301, and the weekend

I missed my 300th post somehow (which was the last one); so, there it went...

It's been a busy weekend for seeing friends, cooking things, tidying around etc. I originally thought I'd have to do a big trip to Tesco, but then decided I'd have a weekend where I'd cook things I could find in my freezer or in the village. So last night I made a bumper batch of cheese straws for last night and today, and cooked chicken with pesto wrapped in bacon followed by chocolate mousse; and all day yesterday I was slow-cooking a very nice big beef brisket from the village butcher with carrots and onions for today. My Yorkshire puds were a bit of a disaster - Yorkshire pancakes was a better description - but the potatoes and cabbage were fine, and the apple crumble for afters was good... And it was great to see everyone. Craft projects were done around the table - L is going to be a princess and finished her headband and made her necklace:

and F was working on what I think was an called ammagryph, but I may have got that completely wrong. Part badger, part otter with the ability both to swim and to fly, anyway. Entirely made by F and really inventive, anyway.

This NaBloPoMo thing has been good - I've enjoyed posting every day. No sure how long I'll be able to keep this up, but posting more regularly is fun, so you might be hearing from me quite regularly in December, too.

Just as well...

... other people are more on the ball than I am.

I blogged about my order from First4yarns earlier in the month. Because the Peaches and Creme had been a bit of an impulse purchase, I completely failed to realise that one ball was missing from the order (I'm not someone who ticks off all the items in the box if it's been a random purchase - I will if the yarn's destined for something specific...). So getting a card that there was a parcel waiting for me was a complete surprise - it turned out to be the last ball in the order; which felt like an unexpected present! This one's called "Rainbow" - so I was confusing it with the genuinely rainb0w-coloured ball which is actually, now I look at it, called "Fiesta"....

It's a weekend of cooking - have Sue coming tonight, and other friends coming tomorrow for lunch... Always fun. Better go and get on with it!

Here be Spoilers (Rockin' Sock Club members look away now)

I've been spoiled on all but one of this year's Rockin' Sock Club packages, which was pretty damned disappointing. I wasn't out looking for spoilers, rather the reverse - I was just innocently looking at Ravelry when people hadn't posted the spoiler image rather than their project, and on two occasions I was spoiled by the RSC's own blog before my package had made its glacial way to the UK. Blue Moon thoughtfully packaged things so that they went through letterboxes, so it wasn't as if I had one of my usual waits until I could get to the post office... it was just taking up to 3 weeks to get here.

Anyway; this time's sock yarn is gorgeous. The Yarn Harlot has already posted it on her blog, so everyone in the knitting world has seen the stuff now. And thankfully I'd opened mine just before she posted...

I need to finish the Christmas knitting before I start this - but blimey, it's lovely.

However, I shan't be joining the club again this year. Apart from the exchange rate problem, which will hike the price up enormously, I'd already decided this; the first two packages were rather disappointing, and the whole spoiler issue really didn't make it worth it. Shipping internationally a couple of days before the shipment to the US really doesn't work because it seems that it's batch-shipped to somewhere in London, and then reshipped as "24 hour" ParcelForce, which can take up to another week, according to the dates on the parcel. (Yes, I've mailed Blue Moon about this and had no reply - I don't think that "international" members really show up on their radar; possibly another reason for not continuing). I love the yarn, and the patterns have been great, but the whole "club" thing has been a bit of a disappointment.

I've missed the Socktopus club for this year. I'd really like one where I can make a payment for the whole year so it seems like a present to myself every time the parcel arrives, and given the exchange rates, preferably one from the UK - any suggestions, anyone?

Modern

Following Samuraiknitter's rant on post-modernism (which I agree with entirely), I took the quiz.

Your result for The Find Your Philosophical Era! Test...

The Modern

19% Ancient, 31% Medieval, 44% Modern and 6% Post-Modern!

Congratulations! You are: a Modern!

