What I bought in England (part 1)
So a week late, here's the first part of my shopping rundown from my recent trip to England. The first thing I wanted to show you was my Patricia Roberts visit, here is a (strangely lit because the sun was going down) shot of the storefront:
The store sells both finished sweaters as well as her private label yarn, and was wonderful to browse through. I had only ever seen her cashmere and angora in person before, so it was a real treat to get to see and pet all the yarn that was in stock in this store (you can see it on the left of the picture, that entire back wall is yarn).
Unfortunately she hasn't come up with any new pattern books recently, but her designs are so intericate and interesting, even old designs still manage to make me drool a little bit. The finished sweaters are handknit on size 2 or so needles, and have boobles, colorwork, you name it. There are, of course, appropriately priced and WAY out of my price range (especially factoring in the exchange rate), so I focused on the yarn wall instead of the ready to wear section. I know, no big shock there!
She has some new colors out that I had never seen before in cashmere, but what really caught my eye were all the colors of lambswool and the silks and cottons. I don't enjoy knitting with either silk or cotton, but it's always nice to check out the selection. Her color palette is gorgeous and it was a lot of fun to look through everything they had. In the end, I did buy something, and the saleslady packed it up for me. There's something to be said about presentation, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of my shopping bag to share with all of you.
How beautiful is this package?
And what's inside is beautiful, too!
That's 4 skeins of her lambswool, 1 pale pink and 3 in a gorgeous chocolate brown that I just couldn't leave on the shelf. They sell their yarn by grams, so when I asked how much something was I was quoted "x per 100 grams" -- that's when I realized that the skeins aren't a set weight, when they ring you up they look at the label and multiply the weight by the price to charge you, which I thought was really interesting.
I'm not sure what gauge I'll get with this, something about 5.5 stitches to the inch I'd guess. I have an idea to do a mostly brown sweater with small bits of pale pink fair isle at the cuffs and neckline . . .
