I have been knitting since I was six years old.
My first fascination began with the older lady who lived next door. Her name was Mamie Guthrie, a native of Killarney, and she used to sit on her front porch and knit for hours every day. I would watch beautiful garments come to life in her hands while she told stories about her childhood in Ireland. I didn’t know it then, but I was being handed two things at once — a craft, and a country.
The yarn is the story
There’s a reason we named this journal Good Yarn. In Ireland, a yarn is a tale, told slowly, with the fire lit and no hurry to get to the end. And of course a yarn is also the thing itself — the spun wool that becomes a gansey, a blanket, a pair of socks for someone you love.
The two meanings have always felt like the same thing to me. Every skein has a story: the breed of sheep, the farm it came from, the hands that spun and dyed it.
Breed-specific, local, alive
In recent years I’ve devoted myself to this obsession more seriously, giving time to my local Wool Shop and the Loudoun Valley Sheep Producers’ Association. It taught me to care where wool comes from — to seek out breed-specific artisan yarns from local farms rather than anonymous balls off a shelf.
Ireland rewards that kind of curiosity. On our knitting tours we visit the woollen mills, meet the makers, and put our hands on yarn still smelling faintly of the hills it grew on.
Come knit with us
You don’t have to be an expert. I’ve taught beginners and intermediates for years — at community centres, at wool shops, and on the road in Ireland — and I promise you this: there is no better place to learn, or to deepen the craft, than in a country where every field has sheep in it and every village has someone’s grandmother who’ll happily show you a better way to turn a heel.
Bring your needles. We’ll bring the yarn — and the yarns.
— Victoria Christie-Healy, Celtic RnR Tours
