Plaristo of Rye

During our trip to Camber a few weeks ago we popped into nearby town Rye to enjoy Ye Olde feel of it all. Every local we spoke to engaged us in a lengthy friendly chat about the history of the place whether we had time to stop or not. And so we quickly learned that because of its close proximity to the Channel it was a prime spot for the French to invade, resulting in Rye being burned to the ground on several occasions. Educational and exciting! But it wasn't just the lovely locals, cobbled streets, castle and cannons I was looking for. As usual I was hoping to find some yarn and as usual I found it.

Plaristo of Rye isn't really a simple yarn shop, it's more of a fibre gallery with fluff in many forms. Weaving, spinning, knitting, crochet and some other non fibre-related arts are all catered for. The colour in the shop was enveloping. Everything was a bit special, a bit jazzy, a bit out there. I loved it. Of course I was mainly interested in the yarn and while Flo inspected the resident felted sheep with bestie Shan and the lovely shop owner, I had a look around.

Mr Sheep and his weaving

Fluff and stuff

A cool table top made of yarn, buttons and lights with glass on top.
Would love to steal this idea.

The lovely thing about the shop was that apart from some of the well known brands there was quite a lot of unlabelled skeins which I spent most of my time there squashing, sniffing and rubbing on my cheek - these are my three main methods of testing the quality of yarn don't-cha-know. The owners took time to tell me that these skeins are all delivered to the shop undyed and they dye them locally, which I thought was delightful and therefore had to buy some.

As I was choosing, this happened:

Flo picked up this skein of cotton and said she wanted me to buy it for her. Now, let's be clear. I'm not usually in the habit of letting her have things that she picks up off of any shelf and requests. It could lead to a very dark place. But this request totally melted me. Seeing her little face, while holding up this quite florescent yarn, asking me to buy it was a proud knitting-mummy moment! 

Flo's florescent request was quickly bought, along with the above multicoloured 4ply Baby Lamb Alpaca. It's going to knit up like a clown threw up on it, but I'm sure that will make it fun to make something with.