We had a lovely Christmas at Paul’s parents. Lots of food, board games and good company. Unfortunately this year Paul’s nana came down with a cold just before Christmas and so didn’t come to stay. Hopefully we will see her and catch up before too long. We saw my parents in the middle of December when they stayed with us while doing their pre-Christmas relative visit. We were going to have Ashby-Family-Christmas on the second weekend of January, but have postponed it for a bit because of the snow.

I really enjoy our spread-out Christmas celebrations. There is more opportunity to savour the time together, rather than feeling that you are on a visiting treadmill with no time to actual spend in each others company. I like to spread the fun out, and enjoy it for as long as possible 🙂 It makes for a more relaxed time, and also the chance to do things you have been wanting to have a go at but been putting off.

I took Suzie along for Christmas, and had a lovely time spinning away while Paul read his book, Paul’s dad did his crossword, and Paul’s mum worked on her tapestry weaving. Paul’s mum had a go on Suzie too and made some very respectable yarn, which I completely forgot to photograph.

As part of my Christmas present I got some lovely knitty and spinny things. From my mum a skein of Debonnaire sock yarn, 100% superwash merino, 100g, 365m. I think the colour is called passion / envy but the band is hand written and I am having a bit of a failure on the handwriting!

The colours are actually a bit darker in real life. Lovely saturated jewel tones. Yum!

She also got me a bag of guanaco fibre from Texere, and two sample bags of silk fibre from Winghams.

The guanaco is the wild relative (possibly ancestor) of the llama, and looks really interesting. I think there are still some guard hairs in this fibre, but it still feels very very soft. The silk is unbelievably luscious, and the colours beautiful. It is so shiny and squidgy!

My sister and her husband gave me a lovely surprise pressie from their holiday in Scotland. A skein of Angora Ecosse, from a farm they visited.

The label is a bit lacking in detail but I am guessing it is about a 4ply weight, 100g, and probably an angora / wool mix. I think I might make a little cowl, there seem to be a lot of nice patterns about at the moment.

There seem to be a rather depressing number of yarn shops closing down at the moment. One of those sadly I only learned about after its demise. It was in Woodmansterne, and I think closed down last year. Since their closure they have been holding occasional yarn sales in the village hall. I learned about one of them in December through Kitty who organises the Ashtead knitting group, and weather permitting they are also going to be coming to the January meeting of the Ashtead group.

They are selling off their yarn at £1 a ball, and have quite a wide selection of yarns left (or at least they did when I left the hall!). I picked up 7 balls of Patons Baby Pure Wool 3ply (these are 25g balls).

I’m not sure where they have been stored because there were bits of twig and grass in the bag, but the yarn itself seems fine. I think I am going to have a go at dyeing this, and then knitting something lacey.

I also went along to Stash in Putney during their closing down sale and picked up a couple of skeins of Koigu in colour 14063, a lovely spring colour. At least it can be spring inside even if the weather is full of grey slush outside.

And I got two balls of Debbie Bliss Rialto 4ply in a lovely shade of bright red. Unfortunately the two balls were the last they had and are two different dye lots. My plan is to knit socks with them and then hopefully you wont notice the difference in colour.

It is a shame to see Stash closing, but people’s lives change and it isn’t always possible to carry on doing everything. It has definitely made me re-appreciate how luckily I am living here that there is easy access to a wide range of yarn shops, along with all the mail order places and people I see at shows.

On a more upbeat note. The weather may be grey and grim, and the ground grey and slushy, but the weather is definitely warming up, and transport looks like it is getting easier.

While ordering yet more stuffing for the toy elephants from World of Wool a few other little goodies slipped into my basket.

This is a really interesting mixture of merino, brown alpaca, camel, and silk.

I got 300g so that should be plenty to be playing with. I might experiment with dyeing some too, as I think the different fibres will take the dye differently and create interesting results.

And these are all merino, 100g of each. I couldn’t resist the lovely colours.

I certainly have lots of lovely things to keep me busy in 2010 (and probably for several years to come!).