Fun of the fair

To Festiwool at Hitchin.  Given that I'd been up until after 3am listening to French radio, wandering around the house and ranting, I wasn't exactly the most awake I've ever been.  But it was a lovely event, and good to meet some knitters and look at some beautiful things.

Here's the haul:  Silk and baby camel from Travelknitter; Sokkosu O merino from Whimzy, which will become an ikat warp scarf, I hope; Nimbus (merino/silk/yak) from Sparkleduck in a colour Heather assured me would go well with the other two colours I have, and indeed does, beautifully.  I picked up another couple of things but they were for gifts so not shown here...

Now off to dinner with friends in the village.

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.

Yarn crawl...

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

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

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

Anyway:

Stage 1: Montréal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stage 2: Toronto

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

Shop 3: Lettuce Knit, 70 Nassau Street.

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

I came, I saw, I spent; I offer a prize...

Ally Pally again! Most of the summer was spent in job-limbo, so it's amazing to realise that it's autumn again... This was forcibly brought home to me as I left the village before it was properly light this morning...





I have no idea what I did to make it look as if there's ectoplasm in this picture, but it's quite creepy, anyway. I had to leave this early because the rail maintenance people are Fiddling with the Track every weekend till the end of the year, and Ally Pally became a train, a bus, a train, another train and another bus each way...


Undeterred, I got there just after 9:30 and found to my delight that they were letting people in to the box office and the Palm Court; don't think I've ever been there before the doors opened before! Talked to a nice lady from Toronto in the queue - she was here on business but had decided to come all four days... Did my usual with the catalogue and ringed the suppliers I wanted to see. There were an amazing number of yarn places again - I thought this was the best selection yet although I know opinions have differed...


I bumped into several people on the way round, including Debbie, who used to teach pottery at Chesterton, and who I seem to bump into every year without fail despite us both varying our days, and despite our living only a few miles apart the rest of the time and never meeting... Also Emily, from the KTog group, at the very first stand... And more expectedly, Gill, who had Cheryl Potter with her on the Cherry Tree Hill stand; and an extremely elegant haircut...

At the Relax and Knit area, Yvonne had just been given a birthday present by Sue - the most gorgeous velvet bag with a hinge closure...




I meant to go back and say hi-and-goodbye, but ran out of energy after about four hours and made my way home! Having been the other side of the counter, exhibiting with Fibrefusion or volunteering on Relax and Knit, for the last few years, I'd forgotten how tiring shopping (which I generally avoid like the plague these days, unless there's yarn involved) and chatting, and things, actually are when there are so few places to sit down and take stock!

So - the damage...

As ever, the first stall I saw was Colinette, next to the doors to the corridor; this skein of Jitterbug whined to come home with me, so I let it. The colour is Slate, and it's actually quite a lot greyer and less lilac than this - while being a lot more attractive than the colour on the Colinette site... I think I'm probably going to turn it into these which appeared on Mim's blog last night...

There were some other delightfully squooshy yarns around, too; this, for instance, from the extremely nice lady at Touch Yarns - I was looking for yarn for Anne at the time and this hopped into the bag with it... It's 100% merino 4-ply, and I think it's probably not robust enough for socks; I'm thinking about a scarf or small shawl in a simple lace pattern (there's 455 yards)...

I went by RKM Wools - I see Rosie has some Lang Mille Colori on her blog so they must have had some somewhere, but I didn't spot it (although I only saw two of their stalls and they had three last year); I did, however, pick up this for the princely sum of £2.50 a ball. Silver Thaw, this is (colour 13)...

Surprisingly, this is the only really purple thing I got this year. I did fondle quite a lot of purply things, though.. And had a lovely conversation with the ladies at Knit n Caboodle about knitters and their involvement with the colour purple. They tried to entice me to buy purple needles, but I have a very similar set from Jan... They were great, though. And have purple carrier bags...

I picked up this DK sock yarn for the next Baby Surprise Jacket (they were also doing the pattern); and these, which may be useful once I start commuting with my sock projects! I saw something similar on the Yarn Harlot's blog last year but I think that one was metal... as I may have to put my bag through an X-Ray on the way into work in the morning, these reinforced cardboard ones look like a better idea... Once I've got something on DPNs I'll try them out and take photos...

There were also needles. Pretty, pretty needles. Lantern Moon needles... Rosewood Lantern Moon needles... Ickle baby 2mm, 5" Lantern Moon needles... This isn't the first time I've bought needles from LM, just the first time I've bought them for me... It'a a ridiculous sum for five cocktail sticks, but they're delightful... And will live in the little bag when not in use - I learned my lesson with the tiny Brittany ones...

And roving! I see all this pretty spinning on people's blogs done with pre-dyed roving... Fyberspates had some lovely stuff...

And so did these people from Finland - yes; it really is that bright... If it's too eye-watering, I have large quantities of plain Jacob fleece and some dark brown fleece to tone it down; but I have a feeling I'll be using it as is. Any hints and tips from the spinners are welcome...

And now to the prize.

My first post was about Ally Pally two years ago, and the blog's birthday is on Friday. I know there are people who read this and don't comment, and I'd love to know who you are; so as encouragement, leave me a comment about anything at all between now and the end of Friday (midnight BST), and I'll pull a name out of the hat - the winner gets a 100g skein of hand-dyed sock yarn (base yarn is undyed Trekking) in a colour of her/his choosing, either custom-dyed or a colourway from the shop.

Small shopkeeper

I kept thinking of Reg Ingley, the original small shopkeeper in On the Town with the League of Gentlemen, while finally setting up my Etsy shop this weekend. I've got some DK and some sock yarn, and a skein of laceweight for sale... and it all fits in two baskets.





I'm at http://knittingonthegreen.etsy.com/ - do go and have a look and tell me what you think (and what I'm missing)! A very nice lady in Texas has already bought some DK from me...

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...

Magi day

Happy Epiphany (or Christmas if you're Orthodox). The Christmas decorations came down here today; and I thought I'd blog the presents of yarn I was given at Christmas. So here they are: all stunning. And I can wind them into balls now...

From the back, clockwise: a whopping great skein of Heritage Yarns' Cloud 9 (50% cotton, 50% rayon bouclé), 832 metres of crunchy goodness. It's likely to become the Triangles within Triangles shawl....

Then a skein of Kaalund kid mohair, colour Tropical Berries; don't know about this one but there's 350 metres of that too, so it'll turn into something decent-sized... These were both from my parents who were primed with URLs...

And finally some Koigu KPPM (and I'd refer you to this cartoon for the appropriate reaction) - this is from Jan; utterly gorgeous stuff in rainbow colours. Until I put it next to the mohair I hadn't realised how good they looked together... Hmmmmm. Which is interesting; the Kaalund yarn I gave her was in the same colourway...


And here's some texture and maybe some better colour: Koigu on the right, Kaalund on the left and Heritage on the bottom; gorgeous stuff.

These haven't left the dining room table since I got them; just keep fondling them...