WOOLLIE

It's been a woollie focused week this week. Monday was the demonstration of freestyle machine knitting, Wednesday was knitting group in Borders and Thursday was back to Newburgh for spinning night. Wednesday in Borders I found a great new book (I love to knit small things i.e. baby clothes and toys because I am always impatient for things to be finished and I think I have a short-attention span when it comes to knitting) called "Dream Toys" by Clare Garland - she of the "Knitted Babes". It has patterns for princess dolls, fairy dolls, a girlie castle, a unicorn, a cowboy and his horse, a pirate and his dinghy and a mermaid and her little fishy friends. I was smitten almost immediately and with friends announcing the birth of their second daughter on Sunday I had to find something to knit her. I decided on the unicorn. Off to the knitting store on Thursday lunchtime I went - not my usual "posh" yarns store but the little local knitting store that sells all sorts of cheaper wool - or not wool as the case may be. The unicorn needs to be white (unicorns just are!), the unicorn needs to be machine washable, so the unicorn had to be acrylic!! 99p a ball - 2 balls required - total cost £1.98! I discovered I really am a yarn snob - I found it hard to buy the acrylic even though it's the best thing for baby toys that need to be machine washable!!


I started the unicorn at spinning group on Thursday (I don't spin I just go to knit and watch in awe of the spinners), so there I was sitting amongst the spinners hand-spinning their own beautiful wool and I'm sitting with my 99p ball!! It was a fun night! On leaving the shop, the owner ran after me telling me to take the ball band with me - I couldn't possibly leave it in his "Posh Yarn" store. I have to point out he was being funny!!

WANDERINGS

Today I wandered toSt Andrews with a couple of friends, home of golf, fantastic beaches, Scotland's oldest university and some great little shops and restaurants - perfect for a Saturday wander and a usual haunt. Today we had lunch in our favourite bar, wandered some of the shops - got 3 balls of Rowan denim half price and some birthday cards - but it was also Historic Scotland's annual free weekend when all their properties are free to visit so we took advantage of this and visited both St Andrew's Castle and St Andrew's Cathedral to climb St Rule's Tower to get a view over the town. The Cathedral was sacked by in 1559 during the reformation, after John Knox preached a sermon their but was at one time Scotland's largest building. It always makes me wonder how amazing it would have looked if more than just a few ruins had remained.

The view from the tower was good, although it was cloudy, so it could have been better - but you could see the castle, the beach and the golf course!