A day out shopping? Not for me.

We went to the mainland today to do some shopping.  It's not something we do very often at all now, and we won't be going again in any hurry!  We had a specific shopping list of things to buy at particular shops we don't have on the Island so we were actually quite confident we would be successful in our quest, but we returned home disheartened and disillusioned.  To begin with, I was after some fabric to finish off the 30th birthday quilt - now in danger of becoming a 'Christmas' quilt, but my daughter is very understanding - but even with two big floors of fabric to look at, nothing was remotely suitable.  N, on the other hand, fell in love with some material he felt sure would make a great summer shirt, so that's another little sewing project for next year - cheers!

Never mind, on to the next store.  We are looking for an oven for when the kitchen is re-done but that's not proving straightforward either.  There is, we've decided, just too much choice these days.  Too many functions and gadgets - all we need an oven to be able to do is cook food for us, at a suitable price, energy-efficiently, preferably fan-assisted and with a reasonable capacity.  We'll get there, it's just wearing us out a tad.

By this time we were both fed up.  We simply don't do shopping like this any more.  We had looked forward to a day out across the water, but it wasn't meeting our expectations.  We're not interested in browsing department stores, searching for 'something' to buy just because we could, our days of that sort of needless acquisition are over and we're quite glad about that.  

Our final destination was a very large retail store for household goods (the store that's blue and yellow!).  Again we had a list, a very short list, and we are very good at ignoring everything else.  Having been obliged to wend our way through all the levels, assiduously avoiding having our heads turned by things we didn't need, we finally reached the warehouse area, only to find the one item we had gone all the way over for was out of stock!  We stood there and looked at the empty space on the shelving, muttered a few choice phrases, and vowed we wouldn't bother again.  In future, we'll find what we need on the Island.  As I said, we were disheartened - we both felt we could have made far better use of our day.  We're not shoppers at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.  We couldn't wait to get home for a nice cup of tea.

This is my knitting pattern for N's North Ronaldsay jumper - lots of figures on a scrap of paper and a pencil sketch!

The knitting, on the other hand, is progressing well after a rather tentative start.  Knitting in the round is great, I'm loving it, all rows being knit rows, but I never actually come to the end of the needles.  I'm so used to saying:  'I'll stop when I reach the end of the row', but I never get there!  However, I'm really enjoying the relaxation of knitting; it's something I can do almost without having to think to hard about it.

The only problem is that the wool 'sheds' little bits (I think it's the way it has been spun) as it is knitted, so I've taken to having an old sheet on my lap as I knit - it's not a fashion statement, but at least I don't end up covered in bits.

At the end of a frustrating day we had a beautiful sunset, just what we needed to soothe our rather frayed nerves.  The colours were just lovely.