Category: Shop News

Winter orders are now open at the Yarn Ball Boutique, and I am delighted to say we have a very full list. There are scarves, hats, mittens for the uncooperative, and a small selection of hot water bottle covers shaped like fish. I am taking orders until 15 November, with delivery before the first frost, or soon after, depending on how the wool takes to the weather.

A few notes: items will be made to measure, so please send me the cat’s dimensions with a loving description. I take no deposit. I do ask that you treat each piece with care, and that, should it begin to feel too much, you simply bring it back. I will always take it. I have a special shelf for such things. It is very full, and it is quite warm.

Many of you have asked about the Mystery Skein, a small hank of yarn that I sell for $5 and have never once described. I thought it was time to say something. The Mystery Skein is, simply, a skein whose origin I am not sure about. It arrives in the shop in the mornings, in a basket, and I wind it and put it on the shelf.

It is usually grey, but not always. It has a faint smell, like a coat that has been somewhere. Customers say it is lovely to knit with, soft, warm and strangely willing. Some have told me it has made them sentimental. One woman reported that it knitted itself into a very small scarf overnight, and then, the following morning, into nothing at all. I told her that was within normal range.

A strange thing happened at the boutique on Tuesday. I came in at half past nine to find the front window display, a lovely arrangement of eleven small jumpers in graduated sizes, replaced by a single pile of loose yarn. It was neatly coiled. It was, in fact, rather beautifully coiled. It was the exact colour of every jumper I had put there.

I have asked around. The delivery boy saw nothing. The neighbour cat, Mr. Ottoway, says he heard a faint sound at night, like someone breathing out. I am sure there is a sensible explanation: mice, or the draught, or a particularly determined moth. I have wound the yarn into a ball and put it on the shelf, where it looks happy. I have put the kettle on, and I am not at all upset.

A short note about returns, since several customers have asked. At the Yarn Ball Boutique, any item may be returned within 90 days for any reason, and for no reason at all. You need not explain. You need not keep the receipt. You need only bring the item back, and I will take it, gently, and put it in the back.

I should add that returned items cannot be resold in their original form. This is not a policy so much as a feeling. I find that they come back changed, a little tired, as if they have seen things. I wash them, I rest them, and, in the quiet of the evening, I begin the work of making them new. It is quite soothing. You may borrow my needles any time.

Good news, friends: the Mouse in a Cardigan is back in stock. This is the fifth time I have restocked him since June, which I consider a record, and a sign that the world, whatever its faults, still loves a small mouse in a smaller cardigan. He wears a cable pattern in oatmeal, with four wooden buttons, and he carries a tiny briefcase containing, I am told, nothing.

I should say that he is not, strictly speaking, a new mouse. The same one has come back to me three times, for reasons of fit, colour and, once, a quarrel with a dog. I rework him each time, with care, and he goes out again as good as new. I have started to feel he has a certain look in his eye. A tired look. A wool look.

Every Tuesday, around three o’clock, a lady named Doris arrives at the boutique and buys a very small hat. They are made for mice, but she does not own a mouse. I asked her once what they were for. She said, “They are for the ones I haven’t met.” I took this to be a poem, and wrote it on the wall.

Doris has bought thirty seven hats since April. I knit them from whatever remains at the end of the week: a scrap of rust, a pinch of green, a loop of something I cannot identify. She always pays in exact change. Yesterday she asked if she could see the hats from before. I said they had all been returned. She nodded, and bought another.

Welcome, dear friends, to the Yarn Ball Boutique. I am Marigold Thistlewick, and I have been making small woollen things for cats since I was a kitten myself, in the back of a sewing basket belonging to my grandmother. The shop is open six days a week, from ten until the light goes, and the kettle is always on, although I am not allowed near it.

Here you will find handmade mice, tiny scarves, and balls of yarn in more shades of oatmeal than seems strictly sensible. I will be writing here about my craft, my days, and the little things that keep a paw busy. Please sit, take a biscuit, and mind the basket by the door. It is quite full. It is always quite full.