On Saturday I went to the I Knit Day at the Royal Horticultural Halls in central London.

Wow! What a day! Luckily the start was not too appallingly early, and the rain decided to give us a respite (at least for a while). I’m afraid I’m not a big fan of London, I find it dirty and smelly and crowded, and I don’t really do well in crowds, but it is worth putting up with occasionally, especially if there is a good knitting reason 🙂

I was very fortunate with the trains, and although all the trains from my station to Waterloo had been cancelled and replaced by buses the ones to Victoria were running on time. After a few minor navigational errors (you would hardly realise that I actually worked the other side of Victoria for 8 months, although I hadn’t ever been to the Horticultural Halls before), I made it to the halls at 10.30. The show opened at 11am, but I like to be early for things and half an hour was perfectly reasonable, and I wasn’t the first person there either!

The other people in the queue were very nice, and we all chatted and admired each other’s knitting, and before long there were quite a few of us, doing what the British love to do – forming an orderly queue, and doing what bloggers love to do – photographing it.

The rain took pity on us and held off until the doors opened, where we were confronted with this:

The first one was actually taken at lunchtime when things were a bit busier than they were first thing, and the second was taken shortly before I went home.

There were a good number of stands to look at and nice wide aisles between them so that you could easily get past even when the stands themselves were very busy. The only downsides were the acoustics, and the seating at lunchtime. I went to Jane Sowerby‘s talk and despite us all shuffling our seats forward and me only being a few feet from her, due to the echoeyness of the hall and the background noise I could hardly hear a word she said. I could see her beautiful shawls though, and later helped to fold them all up, I have a couple of her shawls in my ravelry queue, and I am really looking forward to knitting them. Then later during the fashion shows the microphone was turned up so loud that it was very hard to have a conversation even at the other end of the hall. Seating is always a problem, probably because everyone always wants to sit down and eat lunch at the same time, yet you don’t want the whole hall to be full of empty chairs the rest of the time. I stood up to eat lunch while watching one of the fashion shows but my feet were not friends with me by the time I got home.

The highlight of the day was the talk by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. This was in a separate hall – unfortunately over the road so more queueing in the rain. Here is the hall starting to fill up:

And here is the lady herself:

And the obligatory sock picture:

She was good fun and interesting, although I haven’t had the negative experience she seems to have had when attempting to explain knitting to my friends and family. Perhaps it is just that they are immune by now?

She kindly stayed behind after her talk and chatted to people. I followed the lady in the gold cardigan in this picture back over the road to the main hall, and am now kicking myself for not running a bit faster and saying how beautiful it was and asking what the pattern was.

We all trundled back off to the main hall and Stephanie signed millions of books. Here is the queue for her signing, I think this was after she had already been signing a couple of hours. I do hope she wasn’t there all night.

As well as listening to the talks, one of the delights of days like these is meeting up with other knitters, some of whom I have met before and some not. I’m afraid I will not be as organised as Katie and list them, because I have an appalling memory and it would be embarrassing the number of people I left out. Suffice it to say, I had a wonderful time, and it was lovely to see everyone (again).

I was remarkably restrained in the shopping part of the day. I came home with some lovely undyed yarn from H W Hammand, and nearly my own body weight in fudge (not inconsiderable, I can assure you, as the Wii-fit keeps pointing out to me), and other than that had a lovely time looking at everything and pondering. I love these opportunities to squish all the yarn and see what the colours are really like. Even if I don’t buy stuff on the day I come home with the information tucked in the back of the brain which will whir round and hopefully pop out in a useful manner at some point in the future.

The length of the day felt about right for the shopper, but must have been very long for the stall-holders, some of them had been up obscenely early setting everything up – I hope they sold lots and it was worthwhile. I admitted defeat a little after 6 (the show closed at 7pm), and was fortunate in not having to wait too long for a train home. It did start raining in time for me to get off the train and walk home but wasn’t too bad, and I am hoping that the brisk walk will combat some of the fudge I am now going off to eat 🙂

It has been a busy few weeks knitting-wise, so more will follow soon. First off though, on the 5th to the 7th of July I went to the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM, this year held in Winchester.

