Amsterdam, the beautiful city of canals, heritage and bicycles has several cosy yarn stores, 5 of which I am going to share with you here. I encourage you to visit as many as you can, with the full knowledge that each one will tempt you with delicious yarn begging to come home with you and spark your creativity, making your must-knit list a little more exciting and that phone and laptop, a lot less captivating.

My little family and I were recently in Alicante, Spain. It was our first holiday abroad since having our little girl nearly 4 years ago and it was fantastic! We had such a wonderful time and were able to resurrect some old holiday traditions that my husband and I had when we used to travel relatively often, such as visiting a local yarn store and finding some local yarn treasure for me to take home and knit up as memories of the holiday.

Buying yarn to knit can be both exciting and overwhelming, with these 4 simple steps I hope to help make it a productive and fun experience for you.

For me yarn is inspiration. The feel of it, the colours (as many of my students will know, I am partial to some hand-dyed delights), the weight...it all spells out exciting knitting potential.