The large one contained two things I ordered from Pavi Yarns earlier this week.  I am very jealous that fellow crocehteers across the pond seem to have so many more crochet magazines and yarns available to them, many of which aren’t available in the UK (I haven’t looked at shipping to the UK as I know that could be a slippery slope!).  However, I really liked the look of the Interweave Crochet Accessories magazine, published last autumn and found it was stocked by Pavi Yarns in the UK. 

I have made this collage below of my favourite projects from the magazine, which are all shots taken from the pages, showing just a few of the really lovely patterns it contains:

How much do I love all of these projects?   LOTS!!  And I have to say these are only a few of man interesting and lovely ones included.  There is a great selection of winter accessories, including a few crochet socks which I have never tried.  I don’t know which project I will chose first!!  Which ones do you like?  The only problem I foresee is matching UK available yarns with the patterns, but for most accessories this doesn’t matter too much as size isn’t critical.

Stashed in the envelope with the magazine were some tiny stitch markers that I have needed for a long time.  Until now I have used plastic split rings which really just didn’t do the job adequately, so as a result I avoided using them and often relied on guess work!  Not recommended!  These little lockable ones by Clover look much more sensible!

What was in the little envelope?  A homemade Christmas card with a beautiful crochet snowflake from my lovely blog friend Anca, at Happy Hang Around!  Thanks Anca xx

My main purpose was to go to Fibre and Clay as I wanted to get some lovely yarn to crochet something for myself.  I’m right in the middle of baby projects at the moment and looking forward to using some luxury yarns and vibrant colours just for me.

As usual Riana and her team were really helpful and remembered me from their crochet course last August!  I had to admit to having not touched knitting since then, in favour of crochet.

I didn’t go tooooo mad but I did buy a few lovely things.  I chose a book which I had been looking at online a few days earlier which didn’t really appeal until I was able to flick through it.  Loop Vintage Crochet by Susan Cropper contains 30 patterns for garments, accessories and the home.

Fibre and Clay stocks a great range of yarns and had quite a few in the sale – and it turned out all the ones I chose were reduced!

I got 7 balls of Louisa Harding’s Flotsam in a gorgeous pink to crochet a wrap from the Vintage Crochet book, 2 of Miraso Hancho, a red and purple hand dyed merino, and 2 of Rowan 4 ply cotton in a rich aubergine plum shade.  I don’t yet know what to do with the Rowan Cotton, but it is in my mum’s favourite colour so I shall make something for her with that.

So this will be my next project – the ‘Ava’ wrap from Vintage Crochet:

We also went to Waterstones and I got 3 novels to get myself back into reading, as I have got out of the habit in the last month or so.  I also got some pretty little butterfly post-it type stickers, just because they were so gorgeous – and useful as little bookmarks and place markers when following patterns.  Caveman can’t leave a bookshop without a) buying more books and b) saying ‘I just don’t have enough time to read’!  He was true to form on this occasion, but I wouldn’t want him any other way!

All in all we had a rather lovely afternoon out, followed by dinner in Pizza Express and then home for an evening playing with yarn and books!  A perfect Saturday!