Category Archives: Knitting Groups

Mini moebius waistcoat

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At the end of April Tricia Holman (Elizabeth Zimmermann’s niece) came to the Ash knitting group to do a workshop on Elizabeth’s moebius waistcoat.

Here is Tricia (on the right) wearing her waistcoat, and with some of her other yarns and patterns.

During the day we knitted (or at least started knitting) our own little mini waistcoats.

I used 4mm needles, and some Manx Loaghtan handspun I had left over from my Handspun Leaves Waistcoat, and some red merino handspun for the edging, again another left over from my waistcoat.

It was good fun, and I am keen to make a full sized one at some point, although I think I may need to fiddle with the pattern a bit to get it to fit me. I am not very pleased with the way my icord edging came out. You can see the background colour through it, so I think I need to experiment with other ways of doing the join. Usually I do my icord from the inside, but this pattern with only one surface doesn’t have an inside and outside so both sides of the edging need to look good.

Unravel 2012

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This weekend was the annual Unravel festival at the Maltings in Farnham. It is great to have a woolly festival so close to us, and this year there was even more fun stuff to look at.

As in previous years I was helping out with demonstrating and teaching spinning and knitting with the West Surrey Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers, and with the Surrey Knitting and Crochet Group. Members of both groups lent a wonderful selection of things they had made for our display table. We had our usual corner of the Cellar Bar which was handy as we knew the lie of the land beforehand. Here it all is on Friday afternoon after we had set it all up:

A good number of members of both groups volunteered so we all managed to have a good look around the show too which was excellent, and I also managed to hear Lesley Prior‘s talk about the Campaign for Wool which was very interesting.

This year’s January competition at the knitting and crochet group had the theme of sheep, and we had all the entries on display for the weekend. I made a Shetland Sheep out of some natural black handspun Shetland, although I didn’t manage to finish him in time for the competition:

He is made entirely out of bobbles, which nearly killed me. He wont be having any friends! I find bobbles very hard on the neck and shoulders, and had a headache for a week after finishing him! Luckily I am pretty much better now.

Sue made the most wonderful life-size model sheep which was then covered in knitted squares by members of the group, and hung in the entrance of the Maltings:

He is called Norman, and will be coming out with us to more exhibitions later this year.

And there were even real live sheep, I think from Well Manor Farm in a pen outside:

There were even more stands at the festival than in previous years. A great selection of things to see and have a go at. There were workshops and talks on both days, and a lot of enthusiastic people.

I had a fabulous time 🙂 It was great to see loads of friends, and to meet lots of new people too. I spent a lot of Saturday extolling the virtues of knitting socks with one long circular needle, and Sunday talking about spinning and different wheels and helping new spinners get started. They were all sickeningly tallented, and grasped the principles very quickly, even those who were rather tired after having a long day round the show 🙂 We had a lot of families around on the Sunday which was fun, and we did some great team spinning. My little victims got the hot seat (although some of them were a little short to sit on the chair and reach the pedals so had to stand up), and they were in charge of the treadle, with their accompanying adult in charge of checking that the wheel was still going in the same direction. Then I did the hands, and when they had had enough I did a little ply-back of the yarn we had been spinning so they would have something to take away with them. I think there will be quite a lot of orange merino featuring in show and tell sessions at Surrey and Hampshire schools this week 🙂

I was also thrilled to win the Best in Show exhibition with my Autumn in Anatolia jumper.

I am looking forward to the prize which was a subscription to Selvedge magazine. Our knitting and crochet group were well represented in the Best in Show competition, Kim came second with her crocheted Dalek Tank top:

Sue also entered her wonderfully witty knitted sheep portraits,and Mary entered her Noah’s Ark.

A show would hardly be complete without a bit of stash enhancement and there were lots of lovely things available to buy.

The first things I bought on Saturday morning when the show had barely opened were Knitting with Two Colors by Meg Swansen and Amy Detjen, from Tricia Holman, and an Unravel bag (which came in handy to put things in all weekend). Here they are with my first issue of my prize Selvedge subscription:

It took me all weekend to decide on which colour of Deepy Wicked sock yarn (100% superwash Merino, 100g, 400m) to buy from EasyKnits – too much choice! Too many lovely loud colours! They humoured my indecision, and in the end I decided on this lovely semi-solid green called Astro Turf 🙂

It is a bit grey and gloomy here today so the yarn is actually even bright than my photo suggests 🙂

I also had a lovely time at John Arbon‘s stand, squishing all the lovely tempting fibre. It was nice to see John and Juliet and catch up with them too 🙂

I bought 200g of white 70% Exmoor Blueface, 30% Bluefaced Leicester fibre:

I am planning to dye this and then spin it into socks. We were using some of this fibre for spinning demonstrations and for the new spinners to learn with, and it is very nice to spin, it drafts very smoothly without being too slippery.

