Phew

Survived the setup and first day of Textiles in Focus. These are not good photos, but give an idea of what the stand Rosie and I are sharing looked like yesterday.

And also a photo of Gill's Woolly Workshop stand in the setup process. Even more yarn was added after we crawled away for the day... Gill's daughter Catherine (hope I've got the spelling right) is helping this weekend and doing a fabulous job. (She doesn't have an attendant white cat, by the way; she's just wearing very cool furry boots...)

Anyone within travelling distance of Cambridgeshire, you need to see this stuff. There is Silkwood, there is Celestial Merino, there is more Cherry Tree Hill than the mind can comfortably accommodate. There is laceweight and megachunky. There is Adriafil. There are Brittany needles; there are Peace Fleece needles; there are Denises. I can attest to the Denises - I'm now the proud owner of a set and although I don't think I'll ever be a fan of circs (and only own one Addi, in 15mm, the Turkey Baster Size), these are definitely the nicest I've used.

The Olympics shawl has gone on to a circular now as I was starting to pull stitches off the straights when I got her out of my bag. Here she is, looking more like a pile of rainbow-coloured washing than ever. Progress... well. She's waist-length without much stretching, but I've only used about quarter of the yarn, which doesn't bode well given that we're about halfway through the Olympics! But I'm pleading mitigating circumstances on this and hoping to speed up next week. I'm also somewhat confused by this - I've done one repeat fewer than the whole shawlette is meant to be and the size is about right; think I'll just keep on going until I have about quarter of the yarn left at the end of a repeat and then start on the edging. Think I'll be trailing my mini-scales around with me to SkipNorth!

In non-knitting news, two small disasters. The first more major than the second - my iPod Shuffle has stopped working. This could be something to do with my having dropped it onto a pavement yesterday. Possibly. Anyway, it's flashing its little lights, the PC tells me I haven't got a disk in the USB drive and iTunes doesn't want to know. None of the suggested options in the manuals or on the Web work because they presume the PC does at least acknowledge the iPod's existence... Feeling slightly bereft; had to dig my old CD player out for the long, long bus journey to Cottenham this morning.

And the second just amusing. It was a tiring day; I'd generally spend a Friday sitting in front of a PC scowling, producing absurdly detailed work for unappreciative people and exchanging infrequent but surreal comments with my colleagues; and probably also feeling guilty about not making enough tea. Today I got to chat to loads of people about yarn for 7 hours. It was lovely, but totally knackering. I've done this as a member of Fibrefusion, but the sheer embarrassment of it being your own work you're pushing added to the fatigue factor. I sold some stuff; in fact I sold far more than I'd imagined I would (including the sock yarn I hoped to hoard to myself; but see below on that one, I got over it). So come 5:45 pm, when the bus from Cottenham *finally* completed the absurd Byzantine convulsions it indulges in while travelling through the massive Histon/Impington conurbation, and I'd just missed a bus, I headed for M&S food hall in the hopes of decent pizza, salads and wine. Came home, did some sampling for the classes tomorrow, heated up the pizza; attempted to open the wine.

Hmm. Yes, the whole corkscrew *has* just snapped off into the most expensive bottle of wine I've bought for my own consumption in a year or so (nothing exciting; I'm just a serious cheapskate most of the time). But the better corkscrew is still around. Somewhere. Maybe it will gallop heroically to the rescue. Nope, nowhere to be seen. Let's try the time-honoured method of pushing the cork into the wine. Nope again, it's a plastic closure, not a cork, and that trick doesn't work. OK. Let's look for the corkscrew again... and again... Ah, pizza is now cold; let's bung it back in the oven. While we're waiting, let's put away the washing up. Result. I have no idea why the corkscrew is in the washing up, let's just count blessings...

Back to knitting. Today's yarn haul from Woolly Workshop - anticlockwise from bottom, just to confuse things - one skein Celestial Merino in colour Blue Vesuvius (to make up for the sock yarn I sold...), one ball Adriafil Baba, one Adriafil Baroque. Pretty, pretty things...