I arrived home from Knit Nation on Monday, exhausted but very happy! I met so may knitters and fondled so much yarn that my head’s on information overload. Of course I manage to forget my camera so my photos of the weekend are non-existent unfortunately. You can however see a few photos at Anne Hanson and Clara Parkes websites to get some visual of the weekend. I do however have yarn that made it home with me that I have photos of!

Before the classes started I got to go to the Victoria and Albert museum and have high tea with the other tutors.  I was very honoured to be included with this bunch, which included Alice, Cookie A (the 2 organisers), Ann Hanson, Lene Alve, Susan Crawford, Elise Duvekot, Franklin Habit, Susanna Hansson, Marjan Hammink, Carol & Pete Leonard, Judith McCluin, Clara Parkes, Merike Saarniit and Julie Weisenberger.  I hadn’t met many of them before but they were lots of fun to spend an afternoon (and weekend) with.  Judith lead the tour of the museum and she is just a font of information, it was just a pleasure to hear her speak so knowledgeably on textiles through the ages.

Just before travelling over to London on Wednesday last week I had the start of a sore throat.  Unfortunately by the time I had finished talking for 3 days solid I was sounding pretty croaky.  My apologies to any knitters who had to listen to me on Sunday afternoon, I suspect I was sounding pretty bad!  I had the most wonderful knitters in my class from all over the place with a huge variety of knitting styles.  It’s not often you get English knitters, Continental Knitters, Portuguese Knitters and mirrored backwards knitters (to name a few) all in one spot.  It was very informative to see just how many different ways you can produce the same knit stitch.  Knitting is definitely not a one size fits all kind of pursuit.

The first class I had I got a wonderful gift (just like last year!) from the Portuguese knitters.  It was a little skein of wonderful hand spun yarn, a lavender sardine, pins, a sample of Yarn Adventures yarn and a handmade project bag.

In addition to these wonderful gifts Filomena also gifted me a bag of her wonderful yarn ‘Yarn Adventures’.  You can find her also on ravelry and facebook.

The rest of the weekend passed in a blur, I met some friends from Ireland, met a few other designer friends that I only get to see at different events (including Woolly Wormhead, Ann Kingstone and Marleen van der Vorst) as well as tons of new knitters and designers.  I spoke for a while on the way back from high tea with designer Stephen West who is now based in Amsterdam.  Who knows, we may actually get to meet up again as my sister lives there!  And for anyone wondering, Franklin Habit is indeed as funny as his blog!

With all of this teaching and fun I did get a few chances to slip into the marketplace and pick up the odd hank of yarn..

the first is The Yarn Yard ‘Clan’ in a delicious shade of green.

The second yarn that sneaked into my bag was Easy Knits ‘Deeply Wicked’ in Sands of Time Colour.  How could I leave it behind?

It’s getting really close to my book actually coming out; as we speak it’s being printed!  I brought the cover cardigan from the book with me to my classes (it was the perfect example for top down set-in sleeve designs) and some bookmarks to make sure everyone doesn’t forget the name….

Not too much longer now before you get to see the full book.