Yarndale

So - for only the second time, I met someone yesterday who knows me entirely through this blog (hello Melanie; I tried to find you through Ravelry but wasn't sure I'd got the right person - message me?!), and was reminded (not by M, she was far too nice) that there's been next to no knitting content for the last few months.  I'll maybe talk about that later, in another post.

But I met M at Yarndale; so here's Yarndale.



The night before, the Keighley Travelodge gave me a quiet evening between a visit to family and the Yarndale throng, and let me watch the first episode of this year's Strictly, and a wonderful programme about Nic Jones's return to folk-singing...  Didn't find the place the first time, but having detoured mistakenly into an industrial estate I found a woman coming out of Aldi, and she gave me directions... (This is fairly standard for me if I don't have a map, and I didn't really find one I could print out...)

I went to Yarndale by public transport; this seems to have been a good move.  Not least because of the yarnstormed Routemaster bus which pulled up at Skipton station entrance just as I was coming out.



There were felt panels with sheep and flowers where the ads would usually be...



I got there before the doors opened, and this also seems to have been the right thing to do. I was able to stash my bag under the Sparkleduck stand (thanks, Heather and Michael!) and could then dive in quickly and have a look around before it all got too busy.



Lovely wool, lovely fibres, lovely fleece...



And animals.  These were the pretty, pretty bunnies from Bigwigs.



Can anyone help me with whose alpacas these are - they were right at the end of the arena away from the exhibition hall, near the back car-park/bus entrance?  I marked them off on my programme and then promptly lost it (as seems to happen at most shows; I need to hang it round my neck on a lanyard or something).  I meant to go back and get some alpaca fleece from them for spinning... Lovely bright things...

Edited to say thanks to HilltopKatie who also had a beautiful stand there; and has let me know that these are part of the Why Not Alpacas? herd.



... But the halls definitely filled up quite quickly, and then (speaking as a short person) it became somewhat difficult to see things. Sort of like the Knitting and Stitching Show but without that Huge Horrible Roaring Noise you get in the Great Hall there.  There were, to be honest, some pretty rude people there; none of them, I'm sure, in this photo... More elbows than I'm used to at a fibre event other than Ally Pally, anyway!



Once I'd fought my way to one end of the building, and then been sent to the other end for (not-on-the-map) loos, and realised that breakfast wasn't going to happen because the queues were too long, I spotted Colourcraft's stand for acid dyes; after three attempts at taking payment with no signal, they went down the old-fashioned route...  Then I was able to meet up with a bunch of people from the Archers group on Ravelry...  We were sitting here, in one of the auction rings...



looking over this side, too...



I'd have loved to have taken a group pic, but I'd have been shooting right up people's nostrils, so I didn't. It was lovely to meet Anne, André, Gina, Christine and Susan and see Jill and Brigid again!

Another couple of friends met were Nic, of the Yarns from the Plain podcast and blog, last seen during the Olympics and first met at Knit Camp in 2010; and another friend first met at Knit Camp, Ann Kingstone; here seen at her stand wearing her lovely William design, and with the Truly shawl and the Mallorn sweater behind her, as well as her range of yarns...



There was a lot of lovely yarnstorming in and out of the hall.  I don't know who the blissful lady was, but I suspect I'd have had a similar facial expression if I'd managed to score a cuppa - it gives an idea of the decor though!



The bunting in the exhibition hall was extraordinary;



At about 2:30 I decided I'd probably seen everything I wanted to, and bought what I needed to plus a couple of slightly indulgent things (work's small annual bonus due at the end of September!) - so although I had a couple of hours before I needed to leave, I took the walk through the park, and was glad I'd done it that way round, as most of the walk (after the initial flight of steps) was downhill and I had a wheely holdall...

What had started off as a grey day was now a lovely sunny afternoon



and each time I wondered if I was going the right way, there was something to guide me...





