Wool Shops in Italy - part one

I really felt that this deserved a whole blog post of its own :)

Before we had set off on holiday I have to admit that I did a bit of googling to try and track down some wool shops that I could visit while in Venice and/or Florence. I couldn't find any in Venice itself and was able to find four listed on trip advisor posts so I was quite hopeful.

Purely by chance we went past a wool shop in Venice on one of the many teeny tiny streets - I was so excited, but they were all closed up for lunch (shops in Italy seem to take a very long lunch break!) so we carried on with the hopes of finding it open later on or the next day.

After a lot of meandering around the streets the next day we managed to find the shop again! This is quite an achievement in somewhere like Venice, which is just one narrow winding street after another - it seems like you find things there by luck.

Venice wool shop -- they don't seem to have a website/facebook page etc but I'm not surprised as it was a very small shop and didn't just sell wool: they also seemed to have a lot of women's underwear in stock.

Pretty much everything was kept behind the counter, so you had to ask to see the wool up close and feel it etc - which was slightly intimidating and strange compared to the wool shops I know and love; it was especially a bit of a challenge as Peter and I have virtually no Italian and the lady had the same amount of English...but we got round it by pointing! We managed alright though and the lady was very patient despite me asking for a lot of things down from the shelves.

This is what I bought there - I would have been easy to have spent a lot more money there but I was very virtuous {and also very aware that there were wool shops to visit in Florence and the space in our luggage was very limited *shakes fist at Ryanair's weight restrictions*}

The one on the bottom right is a 50/50 blend of merino wool and silk - it is so yummy and I was able to get 100g for just €10 -- I wish I'd bought more of it now, and in the different colours.

The sock yarn is a present for my friend Shirley :) she makes the bestest socks etc ever, so I hope she will like using this.

The 'Lana Gatto Niger' are all 100% pure wool and they are SO soft! I've started to make a hat with the turquoise/pink/green one this afternoon; the 'natural wool' ones are (obviously) pure wool too though they don't feel quite AS soft as the 'Niger' ones - it's still lovely! Finally the ones with the sheep on are 100% pure merino wool and they are in lovely self-striping colours.

I'll take some photos as I use them and will report back but I am very very happy with my purchases from that shop!