Giant custard creams, Cambridge and another Puerperium

Well, I'm not quite sure where January disappeared off to, but it whizzed past. I have done various Very Exciting Things, including meeting up with 17 other knitting (or crocheting) librarians in London for a day of coffee, giant custard creams, yarn shopping, librarianly chitchat and then to the pub. We had all "met" via Twitter, and it was great to meet them all for real too.

There were also giant chocolate bourbons, but I decided to stick with the custard cream. Yes, that is a normal sized plate and knife.

We went yarn shopping at Loop (in three batches as there were too many of us to fit in the shop all in one go). It was looovvveeely. I hadn't been there for several years and it seemed a lot more friendly than last time, with more space for gorgeous yarns. I indulged in a skein of Madeleine Tosh sock yarn, to make a shawl with. It is gorgeously squishy, very soft and comes in beautiful colours.

One of the others brought along the knitted archbishop she'd made last year. I hope he likes tea. I think the pattern is from the Knit your own royal wedding book. Amusingly one of the comments on Ravelry about the pattern says that he's not wearing any pants under his cassock!! Another one of the comments said that everyone kept looking up his cassock so she'd knitted him some gold disco pants!!

I have also made two trips to Cambridge. One was just for the day, to do a masterclass at the University Library. I was surprised how much more snow there was out the other side of London. I also had lunch with Caughtknitting, whom I hadn't seen for ages.

Remains of a giant snowman outside the library.

The other trip was for a conference at Gonville and Caius College, so I stayed overnight with KnittingontheGreen, where we stayed up late chatting and drinking wine. It was lovely to see her and she cooked me the most amazing meal of spelt risotto with goats' cheese, followed by homemade ice cream. Of course, I forgot to take any photos whilst I was with her, but here are some nice shots of Gonville and Caius:

I got a bit of knitting done on the trains to Cambridge, although I'm currently reading a book I need to review for a journal by the end of February so that's taking priority at the moment.

I did get my third Beyond Puerperium completed in the nick of time, as the Mum-To-Be appears to be about to go into labour any second now. This took exactly 2 balls of yarn.

And, having got frustrated with the lace shawl (no, I haven't made any progress, as I haven't had any quiet-knitting-time-at-home-when-there-are-no-distractions), someone at the librarian knitting extravaganza pointed me towards the Mini Mania Scarf as a good way of using up odds and ends of sock yarn. So I started one of those. It took me an entire episode of Call the midwife to cast on 500 stitches, but now I'm well away, and enjoying deciding which colour to use next.

I'm aware that I haven't taken any garden pictures yet this year, mainly because the weather seems to be alternating between rain and snow.