Shop regulars will know that we can talk about knitting gifts from mid summer if you like, but there’ll be no fairy lights or Christmas window action until we’re safely over the 1st December line. As we are now thankfully there, I thought it might be nice to share our getting-ready story with you..

It begins with the turpentine-ish smell of Hana’s painting…

The paint dries, and Alessandra and I move in, to start rigging up the display. Armed with reels of fishing twine, S hooks and very tangley fairy lights, this year we also had the help of some old bicycle wheels and macrame rope. The idea was to create a marvellously ridiculous woolly gift wrapping machine.

Quite by accident, it’s also turned out to look a bit like a Christmas stocking, which neatly takes us to this year’s Woolly Gift Guide for the Knitterly adventurous, eccentric and risk-averse…