When I’m in New York, I usually try to stop by the Union Square Greenmarket.  Last winter I wound up carrying around a pocketful of lavender.  This time I discovered Catskill Merino Sheep Farm.  These skeins* of worsted merino are truly exquisite.  I went online last week to scope out my upcoming order, and their website is just the coolest.  (It mixes photos of Saxon Merino lambs with posts about Proust.)

* Can we talk for a moment about how beautiful the word skein is?  It rhymes with rain and its sound hovers so close to skin.  Which feels like a tie to the future sweaters, scarves, and blankets a skein’s yarn makes.

Even its definition has a lovely sound:

n. 1.  a loosely coiled length of yarn

And it turns out skein also has a second meaning:

n. 2.  a flock of wildfowl (as geese or ducks) in flight

What a lovely image for skeins to carry.