I also bought a kilo of chocolate 80% fine alpaca, 20% merino fibre:

This is a gorgeous colour, very reminiscent of a good milk chocolate. I think this will be a jumper or cardigan but I haven’t thought much further than that.

I also got some lovely Cappuccino Alpaca and something, but I now can’t remember whether it was Alpaca and Merino, or Alpaca and BFL, or Alpaca, Merino, and BFL, or something else entirely. I think my brain may be a little full.

I’m not sure what I am going to do with this yet. I think not lace, because the colours are quite strongly contrasting. Perhaps a 4ply kind of a weight, and then maybe mittens or something. Or I may mix it with some other fibre I already have to eke it out a bit.

All in all a very good weekend 🙂 I woke up at 5.30am yesterday and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was too excited, so I have been enjoying a bit of a quieter day today. Roll on next year, but I shall try and catch up with my sleep before then!

Unravel 2011

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On the last weekend of February was the Unravel show at the Maltings in Farnham. This is the third year it has been held, and it just keeps getting better (it also helps that I wasn’t horribly jet-lagged this year!). They had a great knitted sign up over the entrance to welcome everyone:

And some lovely Gotland sheep from Well Manor Farm were outside too:

I helped with the Surrey Knitting and Crochet Group, and with the West Surrey Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers. We have a lot of over-lap of members between the two groups so we were sharing about half of the cellar area, and several people were helping with both groups depending on what was needed at the time. We had an exhibition of our work, and were also answering knitting and crochet queries (in my case only knitting, my crochet is a bit basic), and showing people how to spin. Here are Janine and tall Heather (I think that sadly makes me short Heather) setting everything up.

We also had a lot of fun with a spinning wheel that a lady brought in that she had bought in France, I think from an antique shop, for a very advantageous price, which she wanted to get working and learn to spin on. It was actually a double drive wheel, but rigged up as double drive with some of Mary’s string it was a bit temperamental and we had a lot of trouble with the drive band popping off. So with some more string and a couple of elastic bands we rigged it as Scotch tension (with no damage to the wheel, this could all easily be undone) and it span beautifully. The owner did very well starting spinning on it, and I hope has succeeded in her quest for some more bobbins for it too. I do enjoy a nice engineering challenge 🙂

We had one low point to the weekend when we thought that the handbag of one of our older members had been pinched, but fortunately it turned out that it had just been mistakenly picked up by another member (oh the difficulties of everyone having black handbags) and so was returned to Nan when it re-emerged from under a car seat a couple of days later.

There were several talks and workshops during the weekend, which unfortuantely I didn’t manage to get to, but I did get a chance to dash round and have a quick look at all the exhibitors despite the fact that we were very busy all weekend. I was surprisingly restrained with my purchases (which could have had something to do with the number of enthusiastic people we had come to chat with us so I didn’t have too much time for buying – probably better for the old wallet).

I bought some 90% Exmoor Blueface, 10% nylon fibre from John Arbon:

As the name suggests Exmoor Blueface is a sheep which is a cross between an Exmoor Horn and a Bluefaced Leicester. It has the robustness of the Exmoor, but the longer staple, and softness of the Bluefaced Leicester. My plan is to dye this and then spin some yarn for socks. It isn’t the softest yarn in the world (the Exmoor is quite a robust wool) but it should be hardwearing hopefully, which is a good quality in socks.

I also bought two balls of the new Excelana 4ply yarn in Ruby Red, also from John Arbon.

This is a blend of 70% Exmoore Blueface, and 30% Bluefaced Leicester and is a collaboration between John Arbon and Susan Crawford. I think this will also be destined for socks, I am hoping that it will show textured patterns well.

As is often the case with these events the best thing was the opportunity to meet and chat with so many enthusiastic and knowledgeable people. All of the people who came to learn to spin were very quick on the uptake (it really does put my own speed of learning to shame!). It was lovely to catch up with lots of people I don’t see very often and hear and see what they are up to at the moment, and also great to meet lots of new people too. Roll on next year!

Shortly after Unravel, I finished spinning the Bowmont fibre I had started spinning while at the Devon Fibre Retreat (bought on the Devon Fibre Retreat the previous year).

I have a total of 103g and 302m of a 2ply construction, approximately commercial 4ply weight yarn. I am not totally happy with how this has come out. As you can see it is a bit all over the place, and not very consistent at all. I found the fibre to be a bit sticky, I know a lot of people like a bit of lanolin left in their fibre when they spin it, but I am not one of them. I have very sticky hands (particularly in hot weather) and have trouble sticking to the fibre if it is not completely clean. There were also quite a lot of noils and second-cuts in the fibre, which was disappointing. It looked like it had gone through machinery that wasn’t really capable of dealing with such a fine fibre. I did start off trying to remove them all, but quickly realised that if I did I would have nothing left! I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with the yarn, I shall continue to ponder. It has been a learning experience 🙂 It would probably have come out better if I had tried a more woollen (rather than worstead) approach, which is another reason why I need to improve my woollen spinning.

