our tribe

7 November 2019

Find Your Tribe and Your Yarn: Creating and Sharing

thecuriocraftsroom the curio crafts room crochet shawl pattern

Last week I published the pattern for my very first shawl design, the Moonwish Wrap (you can find it here on my blog and on Ravelry and Etsy). And today I can already present the yarn I chose for my second shawl design: Scheepjes Our Tribe. This yarn is super soft and has a beautiful drape, so it's ideal for shawls and wraps. If you'd like to learn the very special story of how this yarn came into being, read on.....

Find Your Tribe, Love Them Hard
I have to start with a little flashback to 2016: A beautiful restaurant at the edge of a lake somewhere in the northern part of The Netherlands on a cold November day just a few weeks before Christmas. Me and my fellow Scheepjes Bloggers gathered around a large table. Dozens of paint chip cards. 

 thecuriocraftsroom the curio crafts room crochet shawl pattern

Then we are asked to make our own personal colour combination from all these cards, a combination limited to only 6 colours. Can you imagine how difficult that is? Yes, verrrry! Even more difficult when you realize that these 6 colours are going to form your own personal colourway for a new variegated yarn especially developed for us as a group. But of course we managed and also managed to come up with very diverging colourways. The photo below shows mine: The Curio Crafts Room. Unsurprisingly, I went for peacock colours, which made the selection process a little easier. For my new shawl design I did not choose my own colourway though because I really like to 'save' it for a design that is really peacocky.

thecuriocraftsroom the curio crafts room crochet shawl pattern

Making our own colour combinations was not the only thing we had to do; the yarn also needed a name. Almost immediately the word TRIBE came up. The Scheepjes Bloggers form a tight-knit group that chat almost every day. We are all business owners and that can be very demanding and stressful sometimes, so we need one another to stay sane and most of all we need one another to share the joys of creating. So the yarn was baptized OUR TRIBE because we were so lucky to find and cement a creative and uplifting tribe. We all have the same bracelet - you can see it in the first picture above: "Find Your Tribe", and then of course Love them hard!

New Shawl Design
As you can imagine, I'm really looking forward to creating a shawl with this yarn with its special history. I chose my friend Tammy's colourway, which carries the name of her blog: Canadutch. I especially love the purple shades it has. 
I've set out to design a series of at least 4 shawls that all have a different shape. The first one was made top down into a half-circle/crescent shape. This one couldn't be more different. Next week you can expect the first WIP pictures and I'll also reveal part of the special shape. And within the next month or so I will share the pattern with you.
thecuriocraftsroom the curio crafts room crochet shawl pattern
Our Tribe: Canadutch colourway
Yarn details
Let me round off with some (technical) yarn details. Our Tribe is a variegated yarn that is beautifully twined, which creates a dappled effect and thus the idea that there are even more than 6 different colours. The more the colours contrast, the more dappled the effect. It's super soft and works up very smoothly and quickly. It consists of 70% Merino Superwash and 30% Polyamide and comes in 100g (420m) balls suitable for hook/needle size 2.5 to 3mm, or even larger when making shawls because that'll result in a beautiful drape. It's machine washable at 40 degrees. Since the day we created the blogger colourways, quite a few new colours have been added to the range and now you can choose from 38 different colours - both variegated and single colours.

Where to buy Scheepjes Our Tribe
Scheepjes Our Tribe yarn is available from the online retailers listed below. Click the link and it will take you to the yarn:
UK Wool Warehouse: http://shrsl.com/17oxa
UK Deramores: http://tidd.ly/4aa64575
UK Black Sheep Wools: http://shrsl.com/1sq13
CA Knotty House: http://shrsl.com/17oy3

thecuriocraftsroom the curio crafts room crochet shawl pattern Scheepjes Our Tribe yarn

Thank you to Scheepjes for providing the yarn for this design.
*The affiliate links in this post support giveaways, free patterns, discounts and the running of this blog. By purchasing yarn through these affiliate links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.  Thank you! 

