The first yarn I bought I’m not going to bother photographing. It’s a ball of natural Peaches & Cream cotton that I bought in Wal-Mart in Hawaii so I could put a chin string on my sunhat. I’m sure I don’t need to post a pic – we’ve all seen dishcloth cotton before!

Much more exciting was the yarn I bought at Seaport Yarns in New York. Four skeins of sock yarn from Pine Woods Yarn (blue), Fannies Fingering Weight (purple), Ellyn Cooper’s Yarn Sonnet (blue-green) and J Knits (greys):

And two of Cascade 220 in a blue I couldn’t resist:

I didn’t get to a yarn store in Montreal, but once we were on the road in Canada there were plenty of shops within reach. First was London-Wul in Moncton, where I bought some bamboo/bison yarn from Fibre-Isle Fine Yarns (natural) and Baby Alpaca by Heidi’s by Hand (dark grey):

Then in Baadeck yarns in Baddeck I bought some cushy merino by Tanis Fiber Arts:

In The Loop Craft Cafe in Halifax there was some shetland yarn by The Last Resort Farm labelled with the name of the sheep from which the wool came from. Bianca, Peaceblossom, Cymba and Iago contributed to these skeins:

Where I also bought this nifty magnet brooch by Unique Wood Gifts, which you attach to your shirt or bag and then use to hold safety pins and stitch markers:

I hadn’t intended to go to Have a Yarn because my list of shops said it was in Halifax and I’d already bought yarn in that location. But when we arrived in Mahone Bay and parked we looked across the road and were surprised to find the shop there. Either they’d moved, or the address was wrong. So I bought some handspun and handdyed yarn by Lambs Run Studio and this lovely shawl pin by Perl Grey:

Gasperau Valley Fibres in Wolfville turned out to be a big room with tables for holding classes, and lots of yarn including this locally spun alpaca/merino/silk by Legacy Lane Fiber Mill:

While at Yarns on York in Frederickton the yarn was mostly from bigger companies, like this Handmaiden ‘Great Big Sea’. I also picked up some non-Canadian sock yarn as the socks I was knitting were nearly finished:

La Dauphine in Quebec also stocked more commercial brand yarn, so the only local choices I had were Mission Falls 1824 Wool and this very soft luscious Anzara cashmere:

And finally, Romni Wools in Toronto had the Canadian Indigo Moon sock yarn, and I also picked up some more Cascade 220 to go with the blue I bought at the start of the trip, and a kind of graduated Regia sock yarn I’d never seen before:

So that’s my new Canadian holiday yarn stash. You can probably tell I was trying to stick to local yarn. I had a couple of rules: firstly, no yarns that I could get in Australia; secondly, the yarn was to be as local as possible – if not grown in Canada then at least spun or handdyed there. I was pretty pleased at the variety of local yarn I encountered. Picking up yarn from small producers in preference to big companies when there was a choice also meant that when I got to shops that only stocked bigger brand yarns I still had something Canadian to buy.

I also bought a few books and mags while there:

The weaving book was an absolute bargain at only $5 in a bookshop sale bin. The sock pattern book hadn’t interested me until I looked at it in person. I’m so over complicated sock patterns. But many of the pattern in this book aren’t all that fussy and don’t look too difficult to knit.

Next post: holiday knitting (and cursing sewing).