Back Again

Harry and I have returned from England--Harry as grumpy as always. I don't know why he should be grumpy. After all, he lunched with the Queen several times (the Queen, of course, had no idea there was a giant spider under the table) and spent the rest of the time waving my credit card around any yarn shop he could find.

I have to credit the salespeople in these English shops with an extraordinary amount of aplomb. They apparently saw nothing unusual about a furry six-inch spider buying skeins of yarn and cheerfully rang up his purchases. Frankly, this scares me, but he did make lovely choices that fit into our suitcases with some difficulty.

On the top we have a glorious skein of Fyberspate's mohair and on the bottom, three skeins of Fyberspate's silk lace.


To our surprise, Harry also bought Roy some yarn for dress socks, complete with frog buttons for decoration.


Harry tells me that the silk lace yarn was purchased at I Knit, a petite London shop whose most outstanding feature was the pile of vintage knitting magazines. By vintage, I mean there was actually a mag from 1912 on the shelf. I am not sure when "vintage" shades into "antique," but you get the picture. Fortunately, he refrained from bringing home magazines with patterns for woolly undervests, but he did find a few sweet toy booklets with patterns perfect for using up odds and ends.


The Noah's Ark pamplet is an insert to the current Simply Knitting magazine, worth getting if you like tiny, adorable knitted animals. Jean Greenhowe has published many booklets, which you can graze through here.

The mohair and sock yarn came from Get Knitted in Brislington (outside of Bristol), a store so full of yarn that it's worth a detour on the way to, say, Chicago. They carry an immense range of goodies, including the entire Fleece Artist, Handmaiden, and Lorna lines. Harry couldn't shlep the camera with him (he hitchhiked and needed all his arms to hang on to the transporting vehicles), so sorry, you'll just have to consult their web page and cry in frustration.

Aside from a small amount of clothing and a large amount of yarn, our return luggage bulged with an entire wheel of the Best Cheddar In The Universe, three bottle stoppers, a jar of onion chutney, and a bag of genuine Sherbet Lemons, Dumbledore's (and mine) favorite sweet.

I knit a row of Lyra and four rows of Luna, and turned a corner on the Spider King this morning. It's good to be home.