SkipNorth 2009.

I got back from SkipNorth yesterday evening. It was, as always, a great weekend. Lots of talking, knitting, spinning, craft talk, shopping, wonderfully knowlegeable people, friends old and new, cake.....what else could you ask for, really? More time??? I did my best but I really didn't manage to get round everyone and there were several new folk I'd loved to have talked to longer and get to know better but really, there was just not enough time to do everything.

As usual I was too busy gabbing and shopping to take many picture but I've unpacked the stash and photographed it instead.

I drove down a day early on Thursday with Natalie. She wanted to go to Wingham Wool Work to do some fibre reconnaissance and I...well, I just wanted to go to Wingham. Plus we've found in the past it's a bit close for time to drive down on Friday mornings, given that I have to wait till the kids are off to school before I can get going. So we fitted in an extra day.

I must say I was extremely restrained at Wingham, given that at SkipNorth One I was the clear and outright winner in the Fibre Buying Contest.

Some purple toned merino and silk Rainbow tops, a small pack of ramie (nettle) fibre to try and some absolutely fabulous yak and silk tops.

We couldn't get booked in at the Haworth Youth Hostel on Thursday night, so headed for the Mankinholes YH ten miles down the road to meet up with Tutley Mutley, Wye Sue, blogless GreenMaggie and SallyJoy.

Yes, the kitchen of the YH does look like a pub!

Nest morning we all headed off to Texere, where I was also very restrained. Very!!



A pattern and a tube of beads for Princess. I was beginning to wonder if I was losing my touch at shopping....

Off to the Haworth YH for the official start of SkipNorth and the Friday pm workshops. I think it's best to draw a discrete veil over my pathetic efforts at double filet crochet but I did as always enjoy Lixie's Kool-Aid dyeing workshop.



This is merino fibre, 100g of each. I'm not totally happy with my choice of colours but I do have Kool-Aid, so might over dye some of the sections.

In the evening we had a yarn swap, where we all brought items from our stash which we did not want, threw them all into a heap on the floor and then had a wonderful free-for-all grab session. Good manners and a desire not to be seen to be too greedy kept this fairly civilised, have to say! We also had a fund raising event for p/hop, where donated items were offered in return for donations of money to p/hop and thus to Medecins Sans Frontieres.

(Psss...have you sent in your event donation yet???)

My haul from these two events...



Skein of Cascade 220 Peruvian Highland Wool. (Swap.)I have never tried any Cascade yarns before so was pleased to get this.

Skein of Manos de Uruguay silk blend, skein of Jitterbug, skein of JK Knits merino silk. (Swap.)

Two hanks of bronze aran weight silk, braid of hand dyed Shetland fibre from The Yarn Yard, "Knit One, Kill Two", a knitting mystery! (p/hop)

This sudden influx of nice bits and bobs must have reactivated my shopping mojo, because I ended up with a really good haul the next day at Coldspring Mill.

This is 700g of Araucania Nature Wool in purple and green aran(enough for a sweater); 100g of pale turquoise merino/silk/alpaca Araucania chunky; 100m of Noro silk/mohair/wool in bright turquoise (these last two are for knitting gifts for my sister, who likes teal/turquoise); 23 balls of Louisa Hardin Coquette in turquoise and coffee; a skein of frog green and daffodil yellow Araucania cotton; 400g of 75% bamboo/25% nylon Freedom Gorgeous in a soft green and finally one kilo of Debbie Bliss pure silk DK in an apricot colour for a cardigan for me. This last cost a mere £29.99, For a kilo of DB Silk!!

Coldspring Mill also sells camping gear, btw. They have some nice display tents up. Look what I found in the sleeping pod of this big 4-man tent...

My sort of tent!

Next stop was a double one, to The Skep and an astonishing mill-end haberdashery outlet called RL & CM Bond.

In The Skep I bought some patchwork fabric offcuts for Princess, and some sock yarn for a mother at the kids' swimming club. She has never knitted socks but as soon as she saw me knitting one she asked me to get her some yarn and teach her. Another convert...

At Bond's I got these, not sure why. It was WyeSue's fault. She made me.

In the afternoon we went to the headquarters of The Knitting and Crochet Guild, home of the 1p per gram Yarn Mountain.

I bought another gruesome doll dress knitting pattern, this one being a copy of that infamous black strapless dress Lady Di wore decades back and which caused such a kerfuffle. Yup, the one where she flashed the not-yet-royal boobs more than was decent.

Also Jan Messant's Knitted Gardens; 600g of Pingouin Highland aran in a nice burgundy colour at 1p per gram; some Jaggerspun Zephyr lace weight in Basil (I already have one ball of the same dye lot so that's the Aeolian Shawl sorted) and seven balls of an interesting merino/silk 4-ply cabled yarn, which was so tangled up I got it for £1 per ball.

AND...yes, yet more...I was given some lovely things by some lovely people.

Tutley Mutley gave me this for Lad...

WyeSue gave me some really rather fabulous things..

That's more Colinette Jitterbug, three skeins of Colinette Parisienne, some Regia Bamboo Color sock yarn, "Knitting without Tears" by the late great Elizabeth Zimmerman and a lovely book on angora rabbits and fibre.

There was also a box of chocolate truffles which was a present from blogless Cybil, but the box is already in the rubbish bin and I'm not getting it out just to take a photo of an empty box, lol.

So that was my haul.

Think it's a lot? See SkipNorth 1, SkipNorth 2 and SkipNorth 3 for comparison....do you know, I thought I'd come home with less this year...but possibly not! However, some of it came from gifts and the swaps, plus p/hop so I certainly didn't spend as much this year.

So that's SkipNorth over for another year. This is a sad thing. SkipNorth is one of the highlights of my year. No it's not just about the swag. The best bit of Skipnorth is definately the people. Thank you all, for making it such a great event again!