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.

Knitting

Not sure if I mentioned how much I love knitting yet in my blog.  Many years ago, I used to do lots and lots of it - the more complicated the pattern, the better I liked it.  Then for a long time, I stopped. I don't think I knitted for my children when they were babies - maybe just one thing for Mateo - but now, I've been rebitten by the knitting bug. Ah, just remembered I posted a picture of my first two items, which were in Noro wool, a Japanese 100% yarn that is lovely to work with. Here they are again.

I've been buying yarns from ebay and oddments from a shop in Holmfirth and discovered that I adore a Peruvian wool with alpaca called Mirasol - which is a fairtrade yarn and just gorgeous to knit with. I have just ordered some more of that!  From a Debbie Bliss SoHo wool, I made a beautiful scarf for my niece Emily, who I won't see now for ages and ages as she's gone off to travel around Europe with two friends - she's 18 and has just finished her 'A' levels. She won't be back before we leave for Spain and will goto Liverpool University to study to be a vet in October. I wanted her to have something I'd made for her though I confess to wanting the scarf for myself when I finished it - so I do hope she likes it.

  

 I have since finished a jumper for Romy, 

which has little pixie buttons along the neckline:

 

another two scarves - one in the Debbie Bliss SoHo wool like Emily's scarf but a different pattern - the other a super thick chunky wool from Germany in deep purple, looks absolutely stunning but doesn't photograph well;

and finally, a pair of 'wrist warmers' - the latter knitted in the Mirasol wool mentioned above and which look lovely on and really rather different.

And today, I ordered myself some woven labels printed with 'Annie's Lana' (- lana being Spanish for wool - ) and 'Hecho a Mano' - which is Spanish for made by hand. Guess what I plan to be spending my time doing whilst Cesar is building us a house!

Orders taken!