This past Friday I hopped in a car and drove with
Alli and Karen to Peddington Manor near Berkeley, for
The Small Wool Gathering, an event that grew out of the cancellation of this autumn's
Plug-and-Play Pembrokeshire retreat.
I picked the girls up just before lunch and we headed westward, with stops at
Avebury,
and a lovely shop in Bath, called (appropriately enough)
Wool.
Finally we arrived at the SWG, to be greeted by handknit washclothes and big fluffy beds,
not to mention divine food in copious amounts.
Saturday morning, after a much-longer-then-planned-or-anticipated run (10K does not equal 5K in any universe),
I sat down to Amy's latest sock class -
Autopilot Socks (
pattern here).
Yarn and fancy Alice in Wonderland stitch markers from Inked Yarn on Etsy, one of the fabulous GLYC sponsors
I've knit a lot of socks, in a lot of different ways, and I think I have a new favorite go-to pattern. This is a toe-up recipe that you knit to your own specific measurements (determined mostly by trying the socks on as you go) and uses a new-to-me short row technique that I love. On Sunday afternoon, I cast on for a pair in handspun worsted weight (more on those later).
Saturday afternoon we had a class on photographing your knitting, aka digital cameras for non-photographers who use macro all the time. Part of the class was lecture, part was practical, which had us wandering around the grounds of the Manor draping knitwear over walls, fences, plants, horses, and (in my case) recycling bins.
Then there was more glorious food and hanging about with yarn. By the end of the evening on Saturday I had a sleeve and a half done on my sweater project:
Sunday morning was spinning, more specifically spinning silk. Aka: porpoise's spinning kryptonite. We learned all about where silk comes from and how it is commercially farmed in China. Then we got to dive into some silk hankies. I've played a bit with hankies before, but this is the first time I've ever gotten real live yarn out of them.
There was also some gorgeous tussah silk top from
Sweet Georgia in the goody bags, which is going to be next up.
Sunday afternoon was all about the hanging around and knitting/spinning/napping. We had grand plans to go for a walk with
Jacqui (who lives nearby), but come time it was pissing down rain and we all just hung around instead. I cast on a sock, and by the end of Sunday, this is what I had completed:
Sweater for Mom, spindleful of silk hankies spun up, 4 oz of Hello Yarn Finn spun up, and most of a sock. I finished the sock yesterday and am most of the way through sock two, thanks to an after school Year 4 music concert and hanging about watching Harry Potter movies with Boo, who was home sick. Sadly most of my good pictures are on my real camera, which is somewhere in Basingstoke with my spinning wheel, and I had to abandon it to
Catherine's mercy when we needed to fit a fourth person in the car on the way home. Plans are afoot to sneak down her way and retrieve it soon.
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, with a chance to catch up with a number of P3 almunae, meet some new folks who were brave enough to join us, great classes from Amy, and wonderful catering/organization from Catherine and Jenny. Thanks so much to all of you - I had a blast!
