Things I learnt from my Festival At Home

Don't get me wrong, whilst I thoroughly enjoyed my #bedinburghyarnfest day I'll be the first to admit that the day didn't go entirely in accordance with my nice neat plan.

  • It didn't start well, when immobile DH insisted on coming on the grocery shop with me. I had planned on a quick, military style operation to get the necessary snacks. Shepherding a bear with a sore head(knee) around a crowded Waitrose full of intolerant and grumpy people slowed me down somewhat.

And my quick browse in Ravelry threatened to derail proceedings. Chronic indecision struck and not only could I not decide on a sweater pattern I also couldn't find a single pair of 4mm needle tips in the house. Faced with the choice of pulling the needles out of an existing project (don't judge - we've all done it) or settling down with an existing project I opted for the latter.

I made good progress on my colourwork hot water bottle cosy but then had to search for something easier for rugby watching. My stash search produced 3 skeins of Blacker Yarns Cornish Tin 2 which would have been perfect but on closer inspection one of the skeins had an almighty tangle in it. I decided that untangling it wasn't in the spirit of the day so it went back into the stash.

I did manage to locate a beautiful yarn cake - bought at EYF last year from The Wool Kitchen. A ready to knit gradient yarn from the Urban hints range. This has been cast on into a nice simple shawl. For now I'm just working simple stocking stitch and I'll decide on a border later on.

For next  time my learning points would be to

  • Wind yarn ahead of time
  • Plan a new cast on properly and amass the necessary materials - don't try to do it on the fly
  • Buy more snack - and don't forget the cake!