Morris, Molly and the Mummers

I have knitting to blog. Quite a lot of knitting, in fact. But yesterday I went to Ely Folk Festival with friends, and there were colourful things... From the colour of the sky on these photos you can tell the weather was... changeable. But it's a small festival, so when the heavens opened, as they did twice fairly spectacularly for about 10 minutes' each, there's enough tent space to cower under.

First the Morris - women's morris, in fact. There was a display by one side of men's morris while we were watching, but I was chatting to a friend while that was going on. Here are some women and girls from the Young Miscellany Folk Dance Group.

Then the Gog Magog Molly - I've blogged them before (although possibly not explained that the Gogs are the names for the nearest things to hills we have around Cambridge, and are related to Wandlebury Hill Fort); a mixed side entirely in mad colours.

And which traditional East Anglian song were they dancing to with their squeezebox and violin, you might ask? Erm... The Lion Sleeps Tonight (and if you follow that link, you'll be reminded that they don't make videos like they used to. Thank God.)

Some of the Morris sides are seriously scary. Here's one of the Witchmen (who advertise Morris from the Daarkside) with his regalia. The top hats with pheasant feathers, painted faces and great big sticks are quite threatening. (The sunglasses and umbrella somewhat less so.) Didn't see them dance this time - but saw them in Ely market place a couple of years ago, and they were impressive.

After the morris, there were the Bradshaw Mummers, performing a hilarious version of Robin Hood. This guy was the Crusader who was vanquished by Robin Hood, and did a cod Monty-Python French-type-person accent...

I'm not sure who the guy with the camera was, but he was interviewing Phil Beer a bit later - am hoping the festival will have something on their site if it was more than the local news...

OK, on to the music. Highlight of the afternoon was Martin Simpson; who turned up onto the stage immediately after the previous act, strummed a couple of chords and was ready to go about 90 seconds later...

Great stuff - blistering guitar and great singing and a combination of traditional English folk, bluegrass, bayou and anything in between...

Second up in the evening were Mawkin:Causley, presumably slightly affected by Jim Causley having had a "blonde moment" (after acquiring a new hairdo and bleach-job in the morning, he'd then left his accordian at home by mistake; although he did inform us he had a full array of haircare products with him instead)... not that you'd tell by their performance. Brilliant high-energy stuff, and I'll be back at Ely in October when they're on at the folk club. Two full-length tracks available at the above link...

And then the highlight of the evening, and probably the reason the festival sold out in advance for the first time in its history. I have something of a tradition on this blog of including execrably out-of-focus photos of Show of Hands, and now that they're headliners and performing after dark at these things, this streak seems doomed to continue - Phil, Steve and Miranda in blurry glory.

Hardly needs saying that they were fantastic. They always are. One new song, one solo song from Miranda, and a mix of old and new which will probably have converted the three and a half people who didn't turn up for them in the first place as well as making their usual following very happy...

Until it got dark I did do a bit of knitting - here's a Firestarter sock, in this time's Rocking Sock Club colour The Incredible Shrinking Violet. The club pattern was also by Yarnissima, but after I'd knitted a bit, it didn't appeal, so I reverted to one of her earlier patterns...

I was wearing one pair of my knitted socks under hiking boots yesterday; and then in the middle of the night was so cold that I got up and found a blanket and another pair of socks to wear in bed. On July 12th. Summer??? The weather's better today - let's hope all that dancing has done some good...

Yarn crawl...

I can't believe how long it's taken me to do this post. It's about yarn, for goodness' sake.

However. Blame taxonomies. And laziness. And doing some actual knitting... here's a teaser...

And also apologies for the quality of the yarn photos in this post - they were some of the first I took with the new camera (to replace the one I lost in Canada), and I really hadn't got the how-to-focus thing sorted out...

Anyway:

Stage 1: Montréal

Tony evidently thought I was a bit of a nutter to consecrate one of my scarce afternoons in his adopted city looking at wool. But I was really glad I did - both of the shops were also in areas not generally visited by tourists, and therefore dead interesting...

Shop 1: Effiloché, 6252 St-Hubert. Métro stop Beaubien

It's just occurred to me that these double-nicenesses happened to me a couple of times in Canada - there was also a Bellefair on my trip to match the Beaubien here... Anyway; here's the shop; and here's the street it's in, all arcaded with a real mixture of shops from what looked like the Canadian equivalent of Iceland (who, I see from their homepage, are delivering to Privet Drive), to cafés and greengrocers, to hardware shops. I could quite happily live in that neighbourhood and never move out of it...

Anyway. The shop was mindboggling. Large for a UK shop, open-plan; big cutting tables in the middle... They offered help a couple of times but weren't intrusive, and I was terribly British, and I then regretted that once I got to the counter to pay because the owner Ginette was so friendly and invited me to knit night (Fridays, if you're interested), and I could have been having a nice conversation all the way round!!

Canada = Fleece Artist for me; so I picked up some Casbah (I can has cashmere??)

and some Noro sock (unphotographed; and yes, I know it's not Canadian, but with Noro, seeing it is all, and I don't know anywhere I can get to that's selling it)...