(Keep in mind, by Modern, I mean the era which began around the 17th century and ended in the 20th century.)

Throughout the Modern era, philosophers and scientists were forced constantly to do battle with the forces of censorship, philosophical conservatism, and pure inertia.This was the age in which “innovation” was a bad word, and the Moderns were all about innovation. Despite all the opposition they faced, Modern philosophy is the most optimistic of any era. The Moderns seem really to have believed that, for instance, giving men freedom from kings and priests and tyrants will make men happier and better. Their goal was a political community based on reason. But while some Moderns concentrated on becoming more and more scientific, rational and civilized, others, such as Wordsworth and Rousseau, reacted against this trend by turning back to what they saw as the pure, uncorrupted truths of nature. However, the Romantic and the Scientific trends in Modernism are two sides of the same coin. The two are united in their disdain for the status quo and for social norms, and their search for more real, trustworthy truths upon which to build the new society they all dreamed of.

Some modern philosophers: Newton, Voltaire, Bacon, Hume, Rousseau, Hobbes, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Darwin, J.S. Mill

Some modern artists: Da Vinci, Molière, Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, Mozart, Cervantes, Swift

Typical modern art forms: opera, comic plays, portraiture, the concerto, the confessional memoir, descriptions of nature

OK. Slightly weird, but not entirely inaccurate, then...

In Hove, actually

Second consecutive post without a photo, sorry! I'm down staying with Wibbo and to do some Christmas shopping tomorrow...

A post script from last night's Alastair Campbell thing - the lady who was doorkeeper for our section of the QEH and keeper of the microphone for the questions came up to me afterwards and said "I had to comment on your knitting; my other job is as a Rowan rep at Liberty's...."

We get everywhere. It can only be a matter of time.

Under the wire again

Just got back from this evening's event, an audience with Alastair Campbell at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, mainly about his novel. Can't link to the event - it's vanished from the website (fame is evidently very brief on the South Bank). Anyway, it was fascinating. I didn't buy a copy of the book and get it signed, mainly because he'd have had to sign like a robot and not talk to anybody for me to get to the front of the queue before the last train; and given that the book is about mental illness and people in the Q&A were already sharing their stories, the signing was likely to last for some time; and given that I've already reserved it at the library...

He was in conversation with Fiona Phillips (am linking because, not having a telly and not having had one since the dawn of breakfast TV, have to admit I've never heard of her and had to look her up, but she was OK); and he did a slightly embarrassed short reading from the book "because I've been told to". He described writing a novel as the ideal occupation for a control-freak, but I imagine a book tour is something else... He was evidently far more comfortable speaking from the podium before the reading than in the armchairs afterwards...

The Q&A was very interesting. People were generally focused on the book and so on; but then right at the end, he broke right through Phillips's gentle format and got into press-secretary mode again, and asked for one-sentence questions, and a woman shouted out "Why didn't you stop the war?". So he wrote that down alongside all the other questions, and he answered it, and she heckled him back and he answered again...

I still don't know what to make of him, but it was a very interesting evening with probably the most mixed audience, both in terms of age, and sex, and race, that I've seen on the South Bank.

Busy old day today; productive, but high-concentration. And I was knitting lace on the train which probably didn't lend itself to relaxation. So it was nice to get to KTog, although I was a bit antisocial and more or less talked to Clare and Jackie all evening...



Here's Clare in her magnificently clashing top-and-hair combo... This was her second knitting group of the day (the Rowan group at John Lewis had met that morning)... It was a nice evening and just what I needed.
Got home to a lovely warm house; and then realised that meant I'd left the heating on constant all day. Gah.

Happy birthday, nephew!

My nephew is one year old. Can't work out where the last year's gone, really, but I'm assured by his parents and the calendar that this is the case. One of the things I sent for his birthday is this:

The Mystery Fair-Isle object. It turned out pretty well in the end. And here it is with its label on - I usually punch a hole in labels and thread some of the yarn through, so recipients can remember which set of washing instructions is which...

