Yarn on holiday

It’s been a while since I last blogged, but I have an excuse… I’ve been holiday in the USA for two weeks.  I love going shopping on holiday, no matter where I am, particularly things like going to the supermarket and seeing what different food and brands are on sale.  I have a particular love of FrootLoops and Milk Duds, when I go the US because you can’t get them here.

And of course, I had to try and visit some craft shops whilst I was away too.

First was Loop and Leaf in Santa Barbara, California.  I only had 10 minutes spare before I had to leave Santa Barbara and head to lunch with a distant relative, but it was a lovely 10 minutes.  There were a few regular customers in there knitting away and I chatted to them as I browsed.

I treated myself to a skein of sock yarn.

A few days later, leaving my friend lying by the pool, I ventured into to Costa Mesa, California where I spent a delightful afternoon visiting first Suzoo’s Wool Works, Piecemakers Country Store, and finally Joann Fabrics.

I had a very nice chat with the owner of Suzoo’s Wool Works and bought a cute pattern to make Sheldon the turtle, using Frog Tree Alpaca yarn.  I thought it was not only a cute pattern, but a nice way to try out the yarn too.

Piecemakers Country Store is a real treasure trove with lots of gifts and craft items in every nook and cranny. Their quilt pattern calendars are extremely popular and I picked one up for Mum along with some fat quarters and a quilting magazine.

Finally Joann’s where almost everything was on sale.  I got some more fat quarters and some embroidery thread for Mum.

Yarn sales

I went to Spin a Yarn this morning because their sale started today.  I’ve been very lazy over the past couple of weeks and haven’t left the village for days, so it was nice to go a bit further.  Mum came with me and as it was a sunny day she thought it would nice to drive over the Moor on the way home.  It was very pretty but boy, it was chilly though 😀

Spin a Yarn was packed though.  It’s a tiny shop anyway, which packed to the rafters with a HUGE range of yarns, and today it was crazy with queues almost out of the door at one point.  But with a 20% discount for loyalty card holders, it was worth going.

I bought some Lanartus Sumo yarn and some more mesh to make a couple of the woven scarves and Mum bought some sock yarn.  I fancy doing another pair of socks too.  Before I made my first pair, I wasn’t really bothered about doing them, but I can see now why people get addicted to sock knitting.  The instructions I had were good, so I didn’t find them difficult to do.

Anyway, time to get back to the possum yarn.  I’m making a hat with it, did I say?  It’s going to take me a while to do though – small needles, lots of ribbing which takes me ages.

Yarn shopping

Last weekend Mum and I had a morning out, whilst Dad was at Twickenham watching England v Italy in the Six Nations. We decided to go to Newton Abbot and Bovey Tracey – places I haven’t been to for years, but where there were yarn shops!

Austins department store in Newton Abbot has a haberdashery section with yarns and I bought some pretty lilic yarn to make a cardigan for baby Emily and a ball of Wendy Moiselle (in damson):

I’ve no idea how I’ll use it, but I loved the colour and thought it would interesting to use it in occassional rows in perhaps a knitted bag?

Spin a yarn in Bovey Tracey has some gorgeous stuff, but not cheap though. I would have bought liked to have bought lots, but didn’t really have particular projects in mind, so restrained myself. I’ll certainly go back there in the future though.

Mum also tells me that a department store in Plymouth has 20% of their yarn this weekend, so guess where I’m going tomorrow morning!