October Wrap Up

Oh dear, not again.  Where were we? Oh, right, Canada. I’m not going to “wrap up” the whole trip for you, but we had a grand time. I’ll hit a few highlights. We saw an awful lot of eastern Canada thanks to the whirlwind trip that my husband planned. After a couple of fine days in Halifax (including a YARN shop–imagine that!), we went on to Prince Edward Island. No, we didn’t do the “Anne of Green Gables” tour. We did however discover that they signpost yarn shops on the highways there. And distilleries. That’s my kind of country.

As we were whizzing down the road on our way to the ferry, John suddenly swerved sharply to the left down a secondary road. He had seen a sign for “Yarn Shop” with an arrow pointing left. I have apparently trained him well. It was the Belfast Mini Mills, which was down a tiny gravel road. It’s really a sheep and goat farm, but they make yarn there and have a lovely shop. They also manufacture yarn processing equipment for other mills, all in a couple of tiny farm buildings. One of the owners was nice enough to give us a tour of the operation.

And yes I bought some yarn. How could I not, when everybody was so lovely?

After PEI, we spent most of the rest of the trip on Cape Breton Island. The annual Celtic Colours music festival started while we were there, and we caught a couple of days of that before heading back to the Halifax area and our last few nights before heading home.

I did buy some yarn, but it was all local stuff that I can’t get elsewhere. I’ve totally given up on the “no more yarn buying” idea, but I am trying to limit it to unusual fibers and yarn I can’t get at home. In Halifax, I bought some lovely Shetland fingering and laceweight from sheep raised in Nova Scotia. Oh, I suppose you want to see photos.

That lovely wool is from the Last Resort Farm, in Nova Scotia. The brown stuff is fingering weight, and that gorgeous grey is lace weight. If I wasn’t already sold on this after the first squish, this got me.

It makes me happy to know the names of the sheep!

I also bought some pretty sparkly sock (or scarf perhaps) yarn in Halifax. The shop that all this came from is the Loop Craft Cafe.

That yarn is hand dyed by Yvonne from Yvieknits. She’s from Ottawa. Click to see the sparkles!

Here’s what I got from Belfast Mini Mills. The red is sock yarn, the orchid colored stuff is silk lace.

What I did NOT get at the Belfast Mini Mills was the huge skein of laceweight qiviut. I was sorely tempted, but the credit card was already groaning a bit at all this loot.

Last but not least, one lonely skein of yarn from Baddeck, where we stayed on Cape Breton Island. The little yarn shop there was lovely, but mostly had pretty standard stuff. I searched and searched for something I couldn’t find elsewhere and came up with this.

I know, I know. Fleece Artist Sea Silk is available everywhere. Not this skein. The color is “Baadeck Sunset”, dyed especially for the shop*. Click on that if you don’t believe me.

All I can say, I’m glad there is no customs limit on how much yarn you can bring back into the USA.

That’s all for today. Next time, perhaps a Project Update!

*No, I have no idea why the town is named “Baddeck“, and the shop spells it “Baadeck”. One of the mysteries of life. It just makes me happy that a town this size has a yarn shop.