Lovely weekend

Thanks everyone for your lovely birthday wishes - I had a great day on Saturday, in fact I had a great weekend all up! One of my best friends, Helen, lives at Jamberoo, so we decided to go and visit on Saturday and stay the night. So we drove up on Saturday morning, via the Southern Highlands - and of course stopped off in every yarn store along the way (my husband is the best!).

First stop, Victoria House Needlecraft at Mittagong. Victoria House used to stock a reasonable amount of Rowan yarn (well, reasonable for a regional craft store, in my opinion!) but seems to have stopped stocking it. I grabbed the last 3 balls of All Seasons Cotton (half price) as well as the latest Jo Sharp Knit (vol 5). A pretty good selection of patterns, but not as good as vols 1, 2 or 3 (but better than 4!).Next, Wool Addiction in Bowral - this is a fantastic yarn store. I'd almost move to Bowral just so it could be my LYS. It's a house, with 4 rooms of yarn and books and the front room has couches and tea/coffee making supplies - fantastic!! And a fabulous range of yarn. So so tempting. But I was good and only bought some Patonyle (which I heard on Ravelry is being discontinued!!! So there's been a bit of panic buying (including by me...) - I'm going to make mosaic socks from the blue and one ball of the grey, and the other two greys are to go with some I got for my birthday, to make Cookie A's German Stockings!).

Had lunch in Bowral and checked out the other shops, had a quick photo shoot for an FO which will be revealed later this week, then headed back onto the road to Robertson. Stopped at the Old Potato Shed gallery. Has a lot of handcrafted items, including Mollydale handdyed thick and thin spun yarn (no idea what you'd call it) - anyhoo, thought it might make a nice rustic clapotis or other shawly item, so of course bought a couple of those - the colours look a bit muddy in the photo, but are lovely blues, greens and chocolate browns.Then went to Berry on Sunday - and of course to the yarn store! Sew and Tell has a fabulous range of yarn as well - a lot more than last time I was there. And has fabulous display garments (lots of baby ones especially) which give you the yarn and pattern info - a great selling point. But again, even though I could have bought stacks of yarn, I stuck to their last 2 balls of Patonyle in this colourway, and some reduced price cotton (dishcloths anyone!). And since I am now such an *excellent* sewing person (not!) I bought some fabric as well.

Hmmm, anyone care to estimate how long it will take for my fabric stash to rival the size of my yarn stash??

Speaking of which, husby bet me there was a fabric shop in Berry that sold quilting fabric. I didn't recall it so bet him a dollar there wasn't, and challenged him to show me. Which he did. Heh! He won a dollar (our usual bet, unless I am supremely sure of myself, in which case I usually bet him $1000) but of course it cost him a bit in fabric. He's so funny!