I arrived shortly after lunch on the Friday, and after collecting my badge and saying a few hellos we had our first outing, to the Knitting Reference Library at Winchester School of Art. They hold the collections of Montse Stanley, Richard Rutt, and Jane Waller, and we had a very interesting and informative romp through the history and sociology of knitting, based on these collections, given by Linda Newington, Head Librarian, and helped by her assistant.

The Knitting Reference Library mostly holds patterns and books, with Montse’s extensive collection of objects held in the Special Collections at the Hartley Library, University of Southampton. The Knitting Reference Library does have a small handling collection though, which they use with students, and which they brought out to show us. Their collection really is varied, from knitted toys (some incredibly kitsch 🙂 )

to the most beautiful and detailed gloves and mittens, some knitted by Richard Rutt himself.

After an opportunity to briefly browse the shelves of the collection we piled back into the assortment of vehicles, and trundled back to the University of Winchester for a well-deserved cup of tea and a biscuit, and the serious task of checking out the stock Gill of the Woolly Workshop had brought with her for the shopping room. There were also two quizzes designed to celebrate 30 years of the guild, and as a getting-to-know-you exercise to fit in alongside the hectic round of shopping.

After dinner was the show and tell, a wonderful wide variety of knitted items were shown, lots of inspiration. Then off home to bed.

Saturday started with with AGM proper. It was interesting to hear about the progress of the guild this year, and plans for the future, but it would have been nice if there had been more time allowed, so that more of the questions could have been answered more satisfactorily.

Following the AGM, Linda Newington gave a talk on the Knitting Reference Library, and the In the Loop conference. It was interesting to hear a bit more about the library, and exhibition and conference, particularly since I wasn’t able to get to the conference itself. Then after lunch we had another expedition, this time to Winchester cathedral.

The cathedral doesn’t have any knitting in it, but it does have some lovely woven vestments, and some very interesting tiled floors. I love tiling, and got completely carried away with photographing all of the different tiles. I think I may try and use them for inspiration for knitting at some point.

After a much appreciated cup of tea back at the University, Imogen Semken, one of the Directors of the guild gave a very interesting talk and demonstration on millinery. I was amazed at how you could create a sturdy base for a hat just by wetting the material (I think it was banana fibre) and stretching it over a mould and waiting for it to dry.

After dinner Joyce Meader gave a fantastic talk on military knitting patterns. In the picture below she is holding up two pairs of American civil war socks, you can choose which flag you put on the sole of the foot so that you can walk on the opposition 🙂

Joyce is a wonderfully entertaining speaker who really knows her subject. She had us all rolling in the aisles for the whole duration of her talk. If you get the opportunity to hear one of her talks definitely jump at it.

Sunday morning brought a final opportunity for discussion of the guild and its future, and prizes for the two quizzes. I won a pattern book by Debbie Bliss! A surprise and a pleasure. Mary Hawkins rounded off the meeting with a demonstration of how to use a knitting frame (without the aid of an actual knitting frame) as a taster of what we might see when the AGM is held in Ruddington near the Framework Knitters Museum next year.

Of course I didn’t escape without a few purchases:

Here is my prize pattern book, a Lucy Neatby instruction booklet on buttonholes, a pattern leaflet, a book on the textiles at Winchester Cathedral and some stitch markers which were given in the welcome bag at the AGM. There were also a couple of pattern books in the welcome bag which I have given to my mum as a consolation prize for not being able to come along.

I took loads more pictures at the AGM (95 of them I think!) which I have finally managed to persuade flickr to upload here.

All in all, a fun time was had. A good opportunity to meet old friends, and make new ones, and of course to see what everyone is knitting.