Today the beau and I headed to Bendigo. We headed there for two reasons: it was hot and since the aircon at home died the only way to stay cool is get in the car and drive; and the Bendigo Art Gallery was holding an exhibition of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work.

As we hit the freeway, we found we had a stowaway on the windscreen:

Remarkably, it clung on for ages, at 100km an hour, before a gust of wind finally blew it off. I couldn’t help imagining it going “wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!” in insect language. Now it’s doing whatever a praying mantis does, in those nice grassy gardens along the freeway. (I refuse to consider the possibility it may have been squished on a windscreen or under tyres. There were hardly any cars on the road, so its chances were good.)

Upon reaching Bendigo, we sought out the local wool store, the Busy Bee, and found an empty shop. The nice lady in the quilting shop next door told me it had shut down. So we headed into the gallery to see the exhibition, which was great, then saw an excellent one of Cecil Beaton’s portraits.

We couldn’t visit Bendigo without dropping into the Bendigo Woollen Mills. In the bargain room I found this:

4ply cotton for socks. Yes, more sock yarn. I haven’t tried making any in cotton yet. I’ve recently discovered the joy of white cotton ankle socks and I think it’s time I made my own.

This was just what I was looking for:

A small cone of red that exactly matches the bulky wool I bought the other day. The bulky is too thick to use as both weft and warp (have I got the terminology right?) so I needed something thinner to go with it. And there it was, in the bargain room, reduced to $4 because the base had been cut. I unwound the damaged bit when I got home, and the pieces were mostly still of a usable length for a woven scarf, and the cone is mostly undamaged otherwise.

Finally, the wool I’d gone there for:

More Classic 8ply to go with leftovers from other projects (the snippets are the other colours I have), to make Tubey! (Don’t you love how you can buy wool to go with projects that are essentially stashbusters? I’m using up stash – I just need to buy a few extra balls of…)

I suspect Tubey will be the next project after the Liquorish Allsorts jumper. And I’m determined to finish my current pair of sock before starting another pair. The only trouble then is, will I make the next pair from the cotton or the argyle I bought on Wednesday… or any of the other balls of sock wool in my collection?

Winter is still a way off. I think it’ll be the cotton.