june cashmere

First and foremost, there is a giveaway associated with this gorgeous yarn review that you can access to at the end of this post! Please click on the link and follow the instructions to be entered to win 3 skeins of June Cashmere Lace in any colour combination of your choosing – pretty awesome and super generous!

I received my yarn courtesy of Stitch Craft Marketing and June Cashmere, choosing Lace in the colourway Silver Fox and the Embrace Cowl pattern by Romi Hill. There is a series of patterns that have been designed for June Cashmere and the Embrace Cowl is one of them. It is a classic pattern with gorgeous feminine lace that ends in a fan-out that sits beautifully on the collar beneath a sweater or jacket. The skein of yarn I received wasn’t quite enough to finish the final garter border of the cowl but after some fudging, you’d never know. If you have been a long-time reader of this blog, you will know that I rarely do yarn reviews. The reason I chose to do this one was because of the amazing story that is told on the website about “Who We Are” in relation to June Cashmere itself. And it was really fun to tell people that I was knitting from 100% Cashmere yarn hand-combed and collected from Kyrgyzstan … because … well, have you heard of Kyrgyzstan?

I highly recommend you head over and read about this story behind this yarn. If you watch and follow some of the conversation over on FiberTrek with Sarah, you will have head of the #soulfulstash, #storybasedyarn and #placebasedyarn. This yarn definitely qualifies! A family with a vision to assist in revitalising the fibre industry in Kyrgyzstan met a man named Sy to begin the work of realizing that dream. Through education and relationship building, they have been able to help the shepherds collect the fibre from their animals and then ship it to a mill in Scotland to be processed into yarn. From there, it is naturally dyed in Maine, USA.

The yarn itself is like working with ‘soft gold’ – the hand of the yarn is incredible. I liked working with it so much that I actually bought some raw 100% cashmere to play with over the coming months to begin to understand this fibre better. The fine downy coat of the indigenous cashmere goats is the cashmere fibre and the shepherds have been taught how to hand-comb the goats to be able to retrieve the fibre from the animals. It is an amazing process and since cashmere has an incredibly short staple length, it looks like a cloud! The interesting thing about cashmere is that while it is light and soft, it is also incredibly strong. I was surprised at the gentle twist angle of the yarn in both the ply and singles – it was gently spun and as a result has an amazing drape. It was hard to break apart by hand though – I had to untwist it prior to pulling it apart (I don’t generally carry scissors with me as one can just untwist yarn and pull it apart to break it).

As the company begins to grow and help develop the fibre industry in Kyrgyzstan, they have been able to help furnish classrooms and assist local communities. If you are able to support their efforts, I highly recommend purchasing even just one skein of this amazing yarn to give it a whirl – and for goodness sake, make something you can wrap around your neck and cuddle into on cool days!

Thank you to the folks at June Cashmere for this amazing yarn, the work they are doing and the opportunity for me to be able to help spread the word.

June Cashmere Giveaway (open until April 12, 2017).