My shopping list for the day went like this:

1kg aran weight natural ‘white’ yarn for Starsky
Yarn magazine
A nice spindle
Bendy Harmony
Try out some double-treadle wheels

First up, I stopped at Virginia Farm Wool Works, where there were some Majacraft wheels to try. I discovered three things: when it’s been six months since I’ve spun on a wheel it’ll going to be embarrassing to try again in public, yet oddly enough it will hook in a passerby so thoroughly that by the end of half an hour she will be grinning with glee at having just learned to use a drop spindle (I should charge a commission), and a nice expensive wheel is nice to use.

Somewhere in among the teaching of drop spindle use, I discovered what a turkish spindle is and just had to buy one.

Later I found this cone of silver thread for plying for just $5! Cor!

After that I warmed my debit card up with some book buying. Flicking through some of the books that have caught my eye on the net lately, I was very grateful I hadn’t rushed out and bought them. A quick look told me that Fitted Knits and Yarn Play suffered from that malady of having the only interesting pattern on the cover. The former was full of bulky yarn patterns and the latter was all small, simple pattern for scarfs and homewares and such.

So in the spirit of not judging a book by it’s cover, I picked up two books I didn’t think I’d like: Knitting From the Top Down and Domiknitrix. The former looks to have the kind of technical info that I’m ready to take in now, and the latter… well, there are some amusingly silly patterns in there but also some with very interesting construction. The instructions are clear and I can’t help wanting to keep it on the coffee table to tantalize non-knitters.

Then I hopped over to the Yarn magazine stand. The editor was busy with a customer who was obviously going to demand a lot of her attention and time, so when she begged a moment to help me I just quietly bought the latest issue and continued on.

I almost passed by the Colinette stand because their usual yarn isn’t what I like to buy, but then the sock yarn caught my eye. Now, the Jitterbug hasn’t excited me in the past because it was all varigated, but what made me put my skids on was the skeins of ‘almost solid’ colours. Sarah told me that they were part of a new range coming out.

At one point I had five skeins in my hands, but I pared them down to two:

Shown with them is a skein of Opal sock yarn, in green. Green! If I picked up on any exciting new trend, it’s solid and almost solid sock yarns in yummy, happy colours.

I bought some roving from Glenora Weaving & Wool:

I want to spin a single in black and ply it with the multicoloured yarn here, and use it to finish the Glamour Vest.

I bought some natural ‘white’ 8ply from a woman at Wirraworra Wool, who swore it’s a bit thicker than usual, so might suit Starsky. I’d not heard of this company before, but the natural coloured yarn they produce… oooooh!

There were a lot of natural coloured wool product stalls there, which might also be a new trend, and one that I like a lot. Some of the colours produced when the natural wools was overdyed… only my stash manifesto stopped me coming home with little odd balls with no purpose but that they’re ‘preeeetty’.

At this point I’d covered the main sheds, had a break and some of those yummy mini pancakes with a cuppa and took stock while watching sheep dog trials. Out of the items on my shopping list, I’d bought only two – Yarn mag and a spindle. It had turned out we wouldn’t be visiting the Bendy Woollen Mill shop because of a lack of time. I had tried out two double treadle wheels, however, and bought some yarn to test for Starsky.

So with half an hour before the bus left, I did another walk through and found a stall I hadn’t noticed the previous time… with handmade drop spindles. The lovely lady at Ixchel Angora Rabit Stud also gave me some bunny fibre a few dollars cheaper to prove that once I’d spun a little, I’d never want to spin anything else. (And she has a stall at the Southbank market each week, so getting more bunny would not be hard.)

Mmm. Bunneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!