundee and were going on to Inverness, Fort William and Glasgow, with lots of yarny adventures planned by the tour organisers.

It wasn’t all business though as we were able take time to go to shows and music gigs, with a trip to Edinburgh to see the musical Moulin Rouge in May and three trips to Glasgow in the space of sixteen days to see Bonnie Raitt, Mellissa Etheridge and Brandi Carlile. All of them were good and very different. While Bonnie Raitt and Brandi Carlile had full bands Mellissa Etheridge was solo wit just guitar accompaniment. In August it was time for annual pilgrimage to Edinburgh for the Festivals. We managed to fit in six shows in the space of two days, including music, books, theatre, comedy and art. Who knew we were so cultured?!

Business was still busy and dyeing yarn was a weekly task over the summer, making use of the lovely weather a lot of the dyeing was able to be done outside which was a bonus. It also meant monthly orders for yarn to keep up with what was disappearing from the shelves!

The Aberfeldy Markets had taken a break to allow work to be carried out at the venue, the Birks Cinema, and they started back in October but I had to give it a miss as we were taking a well earned break for a week in the North West of Scotland in Wester Ross. Our journey north happened to coincide with a storm! The weather when we were away wasn’t great but we enjoyed touring Assynt and Torridon, including the highest road in the UK, the Beallach na Ba. The views were breathtaking!! We were also fortunate to see quite a bit of wildlife while we were there. It was a lovely relaxing week away at the end of the season.

From October to April the studio is officially closed but anyone who wants can get in touch to make an appointment and so far eight customers have done just that, coming from Canada and the US. At the end of November I had the final two craft markets of the year, the always popular Aberfeldy Santa Day on the 29^th and, new to me Blair Athol Distillery Christmas Fair on the 30^th. It’s now time to put my feet up and relax, apart from doing my tax returns!!

There are plans to increase the display area in the studio for next year so that will be happening over the winter ready for opening next April. The studio will open again on

Thursday April 2^nd, which is the start of Easter weekend, but will be closed from the 16^th to 19^th to allow me to visit the Woolly Good Gathering in Edinburgh in its new venue the Edinburgh Academy in the Stockbridge area of the city, an area I know well from growing up there in the 1960s and early 1970s.

I’ll leave you with a few photos that some of my lovely customers have allowed me to use, showing their very impressive finished objects completed using Moulin Yarns.

Thank you everyone.

I think I’ve rambled on long enough, so until next year cheerio!

Happy Knitting,

David

Moulin Yarns