Fancy this and fancy that

I think I've established that the knitting bug has started to bite me as the temperatures here in Alcala begin to drop. The big blue box has been dragged down from the store room upstairs and I've been sorting out my stash.
But nothing has grabbed me. Sad face.

SO, after a couple of hours teaching (and a few euros in my purse) I decided to investigate the local mercerías - which are like old-fashioned haberdashers, selling a bit of all sorts of things. Not the beautiful, colour-coded, subtly-laid out, delight-for-the-senses wool shops I had access to in Yorkshire - which, if you didn't know is  where wool was invented - but a mishmash of material, towels, buttons, little drawers with goodness knows what in them, knickers for one euro a pair, towelling dressing gowns - and plastic bags full of 'ovillos'. This word is what the Spanish call a ball of wool. They're not hot on knitting in most of Spain and there's no verb 'to knit' - 'ovillo' means a tangle! I will say no more. Though I'm tempted..

No, moving on, I remembered seeing a video on one of my favourite wool shop sites - Black Sheep Wools - where a woman was knitting up some novelty yarn into a super frilly scarf. And here in the shop, on the floor in a plastic bag though still recognisably a 'ball' was something similar to the yarn used on the video. If you're interested, watch this:



I bought two balls of novelty yarn and whilst knitting it up is a bit fiddly, the first one in a lovely sheeny green, salmon and brown, was round my neck within two hours! The second one is taking a bit longer but is now halfway done and I'm only doing a few rows at a time in amongst more important things (like feeding my children, walking the dog and doing the washing...) but will definitely be finished this evening.

If you're into scarves, like I am, and can face fiddling with novelty yarn for just a few hours, then either the Black Sheep yarn or the Katia Triana and Onda yarn might just be what you're looking for to make an interesting addition to your wardrobe this autumn.