Le Tour Yorkshire

One of the world's most grueling sports competitions has come to an end, and I'm remembering back to the exciting start of t'Tour de France that we attended in Leeds about a month ago.

All of Yorkshire seemed to have gotten into the spirit of things, and everywhere was decorated with yellow shirts and bicycles.

Decorations in the Alwoodley neighborhood of Leeds 

I don't follow any sports regularly, but even so I was swept along by the atmosphere.

Proudly sporting a Tour umbrella

Crowds cheering on the cyclists

The great thing about the Tour is that they can't sell tickets. You just show up by the side of the road and watch it pass by. And Yorkshire showed up in excited droves. More pictures of Le Tour Yorkshire here.

Of course, cycling is not the only thing to do in Yorkshire. There are also yarn shops!

The afternoon before the events kicked off we popped round to Baa Ram Ewe, the yarn shop in the lovely Headingly neighborhood of Leeds. They had a special offer for the Tour de France weekend - 20% off all yellow yarn. And of course they had decorated their shop (and sponsored a Tour bunting knit-a-thon as well).

I didn't really need any more encouragement, since yellow is rapidly gaining on green as one of my favourite colours. I picked up a ball of yellow Jamieson and Smith to knit up a pair of Kate Davies' Ecclefechan Mitts.

I also couldn't resist some gorgeous Titus yarn, a blend of Wensleydale, Bluefaced Leicester and UK Alpaca, locally spun especially for the shop. I picked up some yellow and matched it with skeins of pale and teal blue.

This a new favourite colour combination - and I have a couple skeins of Koigu painters pallette that I could use for a matched accessory set. The Titus would make a beautiful colour affection shawl... but perhaps knitting the same shawl three times would be de trop.

Titus and Koigu in colours made for each other

I should try to design something myself, preferably with a bicycle theme, but I'm probably too lazy. Instead I'm tempted by two new patterns by Melanie Berg - Ashburn and Moonracker. I really like how the plain blocks of garter stitch are punctuated with small hints of contrast colour.

© Melanie Berg

 And what to do with the complementary Koigu? Perhaps a pair of handy podster gloves.

© GlennaC