Knit Camp 7: the aftermath - stories emerge

I was going to post on the entirely positive experience which was the I Knit Weekender last weekend; but I couldn't avoid talking about this first.

Starting this post with a picture of the Stirling campus lake. Still waters, and all that.

I don't take back anything I've posted about my personal experience of Knit Camp while it was happening - I think I was honest. There's been a fair amount of criticism online of those of us who did post some positive comments, accusing us of Pollyanna-ish tendencies (which will come as a surprise to anyone who's actually met me in real life!), but I posted what I saw and experienced.

I was aware of some of the background shenanighans which went on before camp, because oddly enough I do talk to other people online and in real life, some of whom had first-hand information. I knew that a couple of people I know, think of as friends and was looking forward to meeting had decided not to participate as tutors because of problems with the organisation, shifting terms and conditions, etc. But by that stage I'd handed over my money...

Since the event, though, those of us who paid fees in good faith have become aware that that money has not gone to tutors, helpers who were expecting to be paid, people expecting refunds, etc. The British Yarn site has been taken down, and my understanding is that the company formed to organise the event has been dissolved. A minority of tutors appear to have been paid, some appear to have been part-paid, others appear to have received nothing.

I would like to present you a trio of blog posts, in chronological order.

First, one from the organiser (apologies if this link doesn't work when you get to it; communications from this source have a habit of disappearing post facto). This has the joint themes of self-justification and complete lack of apology we grew to expect. And of getting retaliation in first. It was a surprise to me to learn that I don't travel to knitting events; presumably that six and a half hour train journey was some sort of delusion.

(This blog post was put out shortly after Camp; at that point I think lot of us still had hopes that people who were owed money would be paid it; although we feared they mightn't. The 28 days in people's contracts, and cited in this blog post, have now expired without full payment, so over the last day or two, insiders have published more complete information on what actually went on.)

Second, one from an internationally known tutor (with whom I took an excellent class), confirming in print some of the things I'd heard by e-mail and conversation.

Third, one from the person who was KnitCampers' main link with the organisation in the month before the event. I have no idea how much worse it would have been without her, because she was really the only source of definitive information like where we were meant to go to register, etc., when she could get the information herself.

Don't think I can really add to these. Other than to say that organisers of large-scale events in the UK may well have difficulty in recruiting both UK and overseas tutors in the next couple of years, and that's both completely understandable, and an awful shame.

Knit Camp 6: Out and About at Loch Katrine

Trip the Second: the Trossachs and Loch Katrine

Couldn't have been more glad that the outings were in this order - because this one was lovely from start to finish, with additional hilarious aspects.

We set off on time, in a single coach; checking in etc. was calm, with the main organiser's husband in charge; and we had a lovely, friendly, funny Scottish driver in charge for the whole trip up to the Loch. He gave us a commentary on interesting things to be seen to our left and right, and pointed us at some Highland cattle; he gave us historic background on the towns we passed through, and made everyone laugh at some point; and then he announced he was going to spend the evening having dinner with his wife. Aww.

We got to the loch and were divided into two groups - the first noticeably larger than the second, but it seemed to work. I was on the second group, and we did worry that the sun might have gone down before we got onto the boat. But then we got to eat first; and after two quite intense classes with Jared Flood and Nancy Bush, I was pretty hungry! Nice, simple, tasty, barbecue meal - cooked in the pavilion on the top level of this photo.

with good home-made coleslaw which is just about my only requirement with a burger and chicken and green salad - and then shortly afterwards it was our turn on the boat, the Lady of the Lake.

With her very amusing and informative guide. He was great.

One of the snippets of information he provided was that we were putting along largely powered by second-hand chip fat. There were surprisingly few deep-fried Mars Bar jokes.

Loch Katrine (pronounced without the final "e", like CATT-rin rather than Ka-TREEN) turns out to be the main water supply for Glasgow; it's always been a lake, but was turned into a reservoir in the 20th century.


Walter Scott was very familiar with the area and wrote the poem The Lady of the Lake around Loch Katrine; the paths he walked are now underwater.

Until recently, there were many sheep grazing on the banks, but after it was discovered they carry crypto they had to be removed because of the threat to the water supply. I gather some of them make their way back because sheep have homing instincts...

It really was a lovely boat trip.

The flags were particularly pretty as we came back into dock.

I don't quite know how to describe what happened after that... except for one word.

Midges.

I grew up with them, in the north east of England; and when we set off they were starting to group; on the lake, they weren't all that much in evidence... But when we got back into the restaurant/bar, they were certainly happily flocking around in hordes. Generally the whole Swipe gesture was used to attempt to get rid of them, with no success whatsoever...