 

Devon Fibre Weekend 2010

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The cyclists are having a well-deserved day off today, so I thought I would have a break from the spinning and catch up with some other bits and pieces from the last six months.

Back at the end of October I went to Devon for Terri‘s second lovely Fibre Weekend. The Friday starting early with me packing all my stuff in the car, having a think and then re-packing. Then I finally set off to collect Marty, and re-packed the car, and then down to collect Joanne, and you guessed it, re-packed the car again. I was quite impressed that you could get three people, three spinning wheels and their luggage including bedding in a Nissan Note, and no-one had to be strapped to the roof or balance their spinning wheel on their head, though Joanne was squashed in the back with a wall of stuff along side her.

Luckily the drive down was nice and uneventful, and we arrived at Sheldon in time to unpack the car and eat our packed lunch before the afternoon’s workshops started. I had signed up for natural dyeing with Amanda Hannaford, which was great fun, and very interesting. Amanda sent us the mordant recipe so we could mordant our yarn before we arrived. I used some 4ply weight superwash bluefaced leicester wool, and made myself a selection of mini skeins so I could try the different dyes.

Here are some of the skeins we dyed drying outside:

And here is everybody’s skeins laid out for everyone to admire:

Here are my 12 little skeins:

From left to right they are: madder x 3, weld x 1, goldenrod x 3, logwood x 1, indigo x 2, and cochineal x 2, all using an alum mordant. I like some of the colours better than others, but it was fun to try it all, and interesting to see the results.

After Terri’s fantastic cooking for dinner and a bit of knitting and spinning we all fell into our beds in time to get a bit of sleep in before the excitement of Saturday’s outing.

Saturday was our busy day, lots to do, so we set off early to go to the David and Charles book shop. There didn’t seem to be quite as many craft books this year as previously, but I did find a copy of Girolamo Cardano’s Ars Magna (English translation) for £1 so I was happy 🙂

Then back in the minibus and on to Coldharbour Mill, where we were treated to tours of both the upstairs machinery open to the public and John Arbon‘s machines in the basement which aren’t normally viewable. I love all the machinery, and it is amazing how so much of it is recogniseably the same process as hand spinning just on a much larger scale.

In the shop at the mill I treated myself to 600g of 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre, in Cappuccino:

After lunch at the mill it was back in the minibus again to go to Westcott Farm to see Lesley Prior and her Bowmont sheep and Cashmere goats.

Here are some of the sheep:

And here some of the goats:

It was great to see Lesley again and catch up on what is happening on the farm. It is always interesting to talk to someone so passionate about what they do.

After the tour of the farm Lesley very kindly made us all tea and fantastic scones. I couldn’t resist buying some of her lovely cashmere:

This is 4ply cashmere, 25g, 116m. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it yet, but it is such a lovely colour and feels very soft and squishy.

In the evening we all went out for a delicious dinner at the Nobody Inn, there were enough of us that we got our own room 🙂

Tired and very full we trundled back to Sheldon.

Sunday was less formal, but still packed full. In the morning we had a go at blending different colours of fibre on drum carders and hackles.

Here is some of the carding in action, with the enormous pile of fibre to choose from behind it.

And here is Terri having a go on Rachel’s hackle.

I spun up my efforts when I got home:

The red is merino blended on the hackle, and the greens are a mixture of merino with a little bit of silk carded on a Minty Fine Carder. I enjoyed having a go at this, particularly because I don’t own a carder or a hackle, it was very useful to be able to compare. I prefered spinning the fibre from the hackle, in general I prefer a combed preparation and like to spin smooth yarn, although I prefer the colours I chose with the carder. I love playing with colours and seeing the different effects you can create and would like to have more of a go at this soon.

After the tables were cleared away the floor was used to share out the two enormous bags of waste fibre John Arbon had given us, a mixture of alpaca and different wools. I decided this was best as a spectator sport!

And this is my share:

I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I think it will come in really handy for learning new techniques.

After a delicious roast dinner, there was just the clearing up to do, and then all too soon it was time to pack everything back in the car and say goodbye.

Very kindly Joanne gave me this sheep for doing the driving:

He has a lot of character, and is currently keeping an eye on me from on top of the printer.

And Marty gave me a skein of 4ply Alpaca/BFL which I am looking forward to dyeing:

The drive home went ok if rather slowly, there is always a lot of traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

In all a wonderful weekend. Lovely to see so many old friends and make new ones, and to have such a fun time.