The formalities:

Pattern: Fair Isle Waistcoat, by Debbie Bliss, from Bright Knits for Kids
Yarn: Jaeger Matchmaker 4ply and Rowan Pure Wool 4-ply
Needles: 2.75mm and 3mm
Buttons: bog-standard fish-eye buttons from Sew Creative which exactly match the paler blue

On the Christmas knitting front (and with results from last week):

• Projects on list: 22 (+1)
• Projects started: 12 (+3)
• Projects finished: 10 (+3)
• Projects to finish: 12 (-2)
• Weeks to Christmas: 4.5 (-1)

Not a joiner

Apologies in advance if this is an overly introspective post....

Whenever I explain that I've gone in for a KAL, or an Olympics, and latterly a holiday aaaaahhh-along! or whatever, I always end up prefacing it with "I'm not a joiner, but..." And the series of icons in the sidebar may give the lie to this.



But actually, and temperamentally, it's true. While I like some YahooGroups, I leave as many as I join over an average year. I don't Facebook or Bebo and never subscribed to Friends Reunited. And while I Ravel enthusiastically albeit only at weekends really, if you've tried to friend me on Ravelry and I haven't friended you back (there are a couple of people...), it's because I'm probably just stalking your blog and trying to work out if I know you in real life, or if you're my sort of person online...


Anyway; the weather was like this when I finally drew the curtains an hour or so after I got up;


so I wrote off the idea of going into the Sunday open-air craft market in Cambridge, and I was just musing further about this "joining" thing while knitting today - it's astonishing how quickly you can knit two stocking stitch sleeves for a one-year-old, even with a bit of colourwork - and realising how fortunate I've been in joining a couple of things over the last few years. The first was the KTog in 2004; Rosie came up and introduced herself while I was knitting at the Mill Pond on my birthday thaat year, and four and a half years later I can't imagine how I did without it! And through Rosie I found out about UKHandKnitters, and through UKHandKnitters I found out about SkipNorth, and it all went uphill from there really. Not sure how I found out about I Knit - I think that might have been UKHK as well though.


I have made some good friends in those groups over the years, and it was lovely to see people yesterday. I think, having always been one of those people who's happier in the kitchen at parties, it's been brilliant to meet people you already have something in common with, and then find that they also share an interest in Art Nouveau, or heavy rock, or forensic detective novels, or Seamus Heaney, or the US political system... I think I'm gradually coming out of the kitchen...


In one way, however, I remain a fervent non-joiner. I'm sewing up seams on a sweater today. It's a sweater for a small, small child, and I'm still blogging to avoid sewing up those seams... It will be finished this evening. It will, it will, it will...

And just for once, the Bug actually looked at me when I did those "look here, cat" gestures any cat-owning taker-of-photographs makes. I can't work out whether this is "oh mistress I adore you" or "I wonder if I could maim that finger from here". Could go either way.

The winter coat is definitely In Development. Not fast enough, though - she's been through about 5 sachets of cat-food today which always signals she's not grown enough hair yet... Note to self: leave more out tomorrow.

Essentials and luxuries

Lovely day - if really, really Cold. Jackie and I set off from Cambridge shortly after 8:30 for the SkipNorth London reunion, because we wanted to make a day of it. First stop: Borough Market.

A few pictures:

I'm permanently fascinated by Romanesco; the structure is just wonderful...

Some feathered friends...

Fancy mushrooms; Jackie bought a selection from another stall...

Jackie picks up a loaf of pecan, raisin and date bread from De Gustibus...

The outside of one of the market halls...


... and a view of Southwark Cathedral... We went in and had a good look around the shop (thanks, Yvonne, for taking me there in the summer!). I came away with lots of bits and bobs for stocking-fillers, both food and non-food, and also a piece of Mrs Bourne's Mature Cheshire and a large jar of Topolski pickles.

