new things to squish

In case you were worried about the yarn levels in this house after the last post - it's all ok again! I went to Manchester Yarn Day, which was the funnest day out ever. So much lovely hand dyed and handspun yarn around, there were all kinds of opportunities for stroking, prodding and admiring. And lots of sitting around drinking tea, meeting nice people, chatting and knitting. I did a couple of the free workshops. There was one on spinning, by Kate from Green Eyed Monsters which was all kinds of awesome. Unfortunately, though, someone had stolen my fingers and replaced them with sausages immediately prior to the event. Everyone else seemed to end up with yarn, whereas I had an amorphous blob of an unknittable substance that veered crazily from sewing thread to candy floss in consistency. But it was immensely good fun. As was the Speed Knitting event. I got a bit overexcited about this and demanded a soundsystem playing Eye of the Tiger and a satin dressing gown with Rubbishknitter embroidered on the back. Sadly these weren't provided but somehow I managed to win!

The prize was a basket of lovely goodies from the Manchester Yarn Collective - one skein of 'just peachy' sock yarn and a cute cherry purse from Green Eyed Monsters, and a skein of yellow laceweight from Krafty Koala (the label fell off in the excitement but it is unbelievably soft - I think some sort of cashmere blend). I am clearly having an extremely lucky day and should probably do the lottery or something. So amazingly, I almost got away without spending any money, but unfortunately when I went up to the stall to say thankyou for my prize yarn I leaned on a skein of lovely soft chocolate brown merino sock yarn from Skeins and it was so soft and warm I accidentally bought it. Ah well, I managed to spend less than a tenner and it was a pretty awesome haul! And there is hope yet for spinning skillz in the family...