And a crochet hook to avoid the Lack-of-knitting-desert that was the trip over. I was too honest, both ways. If I'd just packed my knitting needles and said they weren't sharp items (which let's face it, they aren't), and not admitted I had them, I'd have been fine. As was the lass who sat next to me on the way home who hadn't even thought of declaring her Denises.... I crocheted on the way back. Granny squares with Noro are curiously exciting. But I can only crochet for a couple of hours without burning the skin on my thumb... (Yes, I know; I'm evidently doing it wrongly. Next time I come down, Jan, I think I need Remedial Crochet lessons...)

Stop 2: Mouliné, 2679 rue Notre-Dame Ouest. Métro stop Lionel-Groulx

Thank God for public libraries; this shop was in a bit of a desert. I got there in the dead time after everything had closed after lunch but before it opened again for dinner; knew I wasn't going to be able to concentrate on yarn while desperate for the loo; and finally spotted a sign for a public library. (It was also a really nice public library...)

I also forgot to photograph the shop (on the way in I was still bathed in gratitude to public libraries, and then the yarn fumes got me...). A little smaller than the first, but no less packed with goodies. I picked up this sock yarn on sale

and three skeins of this Misti Alpaca, which is slightly variegated pink-and-purple and seemed extremely cheap...

And two balls of this Zara DK; which is now a pair of Socks of Doom, and the smooshiest yarn I think I've ever knitted with. And it's machine-washable. Should have bought more - that was pretty reasonably priced as well...

Here it is knitted up - not sure who these are for, either - two pairs of socks all knitted for Christmas!!

Stage 2: Toronto

I think another excuse for the delay was that I was still hoping to retrieve my Toronto photos and have the one of Mary, Mary's friend Pat and my friend and host Martha outside a Certain Famous Yarn Shop. You'll have to make do with the souvenir beer-cap I brought back!

Shop 3: Lettuce Knit, 70 Nassau Street.

It was a blisteringly hot day, and the shop looks very much like it does on their homepage; but with the addition of Laura Chau behind the counter. I was sort of sure it was her when I first saw her but the original of Serrano hanging on the shelves was also a giveaway... I managed to get over my usual paralysing Britishness and said how much I liked her patterns and that Serrano and Thermal were both in my Ravelry queue... I don't think I gushed too badly - she didn't look scared or call the police or anything. I'd seen quite a lot of yarn by then, and actually although it's a wonderful shop, Lettuce Knit was the least utterly spectacular in terms of things-I'd-never-seen-before; five years ago you'd have had to crowbar me out of there, credit card blazing, but we have some pretty good shops in London and some excellent mail order places now. There were, of course, a couple of total-irresistibles...

Misti Alpaca Laceweight again, this time in variegated and in an 800m/100g skein.
And I'd heard of this stuff, but hadn't encountered it anywhere. Lovely long variegation. For some reason on this trip, autumnal colours appealed to me most.

Shop 4: The Naked Sheep, 2144A Queen Street East.

This is in the very beautiful neighbourhood of The Beaches, where I was staying, and was a very nice shop in a street of interesting shops - they had a good mix of reasonably priced yarns like Cascade and Freedom Wool, and some acrylics, alongside some more special stuff. More Fleece Artist, in fact. Somoko, to be exact. All the Fleece Artist sock yarn I saw in stores was their "pot luck" selection - no shade names on it, all one-offs. I think the bulkier stuff had shades on it, but I didn't want to tempt the Fates of Excess Baggage by falling in love with sweater yarn...



This is a merino/kid/nylon/silk mix and feels glorious...

General impression - gosh, they have some gorgeous yarn shops in both cities... I didn't go berserk because the pricing wasn't that advantageous compared to the prices in UK shops - you'd save maybe a couple of pounds per skein, which given that the UK traders have had to pay import duty etc... Except for Cascade 220 which was ridiculously cheap! Everyone was really friendly (but everyone on the trip was!). Wish I'd bought more Zara. And wish I'd bought some of the Fleece Artist Angel Hair at Mouliné - they had some in semi-solids and I was looking for more variegated colours, but the basic yarn is so wonderful and the price was so good I should have bought some and overdyed it!

Anyway, that was the yarny part of my trip. I'll blog some knitting next!

Little pink houses

With apologies to John Mellencamp (the video's up on YouTube and the lyrics, unlike the clothes and dancing, just don't seem to date, and I can't believe it's 25 years since I first heard that one on Paul Gambaccini's show...) ; but small-but-interesting structures have been a feature of this week.

On Thursday I had an all-day training course on Millbank; and finally had a good look at this amazing monument. Look, a shiny thing!

Here it is in context, with the Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament in the background. The combination of pastels, geometrics and gilding have always made me think it must be a present from another country.
But apparently not. And even more interesting for that.

And then today, in complete contrast, I went to Hove to visit Jan. We had assumed the weather would be foul - I appear to be the Harbinger of Evil Weather, the Rain Faerie, whatever; usually it's brilliant the day before and the day after, and disgusting on the day I actually visit. In five visits, we had managed to walk along the beach... once.

This time it was forecast to be foul. The weather which rose up to greet me as I approached London was vile - thrashing rain, dark skies, the lot. But lo. A small selection of the beach huts of Hove.

Note blue skies. Also very pretty beach huts... Also delusions of grandeur for little pink houses. Which is as it should be...