Find Your Tribe and Your Yarn: Creating and Sharing

7 November 2019

14 December 2017

How My Tribe Got Its Own Yarn

Our Tribe yarn The Curio Crafts Room TheCurioCraftsRoom yarnlove crochet

This post is part of the blog hop we - the Scheepjes bloggers - have organized to show off the yarn we were asked to co-develop with Scheepjes...... or in other words: Whoo-hoo, I've got my own yarn with my name on the band!!!

How fab is that? In case you're wondering, let me tell you how this all came about.
A little over a year ago during our annual Bloggers Days, we were asked to do an assignment that was stamped Top Secret. Each of us had to select 6 colours that were to form our own personal yarn shade for a newly developed yarn. We also got to pick the name for this yarn. That's the brief version; I'd love to tell you a bit more on what this all meant to us and to me.

Our Yarn and TheCurioCraftsRoom Colourway

Picture this: A beautiful restaurant at the edge of a lake somewhere in the northern part of The Netherlands on a cold November day just a few weeks before Christmas 2016. A large box full of paint chip cards is emptied onto a large table and we are asked to create our own personal colour combination - consisting of 6 different shades - for a new variegated yarn especially developed for us as a group. The mood was already festive with the restaurant's abundant Christmas decorations and of course us being very happy to be together - most of us only get to see one another once a year since we live on different continents - but you can imagine that this announcement topped everything. So we got to work with scissors and tape.

Our Tribe yarn The Curio Crafts Room TheCurioCraftsRoom yarnlove crochet

Unsurprisingly, I guess :-), I went for a peacocky palette, this being the chance to have all my favourite colours combined in one ball. I chose two shades of green, three shades of blue and added some purple although strictly speaking purple is not a peacock colour (though you can detect some purple in the peacock eye in the centre of the feather depending on light and angle). Purple has always been my favourite colour so I felt I needed a bit of that in my personal ball of yarn.

Our Tribe yarn The Curio Crafts Room TheCurioCraftsRoom yarnlove crochet

As you can see from the pictures, there's a lot of colour variation in the yarn. The samples I made show the darker range of shades while to close up shows the lighter ones.

After a few hours of selecting colours and arranging and rearranging colour orders, all of us had created beautiful colour combinations: over a dozen personal palettes for a new yarn yet to be named.


Find Your Tribe, Love Them Hard
Thus, we were asked to suggest names for this new yarn and almost immediately the word TRIBE came up. We form a very tight-knit group that stay in contact every day. We are all entrepreneurs and that can be very demanding and stressful sometimes so we need one another to stay sane and most of all we need one another to share the joys of creating. So the yarn was baptized OUR TRIBE because we were so lucky to find and cement a creative and uplifting tribe.....and here we are! These head shots were taken last September during another Bloggers' Weekend.
Our Tribe yarn The Curio Crafts Room TheCurioCraftsRoom yarnlove crochet

Yarn details
Let me round off with some (technical) yarn details. Our Tribe is a variegated yarn that is beautifully twined, which creates a dappled effect and thus the idea that there are even more than 6 different colours. The more the colours contrast, the more dappled the effect. It's super soft and works up very smoothly and quickly. It consists of 70% Merino Superwash and 30% Polyamide and comes in 100g (420m) balls suitable for hook/needle size 2.5 to 3mm. It's machine washable at 40 degrees.
You could use the yarn to make shawls, blankets, socks, hats, gloves or wristies, to name but a few options.

Our Tribe yarn The Curio Crafts Room TheCurioCraftsRoom yarnlove crochet
Blog hop to the next shade
Tomorrow Esther from Happy in Red will show you which colour combination is her favourite in blog hop post number 11.
In case you missed yesterday's blog hop post, please visit It's all in a nutshell.
Enjoy!





Where to buy Our Tribe
UK: Wool Warehouse (international shipping)
CANADA: Knotty House
THE NETHERLANDS: Various Scheepjes' stockists
Caro's Atelier

How My Tribe Got Its Own Yarn

14 December 2017

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