This year Yarndale helped to raise valuable funds for  some wonderful local and National charities.

The Park and Ride  was a great success for our visitors this year, and we couldn’t have done it without the help of two wonderful charities.

The Rotary Club of Skipton runs a charity car park in the grounds of Skipton Building Society and Yarndale visitors were able to use this car parking facility for a small fee. This endeavor raised over £1,000 during the course of the weekend with all proceeds going towards helping local good causes. In addition, local charity S.C.A.D. – (Skipton and Craven Action for Disability) provided a shuttle mini bus service for visitors attending Yarndale who had parked at Skipton Building Society. Thanks to the generosity of our visitors, S.C.A.D. raised approximately £600, and we are delighted to be able to support this very hard working local charity. Thanks to all our visitors who used the Park & Ride and made it such a success.

For the second year running, we had much fun working with Oxfam Skipton, raising not only money for this amazing national charity, but lots of YARN too! Oxfam hosted a “Yarn Amnesty” at Yarndale, providing a drop-off point for visitors to donate unwanted yarn from their stash. A staggering 30 bags were collected, now that’s a lotta yarn! Some of this will be sold in Oxfam Skipton’s shop, but the rest is kept to be used by a fabulous group of crafty makers affectionately known as O.M.G.

O.M.G. stands for “Oxfam Makers Group”. This talented group of local ladies work throughout the year turning donated yarn, fabric and haberdashery into a beautiful range of hand made goodies for the shop. Think cute little knitted decorations, accessories, cushion, blankets and bags, all hand made with love and care from unwanted materials donated to Oxfam. Since it’s launch in December 2013, O.M.G. has raised over £1,000 for Oxfam from the sale of hand made goods in the shop. We think it’s just brilliant!

Oxfam also very kindly ran the Bag Creche for us at Yarndale this year, which raised further funds for the charity. Manager of Oxfam Skipton Carl Knott was delighted with the response. He told us “we made £120 from the bag creche which we used to buy 4 sheep (which we thought was rather appropriate!) Oxfam buy livestock for communities facing poverty and the idea is the livestock provide things which can be sold (eggs, manure or wool etc) to provide an income for the recipient.” He went on to add “the shop itself was very busy over Yarndale weekend. Our top selling category over the 2 days was wool and linen!” No surprises there then!

Now let me introduce you to Sheila Metcalfe, Skipton’s very own Crochet Queen. Sheila is a great friend of the Yarndale team and during the course of 2014 has worked her fingers tirelessly in a quest to sort out our famous bunting. The bunting had previously been strung onto lengths of tape so Sheila undertook the task of crocheting the whole lot together for us. It took her 8 months to work through the 6,212 bunting triangles, what a star.

Not content with that, Sheila then set about creating a beautiful Crochet Garden display for Yarndale, to raise awareness and funds for the Alzheimers Society, in memory of a dear friend who suffered from the disease. Sheila’s kind heart and generous spirit touched a great many people and her wonderful display raised an admirable £209.50. There were also additional funds raised from the sale of knit and crochet goods totaling £107.70, all of which Sheila donated to Save the Children.  Sheila, we think you are absolutely incredible, thank you for all that you do for the love of yarn.

Once again our creative competition was organised with local business The Tempest Arms.  Last year it was tea cosies, and this year it was the turn of the humble egg. Yarn lovers from all over the UK made sets of four egg cosies for a chance to win a fabulous prize, with the egg cosy sets then being sold at Yarndale to raise money. We raised a total of £63 for Macmillan Nurses. The winning egg cosies were rather special (that’s them up above), and were entitled “A Bunch of Good Eggs”! Thank you to everyone who contributed to this fun competition.

We also chose the same charity (Macmillan Nurses) to receieve a donation from us on behalf of local company HML, who kindly allowed us to use their car park during Yarndale Weekend.

Last, but by no means least, here is the lovely Stacey looking very happy to be at Yarndale! Stacey is the Fundraising & Events Co-ordinator for S.E.L.F.A. – (Skipton Extended Learning for All). Members of the S.E.L.F.A. team volunteered to run our Children’s Corner at Yarndale this year, providing woolly activities for our young visitors. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our Yarndale exhibitors, some amazing prizes were donated to S.E.L.F.A. which enabled them to run a very successful raffle during the weekend. 35 prizes were on offer, and our visitors must have loved the look of them as £812 was raised from the sale of raffle tickets. S.E.L.F.A. manager Emma Pears told us “to say we were overwhelmed by the generosity of the Yarndale community would be an understatement! We were literally blown away! We’ve never raised so much from a raffle!”

S.E.L.F.A. is a wonderful local charity which aims to provide a range of activities for vulnerable, disadvantaged and disabled children who live in the Skipton and Craven district of North Yorkshire. Throughout the year, they offer a range of fun and inspiring out-of-school workshops, a holiday club and specialist after-school clubs; as well as trips for children and young people. Yarndale is thrilled to support such a dedicated team of all round lovely people doing all round lovely things for our community.

The Yarndale team would like to thank everyone who contributed to this year’s wonderful fundraising efforts. ♥ Thank you ♥