All About Woolmouse
Woolmouse, established by Grace and David, mother and son, began in 2011 in the beautiful market town of Richmond, N.Yorks to provide the kind of wool and knitting accessories that Grace was looking for locally and wasn’t finding.
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First we had one stall in the market, luckily, an indoor market, and with business expanding we were quickly working 7 days a week and expanded across several stalls.
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We then moved to our own small but quirky shop in 2014, in Barnard Castle, Teesdale Co Durham, as we were not able find a suitable premises in Richmond.
Lovehandyed then evolved, to supply the shop with local and affordable indie dyed yarn, many of our customers were tourists, holidaying either nearby, or passing through on their way to Cumbria, the lake District or Scotland. They told us they wanted smaller uk woolly souvenirs of their trip, or presents to take home, often by plane.
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Unable to find dyers locally Grace who has always had a love of all things crafty set about learning to dye yarn. David then took over the dye pots and, where possible, uses UK wool/yarn and dyes for the majority, if not all of our hand-dyed yarns.
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We began to realise customers were moving towards buying their wool/yarn at wool/yarn/knitting shows, that were springing up around the country, and after trying our hand at exhibiting we took the decision to close our bricks and mortar shop as the lease came up for renewal.
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We now thoroughly enjoy being on the road, catching up with customers year after year ,as well as the support and friendship from other exhibitors. This has sadly been on hold for 2020 with the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
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In September 2020 we were fortunate to find a small but perfectly formed shop unit in the lovely durham dales centre, Stanhope, just down the hill from David.
We are a family of crafters that love crafting!
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Grace is a serial crafter, sewing, knitting, crochet and is constantly searching for new ideas to keep the stand interesting, and fend off old age! She can most often be found in her studio conservatory in Bolam, Durham with her expanding sewing machine collection ,planning new makes. Her drawstring stand up project bags have quite a following, as do her artisan’s pinnies.
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David dyes all our yarn, from his studio kitchen in Stanhope, on the edge of a moor in beautiful Weardale.
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Brian (recently retired, but is as busy as ever!) crafts our popular wooden shawl pins and when necessary rewinds, twists and untangles wool!
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Katie creates our knitted and wool inspired greetings cards, stitch/project markers , scissors pouches and shawl cuffs.
We hope you enjoy our website, and if we can be of any further assistance regarding any items in our online shop or anything you have seen at any of the shows we attend then please don’t hesitate to get in contact.