We were called down to the coaches, and as ever people got in gradually; the poor driver was trying to keep as many flying menaces out of the coach as possible but was having to open the door every minute or so to let more people in, with accompanying clouds of ickletinybeasties... I suspect the various threads on Ravelry worrying our across-the-pond cousins didn't help either...

Apparently, what you do when confronted with midges, as a knitter, is to to get into your seat and then develop your very own personal ethnic clapping dance. The Katrine Knit Tangle, maybe? It involves putting on one's seatbelt, and then a gyration including the destruction of any small flying insect in the immediate vicinity...

I was sitting next to someone who was suffering badly from coach-sickness throughout the return journey, (and who womanfully controlled it) - which was the only thing which stopped me weeping with sheer amusement at the Sound of So Many Hands Clapping to So Little Effect.

The noise made by it sounded like someone doing strenuous Creative Play with a class of 50 or so children with auditory difficulties. Later on, Nic and I re-enacted this for people on the Saturday night. (I haven't listened to her podcast yet - I wasn't aware of it before the weekend- ; I'm hoping she'll do the description better...)

Just for a change, nobody could possibly blame the Management for the beasties; we were absolutely and totally warned.

We had enough time for everything, it was relaxed; it was a really lovely evening.

And just for the record; as someone prone to slightly extreme histamine reactions to bites, and someone who gets bitten really badly; I'd been taking the vitamin B1 tablets for a good month before the event, and had sprayed myself all over with Jungle Formula before setting out, and had antihistamine tablets with me. I got away more or less unscathed. I had a couple of annoying bites on my scalp for a week or so, but that was about it. B1; highly recommended!

Knit Camp 5: Out and About at New Lanark

I booked on two afternoon/evening outings from Camp; and as with everything at Camp, it was a game of two halves...

Trip the first: New Lanark

I was aware of New Lanark's yarn well before I knew anything else about the place, and once I'd realised it was also a World Heritage Site with C19 mill machinery, I booked in immediately.

I think the most charitable description of the proceedings was "chaotic". As one who had to do the on-the-ground sheepdog-type work on this sort of excursion, repeatedly, over 6 weeks, as a 23-year-old new graduate (and managed it better), I'd personally go for "shambolic", though.

It started before we'd even left the campus - 15 minutes after we were meant to have set off, someone left the other coach, went dashing back into the building and emerged a good 10 minutes later with another person. Presumably neither of the organisers had a mobile with them, because although our coach had a microphone, no information was shared as to what the hell was going on (20 years ago I wouldn't have had a mobile either, but I'd have legged it out of the coach to find out what the problem was!).

Then we hit roadworks (OK; roadworks are basically an Act of God as far as a trip arranged six or more months in advance are concerned); but, again, presumably neither of the organisers had a mobile with them, because once we'd arrived and walked down the hill,


we met a couple of rather agitated guides who believed we'd be with them 1.5 hours earlier (5 minutes after we left Stirling)...

That sort of set the tone for the whole visit. I had the impression that we'd have been divided into smaller groups if we'd arrived when they were ready for us; and we got there an hour and a half before everything closed up for the day, rather than the 3 hours they'd anticipated... They did their level best, but there was a lot to see. They'd prepared a special tour for us focusing on the yarn production at the mills (which is one of their profitable areas - brilliant, given the entirely reasonable prices they charge!) but basically the general effect was Huge Flocks of Confused Knitters milling (sorry) about, not quite sure where they were meant to be going.
The first thing we saw was a bit of the turbine and watermill machinery

and then we went on the New Lanark Experience - which was a sort of fairground ride (think ghost train, but with tunnel-of-love style two-person carriages) focused on the experience of a 10-year-old girl called Annie who worked crawling under the spinning machines to clean out all the waste. It was beautifully done, and pretty moving. This is a terrible picture, but given as a general impression;


but there were lots of holograms and lights, as well as some more realistic models and so on, and snippets of archive film footage of other mills. Originally it was a cotton mill, but they got in the wool spinning machines more recently as this seemed to be a more local and sustainable way of spinning (and also healthier for all concerned).

I'd guessed, wandering down the hill, that this was a Model Community; and while work was obviously completely back-breaking, they were also keen to emphasise the work of Robert Owen, the founder of the mill and an early Socialist. It was a huge example of both the positive and the negative elements of Victorian Values, and absolutely fascinating.