These were particularly wonderful, next to the canal bridge near the station:





The journey back was... well; I'd have said "epic", but that implies "interesting".  Which it wasn't; but I'm going to write about it anyway. Just missed a half-hourly train at Skipton, which meant that breakfast was a Snickers bar from the vending machine at 3:30; once I got to Leeds I had two hours before my onward train. They seem to be much better at letting you break your journey these days (I suspect all those shopping opportunities beyond the barriers are responsible for that) so I headed into Leeds city centre for some lunch/dinner; Bella Italia isn't my usual favourite place but it was close, and actually really nice service, even if grown men calling me "duck" isn't something I'm used to.  (They were calling each other "duck", too; I hadn't nicked that bollard-cosy to wear as a hat, or anything.)  Then another train from Leeds to Selby; and then the Train from Hull. Didn't bother trying to get into my reserved seat as half the train was full of football supporters celebrating a victory, and therefore Bedlam on Wheels.  The detour via Lincoln and half-hour delay at Peterborough didn't help, either; but the train staff had evidently planned for this journey and had the world's largest supply of cans on board...  We eventually limped into Kings Cross at 10:50pm; but at least that meant a quick trip to M&S for some milk before they closed, and catching the last (packed) train back to Kings Lynn, were still possibilities...

If that sounds like a roundabout way of doing things, your're right.  The quick option is to do Skipton - Leeds - Peterborough - Ely - home.  But that option was £99.50, and the perambulatory alternative (with the final London - home stage on my season ticket) was £22.90.  Money saved on the trip - £76.60.  When you see what I bought...



... £76.60 covers everything but the dyes; definitely worth a couple of extra hours of my time!

Clockwise from top left - two skeins of Sparkleduck Socka, which I love for its high twist, and of course Heather's beautiful colours.  The purply one doesn't have a name; the green one's called "The forest began to sing". A bag of fibre from Freyalyn - oatmeal BFL and sik; colour "Sky blue"; 2 balls of King Cole Country Tweed and a set of 2.5mm Harmony needles from Knitting4Fun (I'd gone looking for exactly that sort of yarn, and a new-to-me King Cole yarn is always a bit exciting; I thought I needed the Harmonies but found the set I thought I'd lost in my bag on the way home!); 7 colours of dye from Colourcraft (I hope these are the colours I needed, but forgot to take an inventory before I went); braid of BFL from Wheeldale Woolcrafts; 4 skeins of organic merino aran yarn from John Arbon's bargain box - 400g for £12.

That little tissue-wrapped parcel nearly didn't make it home - it skippety-hoppeted out of the top of my bag on the train as I was getting up north of Cambridge, and was retrieved by a member of British Transport Police (they usually send a couple of police up on the last train home as it all gets a bit lairy at Cambridge); he asked what it was and I said "knitting wool; well, wool and angora, for knitting" - turns out I got a knitting member of BTP.  He makes socks, apparently, but not boring black uniform ones...  Here it is, unwrapped...



I have a small collection (3 balls) of slightly exotic stuff, none of which are quite the same thickness as each other.  I'm hoping this is going to be the same weight as one of the others - I'd love a pair of nice warm gloves for this winter.

So - that was Yarndale.  I'd definitely go again, particularly if it's at this time of year and I can combine it with a visit to other bits of Yorkshire - Skipton itself looked lovely, and it's been ages since I went to Bradford or Leeds; keep meaning to stop off in Saltaire at some point, too... There were teething troubles with catering and parking, but I imagine those will get themselves sorted out for next year; essentially, a really nice show.

I Knit Weekender

I spent Friday and Saturday at the I Knit Weekender, and I had a marvellous time. After a stress-free journey down, so unlike last year, first up at the Royal Horticultural Halls was a presentation from Debbie New, author of Unexpected knitting. She was interesting and warm and funny, had some great slides of her projects and techniques, and was unfazed by questions being fired at her from the audience. Here she is knitting a complicated knot before the presentation started.

And here are some of the samples she brought. This little sweater was something I hadn't really noticed in the book, but was the most exquisite thing seen close up.

