Bountiful Beauty

The highlight of yesterday morning was a visit to Beautiful Silks with friends from the Experimental Spinning group. What can I say . . . rooms full of beautiful silks: yarns, embroidery fibres, fabrics, dyed and undyed. What's more the people there seemed to be both knowledgeable and passionate about their products. I came home with a tiny taste of stranded embroidery silk and ribbon; a catalogue of yarns and a lust for more.

From there we went just around the corner in Bruswick St Fitzroy to another treasure house. This time Jasper Coffee:
You can just imagine the smells that greeted us as we walked in. The front of the shop is full of coffees, teas, coffee pots, tea pots, cups of all shapes and sizes. And then there's a cafe and courtyard. We sat in the shade, sipped and munched and talked. The talk got quite heated a couple of times when we discussed the pros and cons of protecting Australia's local publishing industry. It was great to be in the sort of company where silk and the value of Australian writing were the topics of conversation.