Yarn & Pasta

It's a busy day today! with colour overload.

John, Bob, Sinal and Joe are going to private whiskey tasting session this afternoon. Nancylee, Nancy Sally and me are going to the Urban Yarn shop in Vancouver. On the journey into Vancouver we have a lively discussion on the dire state of the Health Services in our respective countries. Only Nancylee isn't in the Health Service but has been around health professionals all her life.

I've been to several yarn shops out and around now and I think this is the friendliest. Its on a busy street on West 10th Avenue in Point Grey, Vancouver. The window is bright and welcoming. Knitting is certainly a trendy pastime here as well as in London.

So many beautiful colourful touchy feely yarns. We spend a couple of hours browsing, choosing, rejecting, discussing, oooohing and feeling before finally deciding which to buy and sadly putting back the wools we decide to reject. Maybe another day. John Lewis in England has a reasonable selection of yarns but none of the speciality wools and none of the atmosphere these shops have.

Dazzled with colour overload and loaded down with extra large bags of wool we dump it all in the car. The large bags of wool are all donated and are for Nancy to knit scarves and hats for Vancouver's Street people. Nancylee runs the website 'The Sheltering Stitch' Mine, Nancylee, and Sally purchases are a little more modest.

Time for a reviving cup of tea and biscuits at a ultra smart tea and cook shop a little way down the road.

We just have time after our tea to look around the upmarket cooking utensils before we are summonsed by the 'boys' to collect them. It takes us a while to drive across the city to east Vancouver and its dark by the time we get there. Sally collects their car and Bob, John and Joe and we drive off to meet up again at a busy noisy little Italian Bistro called Timbre for another Italian pasta meal. I choose wild mushroom ravioli with pesto pine, nuts, basil and truffle oil. It was delicious. I've given up on watching the diet. I'll sort it when I get home!!!!!

After dinner John has another tasting session to go to and we head off to the east side of Vancouver to large warehouses on Parker Street where we join the famous Vancouver Culture Crawl There are 89 artist studios in these vast warehouse spaces. This is the preview evening and the studios are packed with people. We 'crawl' around the cavernous space and four floors of studios of just one warehouse before we are exhausted and suffering from cultural overload. We've seen some great stuff and some dire stuff amongst all we've seen.

Luckily by this stage John rings and wants to be collected from the Whiskey tasting . He's had enough too. Home beckons.