And one thing I'd not really taken account of was the amount of warm colour in her projects - you tend to think of techniques rather than colour, but the colour combinations were wonderful.

She'd also brought one of the "some assembly required" puzzle sweaters - you can see it as a long strip trailing off the first photo, and here it is after two keen volunteers from the audience had assembled it on the floor...

It was lovely to meet someone who's been a bit of a hero for a long time...

There were fashion shows - I only caught the very beginning of the Biggan show because I went to sit on the KCG stand for a bit of the afternoon.

Gill had some of my yarn on the stand - they do say everyone has her price...

And here's the full Woolly Workshop stand complete with Gill - fabulous colours, as ever. Mini Mochi seemed to be the best-seller but the Manos was hopping off the stand as well...

Opposite was Rockpool Candy with their Fibre Activism.

An overview of the beautiful halls. When I took this I didn't realise I had Jeni from Fyberspates in the shot - she's the tall blonde lady in the black.

The I Knit stand (and lots of knitters including Skein and Jill)

View from the top of the steps just before the fashion show.

Crocheted blankets on the Natural Dye Studio's stall - beautiful faded antique colours...

Herdy had all sorts of good ideas including the Herdybank and some lovely mugs.

And John Arbon/Coldharbour Mill had some fountains of beautiful fibres. Some of the 70% alpaca/30% merino at the back begged to come home with me so I let it.

After presentations, shopping and volunteering it was Wine O'Clock.

Jackier knitted faster than the camera could cope with

while roseanglaise, still justifiably chuffed by her recent honour from the Oil Pastel Society, found a novel use for a Harmony DPN.

After some dinner with Gill, I went back to Wigram House where I was staying for the princely sum of £28.50 plus booking fee - it's clean, quiet after midnight, incredibly central but in a residential street and very efficiently run. I'd certainly use it again - highly recommended.

On the Saturday morning I did a class with Alice Starmore. I'd signed up partly out of curiosity - she does have something of a reputation both for her expertise and for her business model - but mostly because if you're going to see your first steek cut, there probably isn't anyone better to do it! It was a wonderful class - the first half hour was some history (with an emphasis on the financial imperative having developed the highly efficient two-handed style of knitting, the left hand working Continental and the right working in English style), and a demonstration of all the basic techniques, with several samples, and the aforementioned steek-cutting (up the front of a v-neck cardigan). In the second half we embarked on a sample (on two DPNs, breaking the yarns off at the end of each row so we were always knitting from the front), while Alice came round each small group of people and commented/corrected as necessary. I was keen enough to finish the sample in the bar at St Pancras before catching my train home; and am going to do some more soon. And I got my new book signed!

As last year, the best part of the day was meeting up with people I knew and hadn't seen for ages. I didn't get pictures of littlelixie (apart from a sliver of her back on the final Debbie New photo!), who was on fine form in a lovely sequinned top until her back gave out again, or of daisydaisydaisy who was there on Sunday and shared a half-hour in the café with me. Or of several other people...

Sparkleduck was around, and some of her beautiful yarn was also on display at Woolly Workshop.

Here's Harvey, taking a well-deserved break towards the end of Friday

and from way too early on Sunday morning, the wonderful Woolly Wormhead - it was soooo good to see her again! And look, she's carrying two of her gorgeous Hats. She was teaching, but not till the afternoon...

From Cambridge, frizzyknits and her friend whose name I have forgotten again (I always want to steal their beautiful hair...)

And a very rare sight, Gerard, the force behind the whole enterprise, actually sitting down. I think this probably only happened for about 3 minutes. The whole organising crew was dashing around all over the place. Comments from last year had obviously been taken on board by the venue - the food lasted all day and the cashpoint had been filled up! As I left at about 4pm, AlpacaAddict came racing round the back of the building heading for the front - still working away... Thanks, guys; it was wonderful.

