Yesterday was my birthday, and to celebrate my lovely Boy drove me down to Yorkshire and treat me to a little wool hauling. I had planned to bring my camera along, and show you pics of all the lovely places we visited, but in the rush and excitement of the morning I forgot to pop it in my bag! But I did manage to snap the occasional phone pic…
So here goes. A snapshot wool filled birthday tour…
Giant needles at Texere. These things were ridiculously large!
Beautiful snowy Bradford on the drive to Coldspring Mill. It’s nice to see pictures of Bradford being beautiful because I lived there for 5 years as a student, and the area that I lived in by the university was thoroughly awful. I won’t bore you with the details, but needless to say my last couple of years there were miserable. Hopefully my bad memories can be overwritten with images as lovely as this!
More of the drive to Coldspring Mill, followed by…
a nice cup of Yorkshire tea at the Mill! And a lovely lunch of giant Yorkshire pudding, sausages, gravy, mash and peas (that I was far too hungry to stop and take picture of) for the utterly bargainous price of £3! I’m a bit of a sausage snob, so I was dubious when I saw the price, but it was completely delicious, and I still can’t believe how cheap it was.
We rounded it all off with a stop at Whitby on the way home, and an obligatory visit to the Magpie Cafe for fish and chips and mulled cider, followed by lovely moonlit walk along the pier. There really is nothing nicer than being wrapped up in deliciously warm handknits, staring up at the stars with the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and the wind whipping around your face. A perfect end to the day.
Well actually, the perfect end to the day was coming home to the birthday cake that my Mum had baked for me! Vanilla cake with lemon buttercream is my Mum’s specialty, and it is delicious.
But I suppose the important part of this post is the haulage, so here it is!
Some King Cole Riot DK, which is touted as being a Noro dupe. This ticks (almost) all my boxes (grey? Check. Jewel tones? Oh yes.)
Mystery yarn from Coldspring Mill. It’s a beautiful rust colour, looks like a DK weight, feels like merino and I’m pretty sure it’s Debbie Bliss but I haven’t a clue what line it is. Might have to do some investigating one of these days. They had a larger pack of this yarn, and I’m kicking myself for not getting it because it’s such a lovely colour!
Chocolatey brown Debbie Bliss Rialto, in what I think is an aran weight.
According to the pack this is Extra Fine Merino 4 ply, so although I initially thought this was a Debbie Bliss yarn, I now think it’s probably Sublime Extra Fine Merino 4 ply. Yellow is not a colour I’m usually drawn to, but I love this. It’s not quite dark enough to be a mustard, not bright enough to be lemon, and not brown enough to be biscuit. It’s just lovely and buttery, and I’m surprised at how much I love it.
There was more haulage. I picked up a couple of balls of colourful acrylic for my best friends daughter as I’m giving her knitting lessons for Christmas, and a few balls of Stylecraft 4 ply for knitting dolls clothes and accessories. There was also a huge amount of fibre haulage!
I’ve been a little obsessed with dyeing tops at the moment, so I’ve stocked up on undyed merino as well as picking up a few other fibres and blends so that I can try my hand at spinning wools other than merino. It looks like 2012 is going to be the year of the wheel!
