japan love

If you were wondering, we raised over £400 at Purl City on Wednesday for the British Red Cross Japanese tsunami appeal!

And a jolly fine time was had by all. I did lots of knitting, chatting to friends, won some ace prezzies and had wasabi peas and sake for my tea. What more can one possibly want from an evening?

There was a raffle in which I won this ball of Noro Kureyon sock, in nice restful natural shades of green. And a book of amigurumi robots! How good is that? Such as this handsome devil. I'm going to be all over this just as soon as I've reminded myself how crochet patterns work.


There was also a closed bid auction, in which I managed to get my hands on this very lovely Noro hat knitted by Vikki. Beautiful sunsetty colours - rubbishknitterjunior is very taken with it.


Thanks to the organisers for the yarny treats and a fun night out!

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purl city yarns

OK so 10.10.10 may have been a memorable day in many calendars, if you are a fan of the Mayans or Ubuntu. But today was a much more momentous day for Mancunian knitters... we got a brand new LYS!!!

Dangerously close to my current office is the very lovely new Purl City Yarns. Of course, I had to go down on opening day and check it out during my lunch break. Hell, I even took a packed lunch so I didn't have to waste potential yarn stroking time in a sandwich shop. I was really rather excited about the whole thing.


And I'm very glad I went. Manchester town centre has been crying out for something like this for ages. Purl City Yarns distinguishes itself from the competition by offering a seriously impressive range of yarn - it seems every knitter has been thought about and catered for. There are your classic workhorse type yarns, like King Cole merino, but in such an amazing range of colours. Your standard corporoyarns like Debbie Bliss, for people who are a bit lost in the vast selection. Lots and lots of beautifully squishable luxury yarns, like Malabrigo, Misti alpaca and Manos del Uruguay. A great range of self-striping yarns, like Noro and King Cole Riot. Loads of beautiful sock yarn. Big piles of Zauberballs in sock and laceweight. Heathered yarns and fat, squishable chunky single-ply yarns. It just seems like a really well thought out selection, rather than just stuff the owner personally likes - there is something for all tastes. There is even (whispers) some acrylic out the back, if you must.


There are plenty of accessories, too. Big old sweetie jars full of buttons sit on top of the shelves. There are lots of needles - a fine selection of KnitPro, soon to be joined by Addis. Hurrah!

But for me the most impressive bit is the range of indie yarn, hand dyed, hand spun, many by small scale local producers. There's Green eyed monsters, Six swans, Wild Fire fibres, Fyberspates (have you touched the Scrumptious?! soo soooft... it's like thistledown crossed with clouds), and Natural Dye Studio. This really is an amazing selection to have in front of you in a bricks and mortar store - usually you would need to trawl the internet or go to Woolfest to have all these things in front of you at once. It makes me very very happy to see it all nicely laid out in an actual real shop.

Look, a comfy sofa! Being test driven by one sleepy young customer. I am planning on spending many future lunchtimes camping out here with my knitting. Today there was also celebratory wine and flapjack to be had. Good times.

Oh and I may have fallen into a cardigansworth of Austermann Alpaca Silk, in a lovely heathery teal colour... mmmmm snuggly


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