It was an altogether charmed weekend. I was so cheerful even trailing my three rather large bags through the village that I tried my "make-an-emo-smile" trick and it worked (if you grin unexpectedly at them they smile back , they can't help it, until they remember that everything's-just-wrong-and-life-isn't-fair and reassume their scowl. Bless their miserable little hearts...). And then I got home just as an SUV from Emmaus pulled up outside - one of the occupants got out and headed towards the shop. So I chanced my arm as everything was going so well, and talked to the driver, and he came in and got the folding bed I've been trying to get rid of for a while now and bunged it into the boot and drove away with it. Result.

I'll take pics of the shopping later on, for the next post...

I Knit Day, part 2

More photos.

But first - Anne and I appeared on the Yarn Harlot's blog!! Scroll down for the "washcloth" part of the parade - thanks, Anne, for letting me accompany you and your washcloth...

And here's a photo taken by the lovely E-J of us meeting Stephanie - this is possibly the best one as neither of us look too actively deranged or stalkerish at the time...

Also, note Stephanie's co-ordinated Manon and waterproof jacket. That's classy and shows forethought. E-J's also managed to capture Gerard checking in at the bookstall, illustrating how much both of the I Knit guys were darting around on the day making sure everything stayed organised, and it really did, so much so that you didn't really notice (except for noticing how fast they were moving around the place)...

The rest of the photos (of shopping) are less good - we're getting into the time of year where I don't get much natural light at the best of times either side of the working day, and the weather yesterday (all weekend, really) was atrocious. So imagine these yarns and then please think of the colours as 2000% nicer. The only as-yet-unphotographed item (I'd cast on socks onto them by the time I got home) was a set of Quills 3.5mm DPNs from Gill at Woolly Workshop which was the second thing I bought. The first thing I bought was this, which has photographed almost spectacularly badly; a skein of Fleece Artist Somoko - no idea what the colourway is (anyone who's bought this - is it always a one-skein-0f-a-kind yarn?), but it's much more autumn-leaves in dark woods than this somewhat... turdish... photo shows.

I have another skein of this, bought at The Naked Sheep in the Beaches in Toronto (appropriately enough) in May, which is in less neutral but (my spidey-colour-sense tells me) toning colours (the other skein's in the sock-yarn-bin in the attic) - so I'm thinking some sort of ripply long scarf. These days, I have to wear suits for work, and as my suits are, like the rest of my wardrobe, mainly black, making nice long scarves in atypical colours is fun...

I was then Good for a long while; until about 6pm, actually. Then I made my way among the leavings of the Serious Shoppers, and found this:

Yes, the name sold it to me as much as the colours

Haven't encountered this one before. In fact, the basic yarn has a real resemblance to the Blackberry Ridge yarn I bought for E-J's baby's shawl, baby now being newly 2 and having opinions of her own (the yarn's definitely a heavy laceweight, very slightly slubby in places. Not my usual colours, but I seem to be starting to branch out...) I'm likely to make one of these out of it.

[I'm also realising that at the time I bought the yarn for Baby M's shawl, Woolly Workshop was the only place I knew in the UK which had any sort of laceweight, and Gill hadn't then started carrying Zephyr as a plain lace yarn. How times have changed... it's stunning, really, both in terms of what's available and in terms of the knowledge of what's available.]

I'd been quite moderate, really, until then. But then right at the end of the day I saw these in a bucket under the table at Loop, which had been concealed by shoppers and queuers until then;

these are for a Jeanie and I was actively looking for 3 skeins of sock for that.... It seems to be my Misti Alpaca Year. The last skein I acquired passed through the hands of Laura Chau who was at the till on my visit to Lettuce Knit (she was apparently at I Knit Day too but I didn't spot her); the ones before that were bought in Montreal...

I'm not going to Ally Pally this year. Saturday was such fun, and I felt I was walking among friends every minute of the day. And nobody raised the classic Ally Pally Art-Versus-Craft Debate ONCE. Knitters knit (and of course, crocheters crochet). That's what we do. Some people, when you say "what are you making" will haul out the pattern; some people will say "well, it's basically [name of pattern] but I'm making it shorter"; some people will say "well, it's sort of [name of pattern] but I'm working it from the top down, making it scoop-necked, and I don't think I'll be doing the ribbing; I'll see how much yarn I've got left for the length of the sleeves; some will say "well, I think the pattern I made and charted myself is going to work in this laceweight" (diviknitty raise a hand); some will say "I'm making it up as I go along"; and some will simply say "I don't know yet" (caughtknitting is my personal fave in this category)...

