Cambridge

This is a post with various FOs, which have already appeared in earlier posts, only here they're featured with their recipients! The first is Monkey's cousin, MJ, sitting in his garden with his banana. The banana was constructed from various bits of toy yarn from a pattern in one of Jean Greenhowe's clown books.

I spent a large part of last week in Cambridge, at a Rare Books conference at New Hall. The conference induced large amounts of brain ache, although I think I managed to follow most of it. It was also a good opportunity to catch up with some friends and shower them with knitting! This is John and his banana (bit of a banana knitting spree last week). The banana was intended as a good luck present as he's leaving for Rome shortly for a few months.

I stayed with Hannah and Lee (also ex housemates, most of the people featured in this blog seem to be!) and here we have Hannah holding their teapot, which is modelling the Kureyon Kozy whilst Lee hides as he didn't want his photo taken.

By Friday afternoon I was very bored at the conference so sneaked off to go yarn shopping. I found Sew Creative (a shop I'd been past a few times, thinking "that looks interesting"), a very cool shop with plenty of wool (Sirdar, Wendy, Rowan, Regia plus some others) and other things like beads and sewing machines. I, er, acquired two balls of Regia stretch 4ply there. I hadn't seen this in a shop before (only online) and was totally unable to resist.

Then I honestly thought I'd wander off towards Robert Sayle (the Cambridge branch of John Lewis), which had moved out of the centre, then go to a library visit later that afternoon. Except I got totally drowned in a thunderstorm and didn't feel like stomping all the way over to the university library in the downpour. John Lewis' haberdashery was much the same as other John Lewis stores, ie very yummy. I acquired a copy of RYC Home and 4 balls of RYC Cashsoft 4ply to make Mum's Christmas present (a hotwater bottle cover).

I also got the socks finished that I started at Greenbelt:


They've turned out slightly weird, as I did the heels differently, but I've decided that I do like them after all!

This blog seems to be turning into a nationwide review of yarn shops. I didn't think I'd been to that many, but now I've counted up that's Lincoln, London (John Lewis, Liberty's, Loop), Marple, Cumbria (5? shops) and Cambridge all visited. Hmm. Am thinking about reconstructing my sidebar to have more yarn shop links...

I start my new job tomorrow, so less knitting time available (but more money for yarn!). Wish me luck! I'll take some pics of the place where I'm working to see if anyone recognises it!

Secret Pal 6 participants should hear about matches today. I'm really looking forward to this getting started & seeing whom I've been matched with. I said I didn't mind where they were based, although I'd love it to be someone in a different country because of finding out about new yarns etc. But then even someone in a different part of this country is going to have different stuff available locally and a different perspective on life. How many times can I put "different" in one sentence?! I'm constantly amazed by other blogs, where people seem to have several children to look after, jobs doing all sorts of things and still manage to do more knitting than I do! Also just realised that I don't know which time zone SP6 is based in, but it must be somewhere in the US, so I might not hear about my Pal until tomorrow (which will be their today). Now I'm getting confused.

Haven't done anything about books for a while either. At the moment I'm reading "Knife Edge" by Malorie Blackman. It's the second in a trilogy and is ace - very moving & quite difficult in places. I don't think it's as good as the first one though, "Noughts and Crosses". It's supposedly aimed at teenagers (books like this weren't around back when I was a teenager!). I'm also still dipping into "Zen and the art of knitting" which is also ace, but in a different way.

Hannah & Lee also had a DVD of "All Gas and Gaiters" and we watched a couple of episodes. I hadn't heard of it before, but it was quite famous in the sixties I think. Anyway, it's hilarious and still oh so true today!!