Hello all, just back from the Edinburgh Festival and the highland wildness (where we saw The Needle on the East coast of Skye (left); other photos of Skye are here) - hopefully the hiking and fresh air of the latter counter-balanced the 5am pub closures and the deep-fried pizza of the former...
I've not been to the Festival since I was an undergraduate there six years ago - preferring to visit when it's a little less crazy - but was so glad to be there this year, for a friend's wedding and a good ole chin-wag...
Edinburgh's wool shops are surprisingly far and few between - but there's an excellent, good-value one near Haymarket station (Drummond Wools) so I often pop to that one. John Lewis and the lovely Jenners are in the centre but, whilst both have a good range, are often over-priced and pretty standard fare. There's a lovely one in the trendy Bruntsfield that has some interesting yarns: but, be warned, they're so expensive that I looked at the price list and woke up to some smelling-salts. Most other related shops sell wool-products to tourists rather than yarns for the knitter.
BUT - I did go to a great comedy gig called 'Girl & Dean' - who knitted all their own props and were sponsored by the Laughing Hens! Fabulous! Quite hard to figure out how they knitted a lot of them though - it's hard to count rows and stitches when you're chuckling..!
Skye has a couple of wool shops. There is supposed to be a lovely one in the north of the island: but, sadly I couldn't visit as there's no public transport and it would have required a 16-mile trek in the rain (...and don't suppose it's that good!!).
But, I did find Carol's Wool in the Portree Gathering Hall. Most of her stock is synthetic fibres though - which I don't like so much - BUT she did have some lovely locally-sourced, -dyed and -spun yarn by a lady who...lives on a boat (see the blurry pics)! How I would love to have seen how she works! What a task - conducting it from a floating home! And, at only £2.70/50g, I was delighted!
Carol told me that most other yarns on the island aren't locally sourced and are only dyed on the island or are local and are dyed off-shore. (If that is the case, I'm glad I didn't make that 16-mile trek!) Interestingly, she explained why she stocks mainly synthetics: most islanders want these yarns to work with as they can just be bunged in the washing-machine. As I gently hand-wash my silk-yarn scarf, this certainly highlights the different roles knitting plays...sometimes it's easy to forget that many people knit to clothe themselves rather than just for fun...a humbling lesson indeed.
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