Knitters in the Rain

I haven't told you yet about the Ravelry Day last week.

I went with Maggi (Ravelry link) and her Mum and we had a great time despite the rain.

And it really did pour down - all day which was a shame and it did detract from the day a little. It would have been a much nicer day if we'd all been able to sit outside the hall on the lovely wide stone benches and knit and chatter. However the good old British summer let us down as usual so we had to make the best of it - as only knitters can.

It was so cold and wet even the alpacas were shivering.

There were lots of great stalls with some great indy dyers and yarn producers, and although a few had been put off by the weather there was still plenty to choose from. I was quite restrained and just bought a couple of bits -

So, here we have a carded batt of unknown composition (my fault not theirs) from Fyberspates at the top. It's mostly pale turquoise with strands of blue, yellow, green and purple with sparkly stuff through it. Only about 40g so it won't go very far but it looks lovely and I'm sure it will be fantastic to spin. Also from Fyberspates is the skein of laceweight superwash merino & nylon called Faery Lace in colourway Java. I'm planning a shawl with this. The fibre is an alpaca/silk blend in colourway Stormclouds from Krafty Koala. Very soft and beautiful. I'm hoping this will help me find my knitting mojo which has still not returned. I'm blaming the stressful last few weeks and the fact that I've been ultra busy but I just can't seem to concentrate on anything at the moment. I'm even struggling to find a book that I really want to read. I've picked up several and put them down again because they're not quite what I wanted. I suspect I'll be the same with knitting at the moment - lots of casting on and lots of frogging again when I don't like what I've knitted. I'm sure it will all come back to me eventually.

Anyway, apart from the stalls there was lots of stuff at the Ravelry Day - workshops, demonstrations, spinning, knitting. We met up with some of the knitters from the Birmingham Stitch n Bitch group which I haven't been to for absolutely ages. It was great to see them all again. I was wearing my Astrid shawl and it was very much admired. One lovely lady even went as far as to say it looked better than the one in the photo in the pattern book. As you can imagine I was well chuffed.

One of the odd things about the blogosphere is the way you read other blogs and you feel you know the person behind it and you forget that they don't know you from Adam. I may have surprised Jo from Celtic Memory Yarns a little by leaping out of the crowd at her saying how nice it was to see her, totally forgetting that she doesn't actually know me. I read her blog but I'm not a big comment-leaver so of course she doesn't know me. It was still nice to meet you Jo. Loved the Noro waistcoat.

I'm at home today having a well-earned day off and grumbling about the weather - it's sunny outside which is not at all what was forecast. Today's forecast was for rain all day so Pete has gone off to work with all the gardening tools in the back of his car and there's no point me going up to the allotment with no tools - it's very frustrating. The sooner we can get a shed up there the better.