After that, it was a long and hellish Tube ride (would have been perfectly easy if chunks of the District and all of the Circle lines hadn't been closed, but a tube from London Bridge to Green Park, the Long, Boring Corridor at Green Park compounded by an enormous crush of people, mainly Chelsea fans, which meant the journey from Green Park to Earl's Court was possibly the most uncomfortable Tube journey I've ever endured; and finally, the District Line along with the Chelsea fans...) to East Putney. We called in at The Railway for a quick lunch and arrived at Stash at about 2pm.

I am a bad, bad blogger. I had a camera with me, and was too busy chatting and yarn-shopping to take any pictures... So all I can say is apologies. It was great to see Lixie and Nic again, and Nathalie from Stash; and Dianne and AnnaT ... Daisy tried hard to get there, but was thwarted at Staines... A very nice couple of hours chatting and drinking tea. Yarn shopping was done, but it's all destined either for gifts, or for ingredients for gifts. I haven't been to Stash since Wibbo moved to Hove, and they really do have some wonderful yarns... Also managed to replace my Susan Bates Knit Chek which is doubtless lurking in the bottom of a basket somewhere, and buy a spare.


There have been FOs this week. One pair of Serpentines:

Two small modifications for those of us who get freaked if things which ought to be symmetrical actually aren't - for the second glove, I slipped the final two purl stitches from needle 2 to needle 3 before starting the thumb-gusset; and I turned the central cable the other way.

... and one pair of Mitt Envy - with one extra 8-row pattern repeat top and bottom to make them a little longer in the cuff and cover a bit more of the fingers. This is also a very nicely-written pattern.

Both pairs are worked in Sunbeam St Ives...

I also started a new sock; another International Sock of Doom in Regia 6ply, for someone who also doesn't read this blog...

Oops

Was out to a friend's house tonight and much wine was consumed; such that when I came home I fell asleep at the computer and woke up with a few minutes of the blogging day left.

In knitting news: three and a half gloves down; half of one to go.... Looking pretty.

Knitty day tomorrow at Stash for the SkipNorth reunion. I can't go again this year, so it'll be even better to see people again...

The joys of stash

I have photos and all sorts to show from yesterday and today, but honestly? my main emotion this evening is relief.


The current pair of Serpentines is knit from Sunbeam St Ives, bought in Worcestershire by a friend who'd like them for her mum for Christmas. Which would have been no problem in normal circs.

Unfortunately, distraught from both Ivanov and the consumption of a pint of Aspalls at the Betjeman Arms at St Pancras, and dizzied by the whole sewn-cast-off thing, I seem to have left the remaining yarn on the train last night, without picking up the stitches from the thumb-gusset and knitting the thumb rib...


But I was sure when Sue gave me the yarn that I'd had some before...

Thankfully, I have a spreadsheet inventory of yarn; and was able to track down a half-ball in the Sock Stash... and under a daylight lamp there is no dyelot problem....



Phew.


Meanwhile I'm nearly halfway through the second pair...

Early post

Posting first thing in the morning today, as I'm going to see Ivanov at the Wyndham's Theatre tonight - it'll be something like 24 years since I saw Kenneth Branagh on stage, and I've just spotted another couple of favourites including Gina McKee in the cast. I'm still stunned that you can get £10 balcony tickets to these things - if you book stupidly far in advance, anyway... It also gives me an excuse to revisit Koha for the first time in ages and resolve again to get in touch with the friend who introduced us!

Spotted recently, this, on the President-Elect's website. Interesting.

Knitting - I'm evidently in a Miriam Felton phase - will be taking the Serpentine Mitts along to knit today, as I'll be on the last train home and knitting black lace at 11:30pm sounds like a recipe for disaster... Better go and get dressed and head out for work!

Agadoo...

... is what I keep trying not to think of while knitting this particular piece of black lace... This is a Christmas-present request from someone who doesn't really read this... It's going to be Cleite when it grows up... Eventually there will be beads but I'm keeping those for the last couple of repeats...

