There was major stash enhancement this past week. In fact, I think I shall divide the post I had planned to do today into three.

First I’ll cover my visit to the Australian Country Spinnerss shop. I really ought to have taken a photo of the shop. I ought to have captured the huge bins overflowing with bags of woolly goodness (and acrylicy somethingness too). A 360° panoramic shot would have been best, I think.

But I didn’t take a photo. I couldn’t work out why at first, then I remembered staggering out with my arms wrapped around this…

… and I know I wasn’t thinking of the future, but was blissfully engrossed in the now. If I’d been thinking enough of the future to remember how I’d like to blog smuggishly of my visit to the shop, I might also have thought enough into the future to ask questions of myself like “is there room in the stash?”, “when the heck am I going to knit all this?” and “don’t you remember how much eye strain is involved in knitting black sock yarn?”.

But at the time I believed I was being fussy and selective. I carefully chose this:

A slightly tweedy blue 12ply. I decided it would knit up fast, and will make a warm jacket to wear in my home office. And this:

More 12ply. In a colour I love therefore have too many garments in already. But I decided it will knit up fast, and would make a warm jacket to wear in my home office. And this:

Some ‘Inca’. It will knit up fast, and would have made a warm jacket to wear in my home office if there had been enough of it. But maybe there’s enough for a vest.

Is it possible that my home office is cold?

I went to the shop hoping to find oodles of cream Patonyle going cheaply so I can enter into a dyeing frenzy. There was Patonyle, but the lightest colour they had was a mushroomy shade. And it was $6 a ball, which is only a dollar cheaper than usual. Still, I had to buy some because it was what I went there for.

The nice lady behind the counter grimaced sympathetically when she told me the price, then proceeded to search through the bins, muttering about finding more. She came up with this:

A huge ball of Patonyle. In black. For only $5. I nearly went crazy knitting socks out of grey last year because it wasn’t easy to see the stitches. And you can’t dye black. You can’t even overdye. But did I put it back?

Of course not. It was $5. For a great honking huge ball of sock wool. And the lady had been so nice finding it for me.

And I reckon I could get some really interesting effects with the careful application of well-diluted bleach. Black is often made up of blues, reds or even greens. I think some experimentation is in order.