My Sister Knits has finally received our shipment from Retrosaria Rosa Pomar! It was stuck in customs for quite a while and we’re thrilled the boxes finally made their way to us! We’ve restocked Mondim, Brusca, and Matiz. In addition, we’ve added Pegulhal to our carefully chosen collection of Rosa’s yarns.

I briefly mentioned this yarn a few weeks ago but I’m going to take a deeper dive into it today. We are caught up in Rosa Pomar’s passion for saving native endangered Portuguese sheep breeds and helping their shepherds. She has single-handedly helped to not only save but grow some of these flocks. One of the things she does is purchase wool from shepherds at an above market price which is an incentive to help save heritage breeds. You can read more here and here.

From left to right, colors 01, 14, 10, 06

Pegulhal is an old Portuguese word for flock and the pronunciation is peh-goo-YAL. Peh sounds like the ‘pe’ in ‘pet; goo sounds like ‘goo’ in ‘good’, and YAL sounds like ‘shall’. In Portuguese, ‘lh’ creates a sound similar to the ‘y’ in ‘yes’. This will take some practice to get it right!

The label shows a mythical blended creature to reflect the fact that the yarn is made with a mix of wool: endangered Campanica and Merino Preto (black Merino).

This yarn is going to be excellent for stranded colorwork! It’s non-superwash, fingering weight, woolen spun, and ‘sticky’. The woolen spun quality means it will make warm, light weight accessories and garments. The ‘sticky’ quality is what makes it so good for colorwork. “Why?”, you ask? Because it helps with getting a consistent gauge, the floats stick to the back of the stitches, when it’s blocked the stitches bloom and merge into a beautiful, uniform fabric. Don’t be put off if you only want to use one color, though! You don’t have to use it for colorwork!

Pegulhal is a yarn that should be swatched no matter what you’re making because you’re going to be so eager to work with it after you see how it blooms and softens! The fiber is dyed before spinning, creating subtle heathered colors. It’s grown, scoured, milled, and dyed in Portugal.

Ravelry is really helpful if you want inspiration on what to make with a certain yarn. Just search for the yarn and go to the Projects tab. There are 23 pages of projects made with Pegulhal!

We have a limited number of sweaters for sale in the shop, a first for us. These are The Sheep Sweater, designed by Rosa, and are made with this yarn. If we run out, you can always make one for yourself!

Also in this shipment was the ribbon we’ve been expecting! It is just what you need for your steeked edges!

We welcome you into the shop to discover our Rosa Pomar yarns; we’re one of 8 shops in the US to carry this unique yarn. Watch for a yarn tasting event coming soon!

Happy knitting,

Finally! Our Rosa Pomar is Here!

Is it a Vest, Is it a Slipover?