Saturday, 16 June 2012

Charity shop gold

It is a wet wet day today, but I don't mind. The kids had their optician appointments this morning but this afternoon we've had nothing in particular to do so have just been pottering around in the house. The kids are making up some incomprehensible game at the moment, and I have been doing some soothing sock-knitting upstairs while listening to the rain. I can't be the only one who likes the sound of the rain can I? It's not just because I'm safely inside either - when I worked at the museum I was up at the farm in all weathers and provided I had the right clothes for the weather I was always quite happy.  The only weather I find it really hard to be positive about is hail. Hail doesn't have many redeeming features, though I'm sure it's meteorologically interesting.

Anyway, the other day I had to go down to the town centre for a few bits and pieces and dropped into one of the charity shops for a look around. I was about to wander back out  again when I spotted some mixed bags of wool, and when I investigated them I found not the usual charity shop acrylic or (horrors!) eyelash yarn but this:

H&O Shetland Fleece by Templetons of Ayr.

And this:


'Falcon Llama 4-ply' which turns out to be neither falcon (ho ho) nor llama, but a rather nice 60% alpaca 40% wool.  It's not a brand I've heard of or remember, and from Googling I can only find references to vintage knitting patterns, so I suspect this has been languishing in somebody's stash for years, as has the Templetons of Ayr wool - from a Google search on them I discovered that their mill in Mill St in Ayr was demolished in the 1980s.


I don't know what I'll do with them yet but they're absolutely lovely - just my kind of colours. Maybe another scarf from the 'Llama' - you can never have too many scarves can you?



5 comments:

Annie Cholewa said...

Wow! Gold indeed!! Those colours would make nice hats too :D

scarletti said...

Think perhaps you need to add 'hail' to the Smalls lists of redeeming-featureless parts of creation thats so far this end include midges and ticks!

andamento said...

Jealous I am!

Mrs. Micawber said...

Yowza! I NEVER find decent yarn at the charity shops here. Lucky you!

I like the sound of rain - particularly when I'm in bed at night. Even hail, if it is very small, and sparse, can sound fun - as long as I'm safe indoors. The plink of hail on a car roof is very unsettling - makes me think of dings and dents.

Peeriemoot said...

Oh dear, I never commented back to you all - head full of fluff at the moment. Annie, I hadn't thought of hats. Scarletti midges were added to my list on Friday!

That was my best charity shop loot ever. I went back a few days later to see if there was anything else/anything I'd missed and there was no wool at all, the knitting locusts had descended, so I'm thinking I was doubly lucky to spot the wool at just the right time!