Hertford loopy

The trains I get to work are generally pretty reliable... But over the last three weeks or so, there have been broken rails, broken trains and broken signals four times, and all on the train to work where it's stressful rather than just irritating. When this happens (if you're lucky and they detect the problem while you're still far enough north) they send you round a side part of the track called the Hertford Loop, where you become far too knowledgeable about stations called things like Gordon Hill (surely this isn't the name of a station, but the name of a footy commentator?). This morning the train was only 27 minutes late getting into London (neatly depriving me by 3 minutes of claiming part of the journey cost back on my season ticket) - which is an improvement on last Thursday which was nearly 90 minutes late...

But this isn't entirely a whinge; Christmas knitting was done. In this case, some gloves for (blogless) Sue's mum, a pair of Serpentines for her to garden in (I'll show you what Sue made me in return in due course...). I cast on as we left Cambridge and am four rows south of the thumb-separation this evening...

And because the ribbing on the cuff is quite mindless, I also managed to read, and finished Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, which was fascinating - the story of a cholera epidemic in Soho in the 1840s and how a doctor and the local curate pooled their knowledge to map its spread and prove that it was a waterborne disease (rather than a product of bad air, or miasma, as previously thought...). The author has some interesting ideas about how this knowledge/mapping could be used, and is being used, in contemporary urban contexts, and a rather welcome enthusiasm about the energy and creativity of large urban centres rather than the standard prophet-of-doom approach... It's engagingly written and quite a quick read.

Odds and ends

A few bits and pieces...

• Compartment of Strange Knitting Comments

On the way to KTog on the bus yesterday, I was, as ever, knitting away. A bunch of Yoof got onto the bus in the next village, and one said "ooh, you look like something from the Olden Days" as he walked up the stairs...

Now, is it just me, or is there something quite weird about being called anachronistic by a Goth?

• Compartment of Seasonal Insanity

These are quite literally some loose ends. The heap of bits and bobs after running in ends on a stealth project - I should be able to blog this before too long...

I cast off one Christmas project and started another at I Knit at Franklin's event on Thursday night, and finished two more today. Unfortunately I then started looking at Ravelry, and added another couple, and had a request for another one yesterday, so I don't think the stats are doing any better although my morale is slightly higher!

To that end, I've joined Julie's

-along - am hoping to get the button onto the sidebar without tearing my hair out...

I'll update stats on Sundays, I think.

• Projects on list: 21
• Projects started: 9
• Projects finished: 7
• Projects to finish: 14
• Weeks to Christmas: 5.5

Projects are visible over on Ravelry...

• Compartment of the Library

I've just finished reading Terry Pratchett's quite astonishing Nation. It's a stunning autumn season for YA fantasy readers and writers, with this and Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book coming out in the same few months. Nation feels quite a lot darker than the Discworld books although with flashes of humour, of course, and although the original premise of a nation having to be rebuilt after a the coming of a great tsunami is pretty contemporary, the themes are timeless...

Oof...

Nothing much from me today... Early morning Tesco trip followed by cooking, followed by lunch with Sue, followed by KTog, followed by chatting and dinner with old college friends, all of which (after the Tesco trip) were lovely, has taken it out of me... Back tomorrow.

All around the houses...

Some more pictures from last night and the I Knit London event with Franklin, first. As you can see, and if you know me and look at the IKnit Flickrset, I inadvertently picked an absolutely prime position despite the place being completely packed - Gerard moved the furniture around us and lo and behold (or sole and beheeled as my Dad would have it) I was in the front row. Cool. These were taken from alarmingly close range (and I still couldn't get them in focus... not sure if it's this camera or me!).

Anyway, there was a bit of intro

and then some reading of pieces from the book (pages 90-94 and 58-61, if you've managed to lay hands on a copy - I'll have mine at KTog tomorrow...) -

and yes, he's another of those rare authors who really ought to read their own stuff and it was very funny indeed...

