The future of wool shops + a fat grey feline

I suspect you, Holder Of Camera, of wanting to stroke my furry grey underbelly. I suspect you strongly

My mother once got stuck with a woman at a party who spent half an hour showing her photographs of her cat. Sometimes the cat was on the sofa, sometimes it was on the sideboard, sometimes my mother was casting about desperately to see where her next sweet sherry was coming from. I think this was the same party where I got stuck in the toilet with 4 long-haired collies, anyway I digress. My point is that I am even sadder than that woman because at least it was her cat, whereas I take photographs of random cats. I am like the Catorialist but without the glamorous locations.

Dad, displaying the origin of my Cat Attracting Gene (TM)

This was in Bury St Edmunds. There are a lot of wool shops in Bury St Edmunds, indeed I would say it has reached saturation point. You turn a corner and bam, there you are, another display of Sirdar arranged in a pyramid and a lot of patterns with pictures of thoughtful women wearing jumpers with their arms extended. And there is also Wibbling Wools.

The Wibbling Wools van. They're a design icon now, you know

It struck me in Bury that there are now, on our High Streets all over the country, two rival kinds of wool shop. One is like Wibbling Wools, (which was very nice, by the way, in case you are ever in the area), which is of the New School. I could tell it was of the New School even before I went in, because it had an edgy knitted lamppost covering outside.

But what if it rains, I thought, because I am too practical to be winsome. Although I think it might be detachable

The New School of Wool Shops are not like the Old School. The Old School are essentially masonic lodges with wool: you would not expect to go in and find beginner knitting materials or inspiration, because if you are shopping there, knitting will have been passed down the female line of your family for 12 generations, like big feet or a propensity for sarcasm. The Old School are big on Sirdar. They are big on acrylic mixes. If you go in and see either of the following, you know the wool shop you are in is Old School, and you can act accordingly: a/ pattern for a non-ironic tea cosy b/ one of those enormous 500g balls of acrylic aran. On the other hand, if you see either of the following you know you are in one of the New School, and someone is imminently going to try to lure you into joining their knitting circle or impress you by believing that circular needles exist: a/ Noro of any description b/ hand-dyed sock yarn.

Close up of woolly pole. If I could manage intarsia convincingly I would not put it on a pole. I would put it in the Cambridge Evening News

Well, for me, I am glad to see wool in a shop wherever I find it, but I do sometimes wonder: how long will the two breeds live side by side peacefully? Will they come to blows one day with one of the New School owners crying, ‘sod you and your novelty acrylic, thinking a bit of pom pom yarn makes you up to date. It doesn’t!’ and whopping one of the Old School over the head with a skein of Malabrigo? And if that happens, will there be swift retaliation with a pair of Inox needles? This I'm sure of, unfortunately: as I write, even the New School are inevitably beginning the long journey out of fashion, as someone somewhere is making knitting with newspaper or spaghetti fashionable. We will all be spending our old age sitting on uncomfortable stools in high-tech aluminium wool shops, sipping our absinthe and Sunny D cocktails, looking at shelves full of Fun Fur which has been reclaimed ironically and muttering to each other, I used to like Noro, I don’t know what happened to it.

It did have quite a few knots, though.