Aladdins cave

You know those kinds of shops that are so full of stuff that you almost can't walk down the aisles and so you have to try and make yourself as small as possible so as not to touch anything in case you get buried in an avalanche? The kind of shop that is so jumbled and disorganised that it seems impossible to find anything that you went in there for but nevertheless you still walk out with a black sacks worth of goods? That type of shop where you can unearth long forgotten and buried treasures if you scrabble around in bins and gloomy looking corners? Have you got that mental image in your mind? Good. Now populate a store like that with all the yarn that you can think of. Everything from fuzzy novelty yarn to piles of 4 ply for socks, baby wool, alpaca skeins, cheap brightly coloured acrylic to soft merino goodness. Add in needles, a super selection of buttons and some nice fabrics to boot, along with the expected old lady quota. Lower the ceiling by about a foot, make the shelving go to the top of the walls and squeeze extra baskets and boxes wherever you can. If you can picture all that then you probably have a good representation of Masons knitting and sewing shop in Abingdon.
The ladies from my knitting group had been raving about this store and despite the fact that it is only about 15 minutes away I hadn't manged to grace the doors of said establishment until last Saturday. Up until the point where I walked through the front door I was utterly convinced that Oxfordshire did not contain a single good yarn store. Oh how wrong I was- but you have no idea how relieved I am to be wrong. It's such a comfort to know that there is a good yarn store within easy driving distance. I managed to find the final ball of wool that I needed to finish off my tank top and the sock wool selection- well that had me in raptures alone. Between the best friend and I we managed to fill a shopping basket with yarn. I think the total came to something like 17 balls and we could have managed so much more. It was only through sheer will power that we managed to restrain ourselves anymore than that. I stocked up on all the yarn that I needed to make christmas presents whilst having a good session of retail therapy. So it's completely justified as well.
Hmmmm, just thinking about it still makes me want to curl up in a corner with all my yarn and chuckle quietly to myself.