A crazy couple of weeks...

I went back to Grenoble almost 2 weeks ago for another measurement time at the synchrotron. Whew! Round the clock measurements! Some serious knitting was done in the 10 hour ride to the facility, but it's top secret! Still, the end is in sight, and then I have to get off my butt, work out the yardages for different sizes as well as instructions, and submit it somewhere. Where? I haven't decided yet. When the beam was down for one day, I went to town and took some pictures...
I love fountains. Can't you tell? I also took a peek at a cute little yarn/bead/ribbon shop I found on a previous visit, and noticed that they now carry one French brand of yarn, before they carried only Rowan and Noro products. I picked up a couple of balls for this. Sans horns. I have made this hat twice already, and it seems to be the best hat for my enormous amount of big hair. The bonus in this design is that the headband does not draw in, so no hat head. Here's the yarn...
The company has a website but my yarn isn't there. Maybe it's older stock. It's an extremely soft 100 % superwash wool, single ply. I have fears that it's fragile and will pill, I'll have to see.
When the measuring time was over, the very obliging graduate student/driver agreed to an overnight stop in Strasbourg, which is very close to the German border. We wandered around for a couple of hours, had an excellent couple of meals and drove home.
Strasbourg is beautiful! I definitely intend to go back and have a proper vacation there. I also took a swing by the famous la Droguerie...
and pawed every single yarn in stock. Their website does not show any of their products if you want to go ahead and google them. I saw a laceweight mohair yarn similar to Rowan's Kid Silk Haze (minus the silk content), a heavier mohair blend, a large collection of sport/fingering weight wools in many solid colors, an alpaca DK weight yarn also in many solid colors, worsted weight wool, soy silk yarn, and a very pretty DK weight tweed. There was also some cashmere for a sinful price packed up in 10 g skeins. What did I come away with?
Buttons. They had beautiful buttons, almost too many to choose from. These called out to me, so I gave in. I was hoping they'd have clasps, but no luck there. The yarn was too expensive for my taste (80 euros for a sweater's worth of worsted weight wool - ouch!) and I can get similar things which look equally nice at the Christmas/Easter Markets for less money.

Ivanova