We saw the ridiculously huge and beautiful carding machine, which is, brilliantly, behind a glass wall at the back of the shop, and produces 28 strands of pencil roving which correspond (of course) to the 28 spinnaret-thingies (I have no idea what they're called for this sort of spinning wheel, but I know what they are in spiders!).

We went upstairs and saw the spinning being done; and how complicated it is to rethread everything when it gets tangled.


Some of us knitted in company with 19th century mill workers.


And for the end (my favourite bit) we went down to the cellars with Alan (?), the consultant who got all the machinery in there, and saw the huge sacks of yarn waiting to be processed, and the blending machine - a sort of domestic-swimming-pool-sized metal vat in which all the colours for the tweeds are layered, and then blended using a set of wheels, and then sent up to the carding machine by fan and vacuum. Fascinating.

I thought I'd managed a photo of the blending machine; but evidently not. Here's a shot of the river above the mill, though...


We didn't, unfortunately, have enough time to see the rest of the attractions, like the mineworkers' cottages, Robert Owen's house and so on; it would have been lovely to do so. But we had an evening buffet booked for 5pm (which was extremely nicely done; and they also did a prize draw for a bag of yarn, which was very kind of them).

The yarn consultant was also around for questions after dinner; I asked about the organic yarn production they'd mentioned, as I have friends who've had to jump through the Soil Association's various hoops for a completely unrelated business. It turns out they have to process it on separate days, with different oil, and they have to clean everything really carefully beforehand...

We left more-or-less on time - further chaos as everyone on our coach was asked to keep the same seats on the way back so we could work out whether all our neighbours had returned; but presumably that message hadn't been communicated to people on the other coach who piled onto the nearer one to the exit, meaning that nobody had a clue.

Yarn was bought. Actually yarn was bought, and exchanged on the same afternoon - I picked up what I thought was a lovely granite colour with burgundy and green flecks; and got it out into the air to realise it was definitely lovely and granite, but the flecks were orange and duck-egg blue; I changed it for a generic mid-aran-type colour called "Pebble"...

In the evening, Stitch and Bitch with Debbie Stoller. A very nice evening; she was surprisingly shy (I'm only going by the impression from the photos on the cover of her books, you understand), and had a proof copy of her new book which looks very good... Photographic evidence of the evening courtesy of Lydia Jensen's blog (scroll towards the end.)

Knit Camp 4: More Skirling in Stirling

So, I left you with the pipers rehearsing outside the Castle. The weather had cleared quite a bit since I set off, and the landscape was beautiful. The tower on the left of this picture is the Wallace Monument; I believe that means the University is just the other side of the wooded hill (but never trust me on anything geographical)...


The castle is a strange, eclectic mix of styles, and I didn't seem to take many photos. The audio guide was good, but maybe a little ponderous, in the style of Imagine this courtyard in the year 1756... followed by a lot of reproduction sounds of bulls lowing, carriages clopping, people throwing barrels from carts, etc. etc. I'm not a great fan of audio guides in general but had been round Buckingham Palace, where the guide was pretty superb, the week before so gave it a go.

Anyway; this is the Chapel Royal, built for the baptism of Prince Henry, son of James VI, in 1594. The wall paintings were restored in the 20th century after the Chapel had been used to garrison soldiers for many years.

There's also a tapestry project going on, with a fascinating studio in the castle buildings - some of the completed tapestries are shown in the next two photos.


And then once I'd been round the castle, there were those Rob Roy people again; this time in full dress with hats etc. They had a large and enthusiastic audience on the various balconies and around the walls.


And there were dancers, 13 of them in this case (note the dancer racing up the middle!)


It was all rather marvellous. And just as I thought the fun was over and they'd taken their bow, the pipes got louder again, and they marched out of the castle in formation.

Fabulous. (Preparing this post over the last couple of days reminded me to go over to their website and say thanks - got a lovely reply back, with the news they'd come 6th in the world pipe band competition on August 16th, so all that practice evidently paid off...)

And just at that point I bumped into Julia (aka Sulkycat, maker of wonderful knitting project bags, etc.); and she'd bumped into some other people, and in the end we had 7 knitters squeezed around the table at the pub at lunchtime with a very entertaining waiter. I think we were from 5 different countries and almost as many nationalities... And that was definitely one of the best things about the week - so many people from different places with different experiences.

We all scattered in different directions afterwards, and I went to look at a very interesting graveyard monument I'd noticed on the way up the hill. I've never seen one quite like this before!