Unravelling

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I spent a fabulous weekend helping out at the Unravel festival of knitting at the Maltings in Farnham. It has wiped me out a bit though, hence why it has taken me til today to sort out my thoughts and photos.

I was helping out with the Surrey Knitting Group, answering people’s knitting queries, knitting flowers (actually I failed miserably to knit any myself, but I did help other people with the patterns), and demonstrating how to knit socks (or any other small circumference bit of circular knitting) on one long circular needle. And also helping with the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers, demonstrating spinning and helping people to have a go themselves.

Here is our little corner, with a display of members work in the background.

I had been hoping to be able to help with the set up but was unfortunately stuck in New Jersey on Friday at the crucial time, and only made it back by Saturday lunchtime (more on that in the next post!).

There were more exhibitors than last year, and a very good range of interesting things to look at and buy. I noticed an emphasis this year on natural dyeing and undyed yarns and fibres, and it was great to see some raw fleece and rare breeds too. There were a few stands selling equipment, I think two or three doing spindles, and one doing wheels. It would have been nice to see more, but then this is still a very new festival and still finding its feet. There were two very nice looking button stands, Jenny Stacy had buttons made with fimo, I am definitely inspired to have a go at making some when I next finish a project which needs buttons, and Textile Garden had some very interesting buttons including beautiful wooden and metal ones.

We had a good number of volunteers on the stands this year, meaning that we had enough people to cope at busy times, and at quieter times we all got the opportunity to have a quick look round the rest of the exhibition and make a few purchases. I was partially saved from myself on this front by John Arbon doing such a roaring trade that when I went back on Sunday morning for some lovely merino / alpaca fibre I had seen on Saturday they had all sold out. I did manage to get a nice little spindle, I don’t know what make it is as it was unlabelled, but it weighs 35g and seems to spin very nicely. I surprised myself by enjoying it more than I thought I would.

I also got some yummy fibre from Fyberspates.

First 100g of green and blue Falkland.

And the piece de resistance, 100g of Sparkle, 63% merino, 20% silk, 15% nylon, 2% silver. Unfortunately my poor photography doesn’t really capture the sparkle terribly well, but it is there, and is sparkly 🙂

I had a great time at the show, and have nearly caught up on my sleep now. Lots to look at, and lots of interesting and keen people to talk to, some of whom hopefully might come along to the knitting or spinning group. Roll on next year!

Fame!

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I met up with Melanie at I Knit London last week at their Wednesday night knitting group. It was only the second time I had been up to the shop, so good fun to see all the goodies they had, and nice to meet another group of interesting and keen knitters. I was very flattered that Craig photographed the jumper I was wearing (ancient fair isle in acrylic with lammentably wobbly seams) and I appeared in their newsletter this week! The photo is up in their flickr set, it does show my many chins but at least I am smiling 🙂

Unravelling

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On the 21st of February Farnham Maltings held their first Unravel, festival of knitting, handspun yarns, talks, workshops and more! It is lovely to have a yarny event so close to home! Since this is the first time they have held this event it was on a fairly small scale, but was such a success that they are going to run it for 2 days next year (next year I think it is going to be the last weekend in February).

The Ash knitting group I go to, and the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers (which I am also a member of) had a display area and were showing people different knitting, crochet and spinning techniques. I brought along my Trees shawl, Supercook socks, and concertina socks for the display and helped out in the demo area showing people how to work a sock on one long circular needle.

Here is our display with demo area in front.

farnhamunravel

It was a really fun day. A great chance to meet a lot of other yarny people who are actually local to me! I had a fabulous time and am looking forward to it being even bigger and better next year.

I Knit with Franklin

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On Thursday 13th November, I braved the horrors of London to go to I Knit for the first time, and hear Franklin Habit talk about his new book It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons.

The shop was easy to find, and conveniently close to Waterloo station, and also full of interesting stuff. I didn’t escape empty-handed, and as well as a copy of Franklin’s book, bought the Meg Swansen Baby Surprise DVD, two issues of Piecework, and a lovely skein of Malabrigo sock yarn in dark brown.

Franklin himself was as lovely, and hilarious as you would expect from his blog. He read a couple of exerpts from the book which had us all rolling in the aisles, and then very kindly signed loads of books and also copies of his calendar, and chatted to everyone for ages.

As you can see, he was signing so fast his hands are blurred (either that or my photographing skills are just really rubbish – I will leave you to decide!).

I had a great evening. It was so nice to see old friends and new, and to be so well entertained in a great atmosphere. I hope we didn’t scare him off with our exuberance.

I Knit Day

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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 🙂

Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM

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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.