My grandmother had her 90th birthday earlier in the month, and so as a family we all went to stay at Holestone Moor Barns in Derbyshire, for a weekend of sunshine, good food, and celebrations. The weather was fantastic, and the location was really lovely. (Amazing views!)

Of course, with my sister and my mum in tow, there was no way this trip wasn’t going to end up fibre or fabric related in *some* way, and sure enough, Kim was suggesting we googled for fabric shops in Derbyshire only minutes before we were due to leave.

Mind you, i’m glad she did, since we managed to find Patchwork Direct, which is a brilliant, brilliant place, which i urge you all to go to -preferably in person, since there website isn’t anywhere near as good as the actual shop. However if you can’t get to Derbyshire, I’m betting they do the main patchworking festivals, like the one at the NEC in august.

ALSO they have tons of great yarn that is not on the website, so knitters need to get themselves there too. (Seriously, it’s just a 15-20minute detour off the M1. Which, being the M1, you’ll probably be glad of.)

ANYWAY… both my mum and Kim spent a huge amount of money (though that’s relative, i guess. it seemed like a huge amount to me. 😉 Actually you can see what Kim bought here.

I was more restrained – Sort of – which was lucky since Holestone Moor Barns is home to three alpacas, which had been sheared for the first time a couple of days earlier.

Which meant…

(This is the first shearing Domino has ever had. Which means it’s never going to be softer than it is right now.)

I have 200g of each colour, and a strong desire to finally get that spinning wheel i’ve been talking about for too damn long – hopefully while I still have enough free time to actually learn how to use it.