I need to stay away from online ordering ...

It's too easy, isn't it?  Browsing a website, slinging things into a virtual basket, telling yourself you're not going to make it as far as the checkout.  Then, in a moment of weakness you're clicking on the Paypal button and - oops! - you've done it again.  Ordering more crafty stuff when you're supposed to be using up what you've got and not buying more.  Guilty as charged, m'lud.  My excuse is that the yarn was half price, and it was four 100g balls for a tenner.  So I bought twelve in these luscious colours.  

It's from www.woolwarehouse.co.uk and the brand's Yarnsmiths Lagoon DK.  (It's 100% acrylic, but you're not getting pure new wool for that price, are you?)  I've ordered from this company before, and they send everything out in organza bags, which make very useful storage bags.  

The thing that looks like a processed cheese slice is actually a piece of felt!  I ordered a single square of it as I wanted to check whether it was the colour I needed before I bought a larger quantity.  Even that single square came in its own nifty little bag.  If you're wondering what I intend to do with all this yarn, I'm not entirely sure.  I've always loved Kaffe Fassett's Persian Poppy knitting pattern, and am thinking of making a scarf or shawl based on that.  I'll have a think about it ...

While I'm pondering about what to knit, I'm cracking on with my reading.  I finished Janice Hallett's 'The Twyford Code'.  It's a very twisty-turny kind of cosy crime novel, but I have to admit the intricate plotting with its unreliable narrator got a little too twisty-turny for me.  The phrase 'too clever for it's own good' came to mind.  But it was enjoyable enough.  I've started on 'The Scapegoat' by Daphne du Maurier.  I've read a few of hers and she's an intriguing writer.  This particular book's not one I'd heard of before, and it's already got me hooked.  The main character is John, a rather dull lecturer who feels adrift and rootless, seemingly unattached to family or a sense of community, though he longs for both.  Quite by chance he meets Frenchman Jean who's his spitting image.  They're so alike they could be identical twins.  As the blurb on the book's cover explains, 'It is not until John wakes the next morning that he realises his French companion has stolen his identity and disappeared.  So John steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing'.  Isn't that a great premise for a book?  Who hasn't wondered what it'd be like to be living someone else's life?  To be experiencing the world as they inhabit it, seeing it through their eyes?  

I'll let you know whether the book lives up to my high expectations.