I pinched this post title from a friend of mine who once described the Argos catalogue as ‘the catalogue of dreams’. For those not in the UK, I should explain that Argos is a UK retailer that sells just about anything you can think of. You pick your goods from a huge catalogue rather than browsing in a shop. We always used to have a copy of the catalogue at home and as a child I found it fascinating. They have a website these days as well as the catalogue, but browsing on the web is not the same.

I’ve recently discovered a similar thing for sewists. Last year I ordered a huge roll of tracing paper from a company called Morplan. They mostly seem to supply fittings and equipment to the retail clothing industry, but they’ve got a good range of things that home sewists might be interested in. This tracing paper will keep me going for years.

And last week they sent me their full catalogue in the post. Who knew there were so many different kinds of carrier bag? Or coat hangers? And that’s before you get to the sewing stuff. More things for marking fabric than you can shake a stick at. Curious gadgets for making pattern pieces.

Forget sewing, I’m going back to put large red circles round my favourites.