This little piggy won’t be going to market…

…this week, anyway!

My Pop has generously offered me space on his craft market stall, and this Saturday was the going to be the first time Pierre the Yarn Snob would be appearing in a real marketplace. However, life has interfered somewhat, and my Pop has spent the last couple of days ill in hospital, so the market this weekend has been cancelled. He’ll be going into theatre tomorrow to have a small procedure done under a local anaesthetic, so please send some get well vibes his way – especially tomorrow morning!

This means that I have plenty more time to sort out some sort of inventory – I was going to take along some handspun and handpainted yarns, as well as some stitch markers (ie- the sort of stuff on my etsy site), but will be knitting rather frantically to get some other stock happening as well (I am thinking scarves, hats and mitts may do rather well!) I have also ordered a spindle and will be attempting to ‘spin the old way’ whilst I am at the market. I figured it would be a good way to attract a few people our way and if there is enough interest I may look into adding them to the store too.

Yet another s’n’b!

Last night Gwet (one of the gals from the Black Sheep Café Knitters) and I headed down the coast to Torquay to gatecrash their knitting night at the Pear Tree Café. It was a fantastic night – there is two seating areas in the café, and the knitters completely took the back area. It reminded me very much of SSK at Bermuda café in Sydney – a rather casual affair over coffee (and very yummy bailey mouse chocolate cake) with wide range of knitters (alas, no men though). The Torquay s’n’b is a weekly event, so I am planning to get back there.

Not co-incidently, the home of Pear Tree Yarns is just across the way from the Pear Tree Café, so I had a chance to chat to the owner, Sue, about her company. Pear Tree yarns are rather scarce in the market place and this is because it is a one woman show. Sue is rather passionate about how she does business, and is trying to manufacture ecologically sustainable, luxury natural yarns, entirely processed within Australia (local to Geelong, if possible). She had some of her current stock, and new lines of yarns out last night – and I have to say they are gorgeous! There was a gorgeous yarn that I thought was cria (baby alpaca) but was actually a long staple 13 micron merino (if that doesn’t make any sense, the finest cashmere is usually about 13 microns – so this is wool on a par with that). I hadn’t tried Pear Tree Yarns before because I didn’t realise they were such high quality. Sue is in the process of setting up direct internet and mail-order sales, but in the meantime I think Taryn over at Purl Yarns still has some in stock.

A quick note on vintage hues…

Remember when I did my review on vintage hues I mentioned I wasn’t sure how it would felt (or full, for the pedants out there!) – Queen of the felted bowls, Olivia, has given it a go and said it made a nice but rather thin fabric – she has a solution for coming up with a thicker resulting fabric, so if you are interested pop over to her blog.