Day 10

A great day out today at the Stitch 'n Bitch day organised by I Knit London. There were lots of stalls selling interesting and luxurious yarns. I really think the UK is bursting with interesting small producers now - no need to look so longingly across the Atlantic any more! I bought some lovely Blue-faced Leicester sock yarn from Oxford Kitchen Yarns, hand dyed with natural dyes. This is a new business. Also new to me was a firm raising beautiful cashmere goats in Devon. Their yarn was lovely but I didn't buy any this time.

I missed photogaphing the men's catwalk show (modelling garments from Debby Stoller's new book, Son of Stitch 'n Bitch), but it was quite a sight to behold. The garments looked very good on the (rather) motley collection of men and I was tempted to buy the book but didn't quite get round to it in the end. I hope some other bloggers will have caught the line-up on camera.

It was wonderful to have chats with lots of knitters I knew already and to meet new ones. A knitting group from the Netherlands was there and they had brought examples of their stunning knitting. I was particularly taken with some mittens (what a surprise!) - see at the top of the post. They are done in two-end knitting and one of the Dutch knitters kindly showed me how it is done. Apart from being a bit tangly, I think it is straightforward. Her advice is that there is no need to use the special yarn as long as the yarn you use is not too tightly twisted.

There was 40s music from 78s played on wind-up gramophones, a comic duo act Girl and Dean, workshops and book signings. But above all there was masses of knitting - being worn, being displayed, or in progress - and there were many, many knitters.

Comments

[Jill]

I must have missed you, I was there just after 9.30, left about 1.45? I saw the cat-walk parade, left a little after that. I went to the Jean Moss presentation with Jacinta, it was a slide show and talk, she spoke very entertainingly. I thought it was a lovely day, not too crowded or too hot, and you got to see everything.