Or an inscription like this:

Thankfully there was an information plaque next to it which read Statues of heroes of the Scottish Presbyterian Reformation, set up when the cemetery was opened, were part of the educational and 'improving' atmosphere of Victorian Stirling... These enclosed figures represent the traditional story of Margaret Wilson who, aged 18, was executed by drowning in the Solway Firth for refusing to renounce her Protestant faith. She had no connection with Stirling. The monument avoids the horror of her death and presents a more sentimental Victorian idealisation of women.

So now you know. Strange, the sort of things the Victorians found edifying, really.

And a quick picture from the end of the visit, from a bar which used to be the old Post Office: amazing beer-glass light fitting...

Next up: outings to New Lanark and Loch Katrine...

Knit Camp 3: If it's Tuesday, this must be Stirling

Making heavy weather of this - another photo-heavy post which makes Blogger/Flickr unhappy...

So, on the Tuesday morning, after an emergency meeting of camp participants at the somewhat unearthly hour of 07:35, supposedly in the (closed) dining hall and then upstairs in the atrium, I queued to make another change to my class schedule (the seventh, I think!), grabbed some breakfast, found the office for a computer password and the computer lab to check e-mail, and decided to head out to Stirling for my day's sightseeing, as I didn't have a class because my tutor was still in California... I'd originally planned to go on Saturday, but needs must and all that! Flexibility was definitely required for the entire week.

It was absolutely horrible weather as I set off - torrential rain - but by the time I got to the city centre it was merely drizzly and overcast. It seemed that the way to the Sights was uphill, so up I went.

Don't know what this building was, (shops now, but I can't work out whether it was a civic building or a church) although it has the first of several memorials to William Wallace. (I've never seen Braveheart; my main interest in Wallace is that he's someone whose trial, and condemnation to death, in Westminster Hall is recorded by a plaque on the floor I walk past a couple of times a week!)

I was walking this way with a purpose though - two lovely local ladies who came to the first-night party and dinner had pointed me towards... yup; a yarn shop. Not just any yarn shop, either...

McAree Brothers' mail order is something I've used often, but I hadn't realised that their main shop was in Stirling. It was brilliant to go in there. The range is fabulous, and they were really looking forward to carrying Debbie Stoller's range of new yarns. One of the people working there was being really enthusiastic about Camp and was talking about it to the customers and advertising the weekend marketplace. It turns out that this was Carol Meldrum, author of the wonderful Knitted Icons book among others; but I didn't realise that at the time! Lace yarn was bought, along with some bonus acrylic for Helen for a class we'd both transferred onto at short notice...

Fittingly, just up the road is an almshouse endowed by a tailor - loved the scissors on the sign.

And this, believe it or not, just down the hill from the Castle, is Stirling Youth Hostel. (Follow the link for a nice slideshow of pictures of the area.)

And I thought the one at Haworth was fancy...

Another nice sign - joint cadets and Scout headquarters...

Next up the hill was the Church of the Holy Rude... Beautiful, rather austere church with a fabulous history. Remarkable both for the number of volunteers helping tourists, and the number of languages their information sheets were in (probably 40 or so!)

Beautiful 19th century stained glass...

And equally beautiful 20th century glass. This is the Guildry Window . The river running through the lower panels is the Forth

On up to Stirling Castle. On the lawns in front was the first sight of the Rob Roy Pipe Band and Highland Dancers from Kingston, Ontario.

I'm not normally a great fan of the Highland pipes, because I'm usually coming across a lone piper in a shopping centre or other confined space, out of context. But these guys were amazing...

Turns out they were rehearsing for a concert in the Castle Gardens a little later, after their appearance at the Bridge of Allan Highland Games.

Stirling continued in the next post - I had too many photos! As you can tell, though, the weather (and my mood) gradually improved as I headed up the hill...

Knit Camp 1: the Knitters

So - after a huge hiatus with only book reviews on the blog, I'm back from Knit Camp in Stirling, with photos. Not as many photos as a really conscientious blogger would take, but actually there was sort of a convention that taking pictures in classes was probably not that sociable, so I didn't have my camera with me at all times.

Lots has been said on Ravelry about Knit Camp; and while there's been a lot of wild speculation in some corners, a lot of the tales of chaos were undoubtedly true, most obviously and spectacularly the failure to obtain work permits for the non-EU tutors before they arrived, which led to one tutor being returned unceremoniously to the States and one speaker/author spending an unscheduled few days with family in the Netherlands.

Having had many changes and cancellations before I set off, on the Monday I found myself travelling up to Stirling with no notion of whether I'd have any classes at all before Friday when I had my one UK tutor. I was not, let's say, in the best frame of mind, and my packing suffered as a result! However, when we got there we found that although the seven affected tutors wouldn't be able to teach on Tuesday, things should be straight again on Wednesday, and total disaster was averted...

