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...

Lovely Sunday

Gill paid a visit today... She's probably not going to thank me for this picture but there you go...


We had lunch; we nattered; we looked at the garden. Gill is a wise woman and brought both inhabitants of the house their drug of choice. [Chablis, in my case]. There are many, many reasons why the Bug loves Gill; but a new, refillable, washable, catnip mouse may well come quite high on her list.

Come back soon, Gill, or I'll come over and we can do the Midsomer Morse Murder tour! And thanks again... Even though I won't be at Wonderwool Wales, some of my hand-dyed yarn will be, on the Woolly Workshop stand!

Gill also exhibited her bee-shepherding skills. Which reminds me of the extremely funny YouTube clip that spinningfishwife had on her blog:

Textiles in Focus 08

I'm tired, but nowhere near as tired as I usually am, at the end of this weekend.

I'm sure this is due to Sue, Rosie and Jackie who were amazing over the weekend; helping set up, helping break down, bringing lunch, titivating the stand, and sitting knitting/crocheting... You were amazing, ladies. Thanks. And due to not having a lot to do with the competition, which I've done the admin for over the last few years... Thanks to Pauline for that!

And it was, as usual, a total pleasure to spend 3 days talking to Gill; and obviously a serious hardship to be sitting next to a selection of the stock from Woolly Workshop... Purchases were made.

I was a Bad Blogger (again) though - no photos... Sorry!

Aaaahhhh....

Textiles in Focus is over for another year. Not that it wasn't fun - it was - but I feel as if I've been run over repeatedly by a fleet of pantechnicons carrying the Rolling Stones' entire stage setup. Have just crawled out of the longest hot bath in living memory and am heating up last night's leftover curry, the food of champions.

Another very nice friendly bunch of needlefelters to teach today - two of whom I knew, which is always a little embarrassing, but they said they'd enjoyed themselves... The morning was quiet at the stand but we sold a few things in the afternoon, including Rosie's beautiful Silk Garden short-row scarf, which is going back to Adelaide with its Australian buyer (pictured - there were no mirrors in any of the loos, so I took a photo of her in it for her to see; miracles of modern technology etc. - she also checked she could wear it in half a dozen other combinations...).

I really enjoyed the weekend - chatting to people about knitting and other things, getting the odd freebie from one or two of the other suppliers - viscose fibre for needlefelting (and, potentially, spinning) from Winifred Cottage and some cotton tape from Gill - I think it's called Ibiza, but realise when I shared it out that I've kept the half-balls without the ball-bands on them!

Today's stash acquisition:

16 oz/1120m of CTH potluck worsted - to be combined with the leftovers from St Brigid, when she's done, and an odd ball of Kureyon. I fancy trying a top-down sweater now I've got the Denises, to see if it's easier to make it fit correctly... In the background, the aforementioned cotton tape - which isn't at all stretchy, and in nice colours, and therefore confounds my prejudices about tape yarns. I'm going to try knitting it up in lacy patterns and see how it works.

And to prove they're still alive and haven't been buried under a mound of yarn, we have an illustration of the principle that

if you put yarn on a table and attempt to photograph it, a cat will appear from nowhere; and still manage to look offended.

And last but fabulously; an unexpected, unwarranted present ... I asked UKHK for cool tea-cosy patterns months ago and there was a huge flurry of correspondence with lots of suggestions, but I never got round to making one ... my teapot remained forlornly unadorned. Meanwhile Rosie was designing and making one shortlisted for the NEC - and here is my gift (the photo is not good; I'm going to try and replace this with a daylight shot sometime soon, just as soon as there is actual daylight while I'm in the house...). It is bright, it is bubbly, it has a complicated slipstitch pattern, it fits... and my teapot is warm and happy.

I love it.... thanks!!

Phew

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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