Knitterly Istanbul

In the Islamic Arts Museum I unintentionally found a crude example of yarn dyeing in a yurt (black goat-skin hut from the Anatolian province of Turkey) and also managed to get told off for taking photos!:

I stumbled across ome crazy (and HUGE) felted hats in a shop:

And some not-so-huge ones:

Doesn't this remind you of a Moderne Log Cabin Blanket?

Anyone recognise this???

I immediately thought of the wonderful Kaffe when I saw this, and sure enough when I got home and checked my Pattern Library, there it was: the Caucasian Stripe:

I think my beloved Kaffe may have got quite a few of his motifs from his travels to Turkey. Here's another I saw everywhere:

Shilasdair

Before we went to Skye, I had come across a snippet about Shilasdair Yarns in The Knitter magazine, so of course I managed to squeeze in a visit once I got to Skye.

It's a small but wonderful hand-dying yarn company that produces some amazing yarn combinations of cashmere, alpaca, cotton etc. in a whole rainbow of colours. Their secret is that they use local natural dyes for most of their colours, which they find on the beach and in the hills around the peninsula where they are based, such as wild-flowers and lichens.

Some recently dyed yarn:

They kindly showed me their dye studio, where some blue socks were bubbling away in one of the vats:

Here's a shot of the shop, where you can see the many hues they produce, in various types of yarn (sorry for the blurred photo):

I couldn't just leave all that yarn there by itself, so of course managed to fill my basket! Here's some luxury DK in a cashmere/angora/lambswool blend that I plan to use for a sweater:

And some lovely greeny Aran lambswool for a blanket. The colour doesn't show up well here; I'll try to take a better photo:

Finally some silk in a lovely raspberry that I'll make into a tie for DH:

If you're ever on the island it's well worth a visit, but they also ship (oh dear, sounds dangerous!).