And then there was a Q&A, during which people seemed to be inordinately interested in the Guys with Yarn calendar, for some reason...

Then there was signing. Yvonne has blogged about her request today (well, one of them - go on, Y, tell us about the other one!)... I didn't get a pic of the signing...

And then there was general emptying-out of the shop (it was packed. Did I mention that??) and a relaxing...

Today I had a rare treat. I work in quite a famous building in the middle of London, the one with the clock with the bongs on the end of it [yes, I'm being evasive here. We have no policy on blogging at the moment but I suspect that I won't be able to identify where I work when we do have such a policy and I'm trying to avoid words-that-Google-will-find]; and I'm able to take a couple of people round at a time, if I grab an afternoon off.

Such it was with Franklin and Tom - and they were fantastic company, two witty, erudite gents... We had two little glitches - somehow we managed to miss each other during security, so they ended up inside the building while I was sitting knitting outside, which seems wrong, somehow. I still have no idea how that happened... Thankfully Tom is in possession of more commonsense than me, so came and found me - I'd introduced myself the previous evening, but doubtless the sitting-knitting-a-sock-while-waiting-thing was a bit of a giveaway too... Not, of course, that we Cambridge knitters carry emergency knitting. Obviously not.

The second glitch was that while my bit of the organisation wasn't meeting that day, I'd forgotten to check that the Other bit of the organisation wasn't either. And it turned out they were; and they went on for quite a while.... Thankfully there's a lot of the building to see, and somewhere to have tea while waiting for them to finish their deliberations!

We did this first, which was fun, and gave us a chance to talk about politics, particularly after the events of last week... and then we had a wander... I gave as much of the tour as I could, and several off-piste excursions, before we declared temporary defeat and went for a cuppa; then we were able to resume the tour. There are very limited opportunities for photography, but we did manage to take a couple. I am reassured by the knowledge that Tom can take photos which are no better than mine with my camera (I really do think there's something bizarre about the focus), but it's a record of the day...

... and here's one I took much later, before we all headed in our separate directions.

As Franklin said about the experience, "It's nice, if you like that sort of thing...."

Thanks, guys; it was a lovely afternoon. And Bon voyage ... (I went through the Tube station again a few minutes after we parted, and the harpist had just started yet another rendition of My Heart Will Go On, by the way...)

This Charming Man

Hideous journey in today - an hour and a half after the intended time... I spent most of the day dealing with "self-harm" and "dermatology", with a side-order of "gastro-intestinal cancers"... so by the time end-of-work happened, I was more than ready for some Fun. Which happened.

More description later; but hey, here's me with The Panopticon AKA Franklin Habit...

Thanks for taking the pic, Yvonne... I will explain to Wibbo how useless I was re: the handing on of the Thing from the Day...

Rottingdean revels...

This is the stash from Saturday....

Actually, no; the first pic is the stash from Friday night. This is what happens when you have a very generous friend who also dyes, and buys yarn from a place which has Ravelry badges... you're presented with a bag of gorgeous yarns, told to take what you want because each skein has... wait for it... A KNOT in it. Possibly TWO.

Wouldn't it be nice if major dyers worked on the same principle??

The badge says greensideknits, by the way; not an attempt to hide my identity, more an attempt to get the yarn colours more or less right... (By the way, Tesco in Hove were doing a 4-way electrical extension thing at £1.48 last weekend. I can now plug the daylight lamp in again!)

In order of acquisition:

Two Wibbo laceweights which didn't make it onto her stall (she really shouldn't have had me helping to lay out, bwahahahaha) - front to back, colourways Scottish Highland and Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal...

There were also stitch markers I couldn't bear to put out, but they didn't photograph well and they might be gifts anyway...

After that I was lured over to Nimu's stand...

The top yarn is a bamboo/wool combination; the bottom one is a pure aran-weight wool. The colours are stunning and the photo doesn't begin... oh, you know.

