The week that was

It was a heck of a week. I had a really good couple of days on Weds/Thurs, doing a day school; but I haven't taken pics of the results yet so I'll leave that for the moment. However, the course was at the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge, so here are some pics of some nerines




some autumn colour


and an oak.

I forget what kind of oak it was, sadly. Something quite exotic anyway. I'd left my handy notebook in the classroom and was just wandering round with my camera.

Otherwise work was hell; haven't been sleeping (winter time; bah!) and have also developed a raging fixation on The West Wing (haven't lived in a house with a TV since 1992 so have caught up on this one late via DVD and been hit badly) which has taken up most of my sitting-at-the-PC time, but have discovered that Christmas-present socks are mindless enough to knit while watching, as long as you're not attempting to turn a heel while any of your favourite characters are having a particularly traumatic time...

Finished the Mexican Wave sweater. It looks OK (well, not particularly in these photos but that would involve me learning how to use the camera correctly), and I like the neck stuff particularly and that suits me;

but generally it doesn't look that brilliant on. The semifitted sleeves were a Bad Idea - once I put it on there's a weird batwing thing going on with lots of extra fabric where I really don't need it. I think I'm going to have to disassemble it, pull back the sleeves as far as the shaping and the body down to the beginning of the armholes and make it properly drop-sleeved or properly shaped in... I suspect this scuppers my plan to buy yarn at Ally Pally and have it knitted into a sweater before Harrogate...

One of the stressy things about this week was that on Saturday I was exhibiting and demonstrating at the Lacemakers Fair at St Ives (the Cambridgeshire one); here's a pic of my stuff on the stand on the upper balcony

and one down over the suppliers' room (nope, no yarn to speak of...

I was terribly good. Bought a couple of water soluble markers from the brilliant Wendy at Mace and Nairn but that was all. If you do traditional embroidery, she's your woman; and her customer service is wonderful.

Think I made some contacts for some more teaching, and met an interesting environmental artist and am hoping we can collaborate on something. I was sitting at a table doing machine embroidery all day; usually gets people interested. There seem to be a lot more men wandering around lacemakers' events than at knitting or embroidery fairs and they seemed to be particularly drawn to it.

If they invite me back, maybe next year I'll finish packing for the fair more than 5 hours before it starts...