And most knitting and crochet groups have everyone all together, stick-wielders and hookers, obsessionists and occasionalists, and nobody cares whether we're making art or craft.

The Art-Versus-Craft Debate always raises its head at Ally Pally, and just for once, I'm tired of fighting that battle, and even watching that battle being fought from the sidelines... Saturday was just about perfect (the bits which weren't are the responsibility of the train company and whoever you choose to blame for the weather); that'll do me.

I Knit Day, part 1

Well, the day was amazing. The Royal Horticultural Halls are spectacular (and I'm slightly outraged with myself that I didn't take more pictures of the architecture of this one which was pure 1930s); and there were knitters everywhere... There were people from all over the country, some of which I hadn't seen for a couple of years (since SkipNorth 2007 in several cases), and a lot of people I'd been at I Knit nights with last week, and about a dozen of us from Cambridge all told. We were delayed on the train (although thankfully they were still running - people coming down from Yorkshire and points north had less luck because of the flooding) so by the time we arrived the place was heaving; shopping was done a little later in the day because the crowds round the stands were several eager shoppers thick! The pic above was taken during the fashion show for Jane Waller's A Stitch in Time, which was wonderfully and humorously presented...

The Lindley Hall was also very beautiful when we all filed into it for the Yarn Harlot's talk; I didn't realise when I took this general photo of people arriving that I know virtually everyone in this particular shot, from several different places!

Two more of the Cambridge contingent, blogless Sue [bigrainbow] and E-J [roseanglaise], waiting in eager expectation...

Gerard did the introductions...

Stephanie took the customary photos - I've seen so many of these on her blog in the past, and it was very funny a) watching it being done b) watching half the audience photographing Stephanie and the sock photographing half the audience. (Annie Mole had a great rant on her blog last week about the stereotypical image of bloggers and their sad and lonely lives, which came back to me while all this was happening).

The talk was wonderful - funny, witty, observational - which I'd sort of expected; and also packed with scientific fact, which for some reason I hadn't expected quite as much, despite the amount of care and research which goes into Stephanie's books... Cambridge didn't come out very well in the talk, due to an MRC study (I think probably this one) which used people tapping keyboards as their repetitive activity rather than actually knitting... Anyway; I came out feeling very happy (and healthy) to be a knitter...

Afterwards, Anne (MrsNiddyNoddy) and I went and queued with Katie [daisydaisydaisy], to get books signed and meet Stephanie in person... Anne had made a Great Britain washcloth, and we felt obliged to confirm the existence of Cambridge knitters!

We had a little chat, aware of the hundreds of people queuing behind us; I handed over some yarn I'd dyed as a 'thanks-for-the-blog' present - I've been reading since this post and in my old job, often reading the blog was the brightest point of the day; Stephanie signed and chatted and we moved on... it was really lovely to meet her.

At that point my camera batteries died, but Anne got this great picture on her phone

and I got batteries back into it in time to take one of Katie's book being signed...

Shopping was then done. I haven't photographed the shopping yet, so that'll be part 2. Fashion shows were watched (Gerard was the first model on the Erika Knight catwalk).

Socks were finished (more on these later), and wine was drunk in the downstairs bar.

Getting to King's Cross and finding nothing was moving due to a problem at Finsbury Park was a bit of a dent to the good mood; but E-J and I picked up gin and tonic at Cambridge station and consumed it in contravention of many railway by-laws while waiting for the next train.... Where I met Susie [susieknits] again, also on her way back from the day!

The last time we met was also on a train, in April, with Susie's friend, also called Susie, who kinneared me... One of these days we'll actually get to meet in ways not engineered by First Capital Connect!