A lost mitten took me to Ramshambles in York, a hole-in-the-wall yarn shop in the tangled heart of York.  Well…this just gave me extra purpose…I was going anyway.  Ramshambles is a tiny indie-style shop located in The Shambles, a crazy assortment of ancient buildings leaning this way and that.  The streets inside the medieval town walls all have delicious names like this.  There is also Swinegate, Ousegate and Stonegate. There is no such thing as grid in York. It is as if someone tossed up a bowl of spaghetti and wherever the strands landed became a street…so mysterious and bemusing to a Hume and Hoddle planned Melbourne girl.

Anyway I quickly found some merino superwash aran-weight King Cole in purple for our dear girl’s replacement mittens – I shall tie these on I reckon.  Then I was beguiled by a collection of 4 ply yarns from the Harris Tweed Company.  Yes, they make knitting yarn.  It is dyed and spun on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

If you can’t afford the 400 odd quid to purchase a Harris Tweed Jacket, why not get a ball or two of yarn.  Since this fitted my British sheep buying criteria, I bought a graded range of orangey reds and a couple of blue shades.  Each shade seems to contain at least 5 blended colours to create a really tweedy woolly yarn, perfect for subtle Fairisle colourwork.  The shades have great local names like Soay, Ensay and Eriskay, although all you get on the ball band is an rather antiseptic little number.