There was a lot of disorganisation; things were definitely skin-of-the-teeth close in terms of yarn arriving half an hour into classes in the nick of time for being used, tutors not having enough copies of handouts because of last-minute rearrangements, some participants (including me) never getting hold of a copy of the revised running order, etc.

The tutors themselves, however, whether they'd been affected by the immigration situation or not, squared their shoulders, picked up their needles and just got on with it, despite on very many occasions not being sure how many students they should have in their class even at start time.

And really: I had a very, very good week. It wasn't at all the week I expected when I booked, but I did uniformly superb classes with some very professional tutors at the top of their game, and enjoyed the outings, trips, knitting and nattering, and the marketplace. I'll do some posts on Stirling, Loch Katrine, New Lanark and the campus later.

Here though, just some general pictures of the best thing about the event: the Knitters. Like the tutors, the Knitters just picked up their pointy sticks and got on with it. There were two alternative slogans I'd heard for this - the first was Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises"; the second was a Rav post just before I left on Monday morning, the more prosaic "If it all goes tits up, we'll be down the pub". Either could have made T-shirts for the week, honestly. Maybe you could have had one slogan on the front and one on the back.

So: I present to you (click to embiggen)...

There were knitters in Clapotis. Many, many knitters in Clapotis. About 150, at a rough estimate and based on the numbers for the event. Never have so many Clapotis been seen in one place... There was also a yarn swap...

There were knitters in pub quiz teams. We (the Sinisters) came second, and won a costume prize for Kath's wonderful T-shirts (we were, needless to say, the left-handers' team). Left to right (Ravelry names in brackets afterwards):

Gretchen (gretchenroth), Rosie (MrsMaddog), Lucy (cardifflucy), Jane (JaneKAL), Kath (Kathj), Ann (AnnKingstone) and me (greensideknits).


There were knitters at World Heritage Sites....

... knitters messing about on or near boats (yes, that's Norah Gaughan in the foreground)...

... knitters at breakfast...

... and more knitters at breakfast... the number of handmade garments, shawls etc. was inspiring!

There were knitters at Marketplace (this is as it was closing down on Friday night, when I could get an unencumbered shot!)...

... including new stallholders Abstract Cat Crafts (who got all that lot to Stirling from Bathgate on public transport)

and The Sulky Cat (ditto, but from Leeds). More from both when I do my stash roundup in a few days' time!

There were old friends. Ellen (Ravelry name unknown) was there - I think we last bumped into each other at an I Knit event a couple of years ago, but we know each other from SkipNorth and its predecessor event in 2004! I also sat next to the lady on the left on the way to Loch Katrine, but have completely forgotten her name. Apologies; you probably won't be reading this but hope you had a good time in Glasgow.

Also from SkipNorth, the lovely Isabella aka spinningfishwife who I see has just blogged the Marketplace - she's local and was here for the day. Sorry it's such a rotten photo - I was wandering around with my camera round my neck and had managed to knock the focus from Auto to Manual and not notice...

And for the trifecta, the inimitable Woolly Wormhead, Hat designer extraordinaire and all-round good egg. Here, she's desperately trying to scoff a salad between her morning teaching and her afternoon marketplace duty. A nice person obviously wouldn't have pointed a camera at her at that point, but I'm me, and it had to be done...

... and here she is somewhate later, trying on an amazing mediaeval hat/scarf/cowl/headwear thing belonging to the couple from The Mulberry Dyer.

There were new friends too - Kel (tootsie2121) and Nic (talesfromthe plain) attempt, and record, Portuguese knitting with a knitting brooch

Barbara (babalor) reads while waiting for her coach onward to Shetland. Barbara and I had an International Snack Exchange going which turned, as these things do, into an International Yarn Exchange as well.

Here are the snacks - I've been wondering about Triscuits since they turned up on the 5th episode of The West Wing and they are very delicious, it turns out - halfway between cream crackers and salty Shredded Wheat... Underneath my room key there are also two little boxes of chocolate sprinkles from the Netherlands...

Because of my room number and the Triscuits, I mentally named this picture Triscuitdekaphobia. (Sorry).

More Shetland knitters - on the left is Jude (meherbie) and on the right Lydia (lydiajensen), and I know the lady to the left of Lydia is her sister Trudy, but after that I get a bit lost...

Anyway, yes. Thanks to the knitters and spinners and designers and tutors and all-round good people who were there this week. It was brilliant to meet you and I'm sorry I didn't take more photos.

More posts coming soon.