Yarn on the square, Ely

Yesterday I mentioned that I had some crafty adventures during my holiday, so here's a little bit about them.

While wandering around Ely last week, my eyes happened to light upon a little yarn shop on the market square, so of course I couldn't go past without going in!

Yarn on the Square is a lovely little shop, with a good range of yarns - brands I spotted whilst browsing included Rowan, Debbie Bliss, Adriafil, Manos Del Uruguay and many more! All was delightfully arranged, with a friendly proprieter to boot.

Naturally with such yarny delights on display I couldn't resist making a purchase and walked out with a lighter purse and a heavier bag containing 3 skeins of Manos Silk Blend in sea green tones:

I think this yarn is definately destined for a cosy crochet scarf!

So what else did I get up to craft wise last week? Well, also in Ely, S spotted a fabulous book shop, an independent retailer of the kind now seldom seen in the UK, especially outside the big cities. Topping and Co. Booksellers is a lovely old fashioned kind of shop, selling new books, with many copies signed by the author. The 3 stories which I discovered make up a rambling kind of bookship which you could easily lose a few hours browsing the shelves in. Did they have a craft section? Yes, they did! Once again I walked away with my purse lighter and my bag heavier for containing a copy of Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Knitting. I have fallen deeply in love with this book, but I think I'll have to save explaining why for my next post, or I'll run out of time to tell you what I've actually been making this week!

So, as you may know I have been hooking away on a hexagon throw made from single colour hexagons, after the fashion of one I saw on the MeMe Rose blog. However, as much as I enjoyed this, I found it quite a difficult mental exercise working out where to place my motifs so that I had the colour block effect I was after, but so that it was still broken up a little. I blame it on the studying overdrive I have been doing the last few weeks - my poor brain can only take so much! So, because of this, last Saturday night I found myself longing for a simple granny square project to take on holiday with me, where I wouldn't have to think too much about which colour to use next.

So here it is so far!

I'll explain more about this in detail in my next post, and probably put up some instructions, but as you can see from the picture the idea is big granny squares using tonal shades for each square on a white background. So far I am pretty happy with the result!