A complete coincidence

It really is. I was not feeling Maryland Sheep and Wool envy, likely to be far too hot for me.

No, me and my mate from Blackburn had been planning a trip to Clapham. That's Clapham in North Yorkshire, not London. Much nicer - the drive alone was well worth the effort, through the fringes of the Trough of Bowland, into the Dales, nothing but moorland and sheep and curlews to be seen for mile after mile after mile. Bliss.

Anyway, we were going to visit a yarn shop that many. many people had told me about in hushed tones of awe. All I can say is - wow.

Now, I spin my own yarn, love to do so, and am only occasionally seduced by the store boughten stuff. I admit, rather more in the last year or two, as commercial yarn spinning has risen to ever greater heights of ingenuity. But this place, Jenny Scott's (there is a website, but only a very brief one dealing with the embroidery and bear stuff, both of which are cool, but it is the yarn that I'm on about) is super. Colour, colour all around, fabulous textures, all really nice stuff. Colinette, Noro. All the usual suspects, but more of them than one usually sees. Our LYS in town stocks the self-same brands, but kind of one example of each, won't get more in until one batch is sold. Frustrating. This place is like a sweetie shop, with a Juliette Binoche type of owner, gently enabling, seducing you with little offers, oh the utter temptation.

I was tempted and I fell. I was actually pretty restrained, but I can still hear the screaming-in-agony of my credit card.



The Charlotte Schurch sock book looks very good, just the thing for me and my handspun, with the designs built around stitches not yarns. Then, I found a little stash of Brittany sets of five short dpns - almst unheard of around these parts - so I snaffled all the smaller sizes. I keep breaking or losing them, and like to have multiple sets anyway so I can work on both socks at once if so moved.

Yarn. Well, very restrained Noro Silk Garden. The owner is damn good - she picked out colours she thought would work for me, steering me away from the more vibrant shades, and you know, she's right. This one has the lime green I have been beading with of late, plus my favourite shade of blue, back in the wardrobe again this year. Clever, clever. This is aimed at a shawl, examples of which were draped around the shop, so simple it made me weep to think none of us had come up with the design for ourselves, and quite irresistible. The next one will be in handspun and hand-dyed, but it will be interesting to work in this.

Oh, and one little skein of an irridescent Colinette, that looks like ostrich feathers when knitted up. The colours in this range are mouthwatering.

Clapham is a very atractive Dales village, with a beck running through the middle, a pub, a couple of cafes - one was closed so we used the other twice, and apparently both come highly recommended. Great for a day out.

We drove back a different way, and came across a good birdwatching spot at a reservoir in the Gisburn Forest, now earmarked for the DSM and me to revisit for a picnic and a spot of twitching. A good day.

I keep pondering the question of why I feel guilty about buying yarn. Apart from the cost - and that is less of an issue these days - I think it is mostly because I also feel that I have very limited knitting skills, and something about the rate at which I knit. Also, if the thing I make is easy-peasy, but handspun and even better, hand-dyes, then I can be more proud of it. That shouldn't matter one jot. Then, I can somehow allow myself to build up a fibre stash, a handspun stash but not a bought yarn stash. Is that not just plain daft? It has to be that damn puritanical voice of ours and our parents generation echoing in our ears. "You spent how much? And just what are you going to do with that, then? Couldn't you have unravelled an old one?"

I still have a way to travel........