“IT'S GREAT that people can take a cone of yarn and transform it into something either wearable, practical or decorative by creating stitches, knot or rows.”

Joanne Richardson runs Airedale Yarns - our T&A Trader of the Week - an online business providing rare, unusual yarns to make creative projects interesting and unique. They include yarns made from wool, jute, paper, cashmere, silk and mohair, as well as a variety of man-made fibres.

“The same cone can become a myriad of different things,” Joanne adds. “Rug yarn is the biggest seller at the moment. This is due to its versatility for crocheting, weaving or tufting rugs, although a very recent trend is to use a tufting gun where the yarn is fired through a gun onto a hessian background making for a much quicker end product.”

After an art foundation course at Bradford College Joanne studied for a degree in design crafts where she specialised in textiles. “I have been a crafter all my life, whether knitting, crochet, embroidery or dressmaking,” she says. “I'm now teaching myself to machine knit.”

She worked for a large yarn retail company in Bradford for more than 20 years until it closed in 2015. The following year she and husband Guy decided to launch Airedale Yarns focusing on online sales of weaving and rug making yarns.

The couple tend to source yarns from local suppliers who often buy redundant stock from weaving mills, knitting manufacturers and other such places. “These might be one-offs where you won't find anyone else selling the same yarn, or unusual yarns that we repackage into much smaller, user-friendly packages,” says Joanne.

“All our suppliers are local to West Yorkshire, which is great, whether it's rug yarn from carpet factories, cotton twisters or mohair importers - the products may come from further afield, but we can see them in Bradford, Keighley, Bingley or Halifax before we buy.”

The couple often advise others on the thickness of yarns and what yarns and fibres are best for certain tasks such as rug making. “We really ought to have an FAQ section on our website as people are always asking how much yarn they'll need for a rug....literally ‘how long is a piece of string?’

“We don't follow any trends with what we buy, but we notice colours that are popular. Everyone still loves grey, but we are also currently selling quite a few earth tones, golds and coppers and lots of deep greens and blues.”

Crafting kits are hugely popular. “This was especially so during lockdown as everything was included and delivered straight to the door,” says Joanne. “They are also very popular at Christmas for stocking fillers, secret Santas etc…”

The lockdowns led to a “very busy year” for the firm. “I think people took up every craft they'd ever wanted to try. We sold more macrame kits than we could make and were lucky enough to be featured on This Morning, so we had more orders in 20 minutes than we would normally have had in a month. I think that's the closest we'll ever get to going viral and it did mean working some long nights and Sundays to catch up.”

She adds: “Macrame - which looks more complicated than it is - is hugely popular and it did feel as though everyone in the country must have one of our macrame kits. As houseplants have seen a resurgence in popularity, so has macrame as it enables growers to hang them up.”

Customers sometimes send pictures of something they have made, which is a treat, says Joanne.

Although yarn is a very tactile product, customers now have much more confidence buying online. “They are safe in the knowledge that if a colour isn't quite right we can exchange it for them, so there's very little risk.

“There aren't many yarns shops selling coned yarns or machine knitting yarns, so they are always happy to find exciting yarns that we might have that they wouldn't be able to find in their local wool shop.”

*airedaleyarns.co.uk