Never one to miss an opportunity for travel, I booked for us all to go and visit her during May half term quite some time ago. The strange thing is, I haven't actually given the country or what we will do there any thought - I just focused on the fact it'll be nice to see my friend.
Cut to the staff room, a normal lunch break, and a colleague starts talking about when she lived in Denmark. Now, I know full well that Norway and Denmark are very different countries, but what she said peaked my interest. It seems that when she was there, everyone knitted almost constantly. Allegedly, during meetings or presentations, if you can get the audience to actually stop knitting then you must be something pretty special. Just imagine that!
I then Googled "knitting shops Oslo" and BAM! hundreds of listings came up for across the city and country. I'm so used to living in a country where buying yarn takes planning that I had forgotten what this was like. But we weren't so different years ago. In the 80s, there were so many more yarn shops on the high street. My nan and I used to visit a fair few of them, let me tell you. So why did ours vanish when those in other countries in Europe didn't? Did we just stop knitting?
Since then, I have had word from Rachael that it is, indeed, some kind of woolly Mecca. Here is her photo of the wool display in her local supermarket:
Amazing!
What's more amazing is that the UK has the potential for this. I was pleased to see a yarn display in Wilkinson's the other day and I know Big Tesco does, too. It's not great quality, admittedly, but it's there. I've previously mentioned my beautiful local wool shop in Stanhope and, since then, we've had Woolaballoo open in Hexham. Is it possible that we have a resurgence on our hands? Or have we moved on too far?
Why not be the catalyst? Get yourself to your local independent wool shop this bank holiday. Vive le revolution!
