Yarn shops

A couple of weeks ago I went to London for the day to meet my City and Guilds students at the V&A Museum, but as we weren't meeting till 2.00pm I took the opportunity to visit Stash Yarns in Putney.

When I arrived I was made to feel welcome by Michelle the owner. Although it is a fairly small shop they have lots of interesting yarns imported from the USA. Muchelle is American so when she goes home to visit family she also takes the opportunity to search out new American yarns.

While we were chatting Michelle was telling me about the knitting circle that meet at the shop, that they are knitting mainly socks or lace shawls and scarves. The shop stocks a number of American yarns used for lace knitting including Fiddlesticks Knitting and Hand Maiden yarns. I was tempted to buy a ball/skein of each.


I bought a ball of Fiddlesticks Zephyr, a fine fingering weight yarn which is 50% merino wool and 50% tussah silk. There is approximately 630yds in the 2 oz ball which should be enough to knit a shawl. I've been commissioned to design a lace shawl using a fine bamboo yarn but I thought this Fiddlesticks yarn would work well as a practice yarn before working with the bamboo as I don't have a lot of the bamboo yarn to play with.

I also bought a skein of Hand Maiden Sea Silk, one of these new yarns that is 70% silk and 30% seacell (which I think is extract of sea weed but it doesn't smell of the sea). The skein has also been hand dyed. It was expensive as the skein was 150gms but should be sufficent to make a lace shawl or garment in a luxury fibre.

I sat knitting and talking with Michelle and her assistant Diane for most of the morning before making my way back to South Kensington to meet up with my students, so had a very enjoyable though rather expensive day.

I will go to visit the shop again but not until I have saved up some money as the yarns are very tempting!