Friday, March 14, 2008

SkipNorth 2008 Pt1.

Off to SkipNorth 2008.


Much knitting was done in the car on the way down. Here blogless Lauren models the third version of the Hat of Doom.


At the hostel there was a chance to meet old and new friends. From left to right: Anne-at-work, who is currently blogless, Rosie and Terri.




And some very new friends.



On Friday afternoon we did some short workshops. This is the result of my first attempt at Kool-Aid dyeing. We also had Modular Knitting and Colour Theory workshops, but you don't really want to see what I ended up with there, oh no.

On Saturday we got down to some serious shopping. I have no pictures of Coldspring Mills or The Skep, because frankly I was too busy running round grabbing stuff. I did however take some pictures of a new stop on the SkipNorth itininary, a shop called RL & CM Bond, of Pudsey, which is just up the road from The Skep. This place was truely astonishing. There are two floors like this, and the assistant told me they have another third storage floor above.





They had stuff there I hadn't seen in shops for decades, I kid you not. I even found some cards of the hairclips I used to wear in primary school. (Which I then forgot to buy.)

We went to the Knitting and Crochet Guild gang hut in the afternoon, but once again I was too busy running around with my arms full to think about pictures. Sorry! Little nugget of information here though...apparently at last year's SkipNorth we managed to buy half a metric ton of yarn between us at the Guild shop, according to the management.


Back to the YH, to admire and covet each other's shopping bargains.


Belive it or not, ALL of this yarn belonged to Chris. She just kept on piling it up, and up, and up, and eventually disappeared behind it.

In the evening we did traditional SkipNorth things...

We ate cake. There was so much cake we eventually had to give some of it away to a youth group that was also staying in the hostel. But not before I'd tried a bit of just about everything, of course.

Knitting and spinning...unfortunately my camera took a wobbler at this point, but it did revive for the Problem Solving and Advice session.





Next day we went to Wingham Wool Work, where we also shopped like demons.





This is a very rare sort of photo for the blog...one of me! It was taken by Alex, one of the very hardworking organisers. I hope you don't mind me stealing it, Lixie!



That's all for now. Sorry the pictures are a bit patchy...I'm not renowned for remembering to take out my camera when it involves stopping talking or knitting to do so! More tomorrow, when I'll put up some pictures of what I bought. I'll just leave you with this sneak preview......


4 comments:

rho said...

it looks like so much fun -- and an actual picture of you -- yippee!

zippiknits...sometimes said...

Thanks for sharing Skip North! What a treat to see your yarn crawl. Can't wait to see what is in that bag! I think you are in another picture, too, in a white sweater? I tried to match details. ears, that sort of thing. :-)

yvette said...

Oooh, thanks for sharing, that Pudsy shop looks like my idea of heaven and the fibre colours at Wingham, very pretty. Look forward to seeing what you bought.

KSee said...

The RL & CM Bond shop is great. Who is going to untangle that skein of yarn?