We were sitting opposite Limegreenjelly. While Wibbo is trying to stay strong and not get into the whole spinning thing, I'm already lost. This didn't come with a name - I'm calling it Agincourt - thinking of the Laurence Olivier "Henry V"...

Back in Wibboland, there may also have been some sock... This one's called Memory Keeper.

Ninety years

Here dead we lie because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;

But young men think it is, and we were young.

A. E. Housman

The Cenotaph in Whitehall this morning, being prepared for the visit of three of the last four veterans of the Great War. I'd have loved to have gone, but was in a meeting at the time.

To make sure everyone could see the event, which they were calling Last Voices of a Generation, [BBC iPlayer link], a huge plasma screen had been put up at the bottom of Whitehall; it looked incredibly odd sitting there, especially from the back...

A bit of Vienna in Hove...

Blimey, I was so busy catching up on other people's posts that I almost forgot about blogging today!

I was going to blog stash from the weekend; but this image caught me. This is Jan with her latest glorious hexagonal throw - and don't you think she looks like Emilie Floge? OK - she's saying 'oh, if you must, for God's sake get on with it... ' but blimey, isn't that gorgeous...

Raining cats and dog, chicken and aardvark

The weather outside was frightful...

Wibbo's smile was so delightful...

And we had somewhere to go...

And no, thankfully, if you've followed this so far, it didn't snow. (It did hail several times, though...)

I wish I'd taken photos on the no. 2 bus on the way there because we seemed to go through North Yorkshire on the way from Hove Town Hall to Rottingdean!

As ever, real names/blognames followed by Ravelry names follow...

Really nice church hall, and a lovely event, organised very largely by Peri [loobles]; here's a general impression (also possibly entitled "four women and a swift").

From the left we have Emma [EmmasMonster], Steph [glitterkitty], and Lucy and Bethany (who belong to Annie [upknitcreek] whose wonderful waistcoat can be seen in this picture:

Look at all this stuff...

There were spinners; Annie again, who's been at this a little while...

And Kate [pie] - I am reliably informed she is a novice spinner - well, OK then. I've seen some of her yarn and I am jealous...

Also very envious of the wheel, which she told me is a Lendrum. Pretty, pretty thing... and it folds down...

There was also a workshop:

[embiggen here - there's a nice range of ages around that table...]
During the middle of the afternoon, both the workshop table and the knit-and-natter table were full to capacity and it was a really nice event. There were sellers of yarn, of fibre, of markers, of knitted objects, of dyeing supplies, and all were small or smallish independents. We finally seem to have a grass-roots movement of independent makers, and they were alive and well this weekend.

Parcel

These days, getting parcels is a bit of an ordeal. You have to check quite carefully as to whether they're going to send by courier (no go - the courier tries to deliver only twice, and is in any case closed before you get home for the evening, and then secretes your parcel into the dark depths of the depot - which may be only 3 miles as the crow flies, but 15 miles as the crow walks and 2 hours each way by public transport..) or Royal Mail (nice, friendly people at the post office 100 yards away from your house, as long as you're in for the weekend...)

Last weekend, however, I won the jackpot - my yarn order, placed on Monday with free (Royal Mail) second-class postage, arrived on Saturday morning, and I got back from my library shift in time to dash back and collect it (the fact that Graham at the post office now gets up from his seat and selects the big squishy package from the 'parcels awaited' shelf before I even get to the front of the queue is something best glossed over...)

So. I got these...

Yes; I'm not sure they were meant to look like drug packages, but...

Anyway, the first one I opened was Peaches n Creme yarn, for many many dishcloths...

and the second was Cascade 220, for much knitted felting.

The company - First4Yarns... They do both brands, and ordering at the beginning of the week seems to mean I'll have it by the weekend. They don't have the responsiveness or individual service of a Woolly Workshop, but if you need a particular yarn for a project and they carry it, they seem to be pretty good...