Oodles of Boodles and other shopping trivia

Hi all. A quick update, mostly on the shopping theme ;) A recent (half-term!!!) trip to HobbyCraft in Chester resulted in bringing home this chunky textile yarn  - Boodles. If you don't know this type of chunky yarn, for your information this is ecological, economical and upcycled yarn made from soft textile offcuts in the fashion industry. A similar sort of noodle-type yarn to Hoooked Zpagetti which is also already well known on the market.

I've choosen my first 3 colours - mint green, white and plum accompanied by a 12.00 mm Bamboodle crochet hook :) 

Recently I've had a crafty urge to try my hand at chunky crocheting and my plan is to crochet some chunky storage bowls and baskets. I get to see lots of these projects in crafty magazines. They are easy to make, perfect to practise my crochet skills and I'd love to store some of my yarns and threads in them.

Cookie is clearly jealous of me taking the photos of my noodle'y yarns so he decided to place himself right in front of my camera. As soon as he hears something is going on on the windowsill, he is there! He's already discovered that the Boodles are good to catch and play with and the wooden crochet hook is something good to chew on. 

A few more shopping treasures :) Magnetic window cross stitch markers - something I've wanted for months for myself. I'm always on the look out for convenient ways of cross stitching. How do you mark your patterns? With highlighters? Magnetic gadgets? Pencil? I hope these will work well for me.

In preparation for Easter cross stitch projects, I got myself a piece of black aida. It can be a bit of a nightmare to stitch on but the folky patterns look so good on the black background :)

And the last but not least, I bought these two small lovely books with crochet and knitting projects:

This should keep me occupied for a while! ;)