I went away, and so

it follows, as night follows day, that I bought some wool. Two lots. 

I bought some in Glasgow. We walked past The Yarn Cake several times going to other places so it was inevitable that I would go in and buy some wool eventually. The fact that it was sock yarn was totally down to the OH who looked in the window and said 'Isn't that West Yorkshire Spinners Kingfisher there?'. Well you could have knocked me down with a feather, not only because he recognised it, but because had you asked me I wouldn't have been able to tell you that WYS even did a Kingfisher colourway. So in we went, and out we came with the following

The WYS is at the top and the only reason that it looks smaller than the other two balls is that by the time I got around to taking a photo I had already cast on with it. I did in fact take it away with me and yesterday I finished these

He's really pleased with them. 

The other two I got because one (the middle one) was really pretty and the bottom one was something which is about as easy to find as hens teeth, being one of the Opal Vincent Van Gogh special edition colours from last spring. I scoured the web trying to get my hands on one of this collection wen it first came out, honestly, any one of them would have done, but everywhere was sold out. No idea how Antje came to have some after several months but I was delighted to see it, and double delighted because of all the collection this was the one I hankered after the most - Bedroom at Arles. I could hardly leave it there. And as it happens I had a full loyalty card so I only paid for two balls instead of three and I've no idea which was the so-called free one, and I don't really care. 

There was a wool shop in Funchal. In fact there are two and I think the one we went into was the new one. It was certainly very nice. I wanted some Portuguese wool and I came out with this

It's beautifully soft and strong and eventually the blue/lilac ones will be socks and the cream and rust ones either fingerless or flip top mitts. Not this week though. 

As an aide memoire for myself I will just record that not long before we went away I did actually donate 1300g of yarn to  a worthy cause. So I'm still ahead.