My Affair with Gunther

When I started Yarn Mixology, I had a small, but very reliable little yarn winder. As the business grew and orders started to arrive, I realised I would need a better one. So I had an industrial winder built in Germany, by a lovely chap called..............you guessed it.......Gunther. It was only fitting that the new machine should be called Gunther. And that is how it started. I soon realised that my new wonderful machine could wind bobbles better (neater, and all that) and much much bigger - up to 3000 meters in fact! Madness. Who would want a bobble you could use as a coffee table? Hmmmmmm, interesting thought........anyway, on with the story. You may not know, but I adore big, squishy shawls. The kind you can wrap yourself in when it get chilly outside and you want to linger over your glass of wine. Or cup of coffee. Or good book. You get my drift. 1500m would do the the trick, I thought. Now for colours..............you know I love colours and I was going to create some combos, when I realised that I had lots and lots of leftover yarn on my cones. Each scrap cone was not enough to be included in a conventional bobble, but more than enough to give me the 20 metres I needed for each colour. And that's how the Gunther bobble started. Each one is unique, with between 18 and 28 colours. Each strand is a different colour and changes every 20 metres. Randomness? Not quite. I line up the colour families and travel through them, with a bit of extra volume with some merino here and Italian Softly Softly cash wool there. So much fun! I should also mention that the Gunthers can't be found in the shop, but only via our FB group 'Yarn Mixology Group'. I only make one or two at a time. That's because they take ages to make - as you'd expect with nearly 80 colour changes over 1500m and because I let enough leftover accumulate to give me the number of colours I need. And just in case you fall in love with one, take him home, and then can't decide what to do with him, I've written a pattern for a Gunther shawl. Check it out in our FB group file. It's free, like all of my patterns. I'm off, winding my next Gunther. See you soon, with some very exciting news!