John Arbon's Spring Clean, Part 2: The Three Bags Full

So there I was at the Spring Clean, vegetarian quiche in my stomach looking for something to buy. Whatever did I do?

Clearly the answer was dive straight into of wool. I filled a couple of the green carrier bags with fibre. I went for fairly small amounts of breeds new to me. That way I get to try them out without worrying about how to use up a full fleece.

I got some Zwartbles and Exmoor Blueface at £1 per 100g and the North Ronaldsay (I know I spelt it wrong above, forgive me please) for 50p per 100g. I'm really excited about trying these. Especially the Exmoor Blueface considering how much fun it is to knit.

My main purchase of the day was a whole jumper's worth of yarn. At least I intended it to be a whole jumpers worth of yarn. It's probably going to be a lot more than that. I wobbled between buying enough of the Knit By Numbers (so gorgeous! Amazing colours, fabulous lustre) to knit Lauriel or enough Excelana to knit Laika.

Just as I was nearing a decision Stephen pointed out the yarn above to me. It's called Excelite, it's a 3-ply, and it's a 70/30 mix of Exmoor Blueface and BFL. I bought five skeins (2443m) for about £20. That's a Laika and a bit and it's already swatched.

Clearly there was something about the colour. I also grabbed an very similar coloured skein of Exmoor Sock. To knit socks with.

My last purchase was two skeins of this white merino lace weight. Stephen liked the look of it because it was organic and who am I to deny him really? Stephen bought a pair of alpaca bed socks for himself and one for my Dad. So altogether we bought 2 pairs of socks, two skeins of lace weight, enough yarn for two pairs of socks, enough yarn for a jumper and then some and some cool fibre. Good shopping trip then!