knit nation

(above: the Wollmeise stand, before it all got devoured by a swarm of yarnlocusts)

Oh yes, last weekend was knitting festival time!!!1!!1! Like Glastonbury, sort of, but with more cardigans. It's taken me a week to recover from the excitement.

Highlights of the day included:

• Marvelling at the Habu stall. So many beautifully arranged cones of colourful tweedy yarn, I didn't want to ruin the display by buying any. There was a great selection of unusual yarn, silk / stainless steel blends, and paper! (All fun and games until it rains.)
  


• Scoring some beautiful Crannog from the Yarn Yard. I went crazy and got a cardigansworth, probably for Laika, but I haven't 100% decided.


• Finding this cute project bag in the same fabric as my recently acquired needle case
  


• Inadvertently wandering across Ysolda's twitter feed. It was Cara who noticed this - she recognised my Tempest cardigan! (the red one)


• Winning a Knit nation mug! Here it is being modelled by a good strong brew.
  


• Relaxing in the cafe with knitting, cake and gentle yarnbanter.
  


• Last, but very much not least - meeting the very lovely Kate Blackburn, who not only put up with my yarn-based witterings for most of the day, she met me at the station, navigated me to the correct place, and gave me gifts of yarn and cake. Thankyou so much!

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wonderwool

OK, i am back now from officially teh_best weekend evah!!11! It's hard to summarise the total awesomeness of the Wonderwool Wales vibe in concise blog format, but I will attempt to do this. With the aid of some fairly ropey photos from my mobile phone. Look! Slightly pixellated daffodils!



Some very handsome sheep, with pretty awesome indie hair

The world's fluffiest angora rabbits

Beautiful antique looms, being actually really used to make beautiful real cloth. Clackety clack... clackety clack...

Bobbins, real ones!

An actual Bobbins magazine mini-stall! I hadn't been organised enough to manage to book a slot beforehand but the lovely organisers let us have a little table next to the bag creche. It's being looked after in this photo by my lovely friends Rob and Amy. That's my knitting bag and flask of tea on the right of the picture. (Surely the least hard day's work out of any day that's ever been loosely categorised as 'work'.)

SOOO much pretty yarn... I slowly squidged my way round the entire perimeter of the exhibition with an inane grin on my face.

But, impossible to show in these pictures and yet utterly central to the whole experience was the unbelievably friendly lovely atmosphere. Everyone you saw had a smile on their faces, and would chat with anyone about anything - knitting, yarn, the keeping of livestock, spinning, the unexpectedly lovely weather, the food. There were people just sitting, knitting and chatting, all over the place. Everyone you saw was draped in beautiful handknitted, hand-dyed, unique and lovely garments, and would love nothing more than to stop and discuss their construction at length with strangers. This truly was the best possible way to spend a Sunday, and I bloody loved it. I can't wait till next year! In the meantime, anyone for Woolfest?!

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