Moving Mountains (well yarn ones:)

Ok so I have finally got around to blogging after a wonderful weekend away at Skip North at Haworth. Although a little on the chilly side it was wonderful, t started earlier for me as of the ridiculous time in the morning that me and Lixie had to depart to make it on time I was kindly invited to stay over with her and her intended Pooch who cooked me some wonderful pasta and then Alex spoiled me with choclate torte, this gave me the sugar rush required for me to tackle the maps!!! Now you have to understand that Lixie doesn't drive all the time (we rented a car) and I don't drive and unless it is on a bus route I have no idea how to get places so this meant an interesting challenge. So at half five in the morning me and Lixie dragged ourselves out of bed and went down to the car with our luggage and this was the point that we realised that it would be fine if it was just going to be us in the car as we almost filled the boot between us and the equipment. So having no choice we headed off for our first pick up (Jane) up and right a bit after the blackwall tunnel (told you my map reading was good :) and managed to arrive in our time slot without getting to lost or cutting up to many people when changing lanes at the last minute. I have to say at this point how badly sign posted London is, I never realised this until I start trying to navigate a car round it, there were at least two junctions where the sign were only visible once you had passed the turn off and many that weren't sign posted at all so I was quite suprised we managed to get to Laura's in time with only a few "head that way at least it's in the right direction" comments from me.

Outward journey


After repacking the car, mostly around poor Jane and Laura we started our journey proper and after a couple of stops later (tea and choclate, well alright also a full cooked breakfast I was on holiday after all) we arrived with a small detour across a mountain. I have to say I haven't laughed so much on a journey before, my ribs just ached by the end and then I had to concentrate on the buisness in hand.

The Youth Hostel looked amazing both from the inside and outside, I must admit to being a little wary as my experiences from my childhood of youth hostels weren't great but this surpassed any expectations, the only thing we didn't take into consideration were the bunk beds, now twenty years ago I might, and I say might, have managed to haul myself into a top bunk but alas no more, and I have to say much to the relief of the person who would be in the lower bunk, but after a little jiggling we managed to accomodate everyone. We did find out (and a couple of the people who joined us at Skip North that there is a nice hotel dead opposite the youth hostel who were quite happy to work things like their breakfast times around the youth Hostels so it gives us a few different options for next years weekend (yes the date has already been set details to follow).

So the first bit of buisness was the workshops which were a combination of drop spinning, felted flowers and stitch markers where some fun was had all round, even if it started a little late,

Drop Spindle


this was paused half way through for tea and cake, a lot of the wonderful people had brought home baked cakes for us to share (I especially had a passion for Liz' ginger cake and demolished a fair bit of it). We then finished the workshops and I managed to find my room, despite the two flights of stairs the veiw was worth it, I was in a small room tucked under the eaves which meant I had to be a little careful waking in the morning as there was a good chance that I would knock myself out if I sat up to sharply but the fact that I could lay in bed and watch the stars though the sky light was wonderful.

view


After demolishing a rather wonderful meal (thai curry I'll have you know, no sausage and beans in this youth hostel) we managed to frighten the group of teenagers who were also staying in the hostel out of the TV lounge and settled into an evening of Knitting, Chatting and all round merriment, slightly lubrictaed with a little sherry and wine and of course chocolate, there were many olympic knitters amongst us and I did take my peacock face cloth with me and poor Jane and Liz pent the entire evening sitting either side of me listening to me counting and swearing, I had intended on an early night as we had got up so early but I found myself still sat in the lounge at around 11pm with Isabella and Shona having a giggle.

Now Saturday was the shopping day of all shopping days, now looking back maybe we tried to fit a little too much along the way but all I can say is wow what bargins we found. Firstly we went to our last minute arranged visit to Cold Spring Mill

Cold Spring


who had just recieved some new cones in and I managed to pick up some Cashmerino Astrakhan at some ridiculous price and some unidentified cone which I have yet to play with. So after a bit longer stop than we allowed for (we didn't take into consideration how long it would take to check our goods out) we headed off for The Skep which I had almost managed to get out of with a whole two balls of space dyed four ply for socks at £1 when Fred managed to spot some wonderul pure wool DK in a lovely mossy green so after a bit of a hunt Bob managed to find some more and I managed to come away with 15 balls admittedly it did cost me just £14. So we had a quick drink in the local pub

pit stop

and headed off to the Bombay stores which was an amazing shop and we really didn't have long enough there but it was full of the most amazing fabrics and beads and clothes and shoes......I could go on, me being me at this point had started to become a little stressed by time and ended up not buying a single thing although was incredibley tempted by the jewellery.
Our final stop of the day was the Knitting and Crochet guild who had organised an open day for us, I do have to confess now that before I arrived I had no intention of staying as my experience of the guild in the past has not been great especially after a couple of run ins over teaching styles but they were wonderful, they made us feel very welcome and had some wonderful things to show us from the collection and they of course had all there stock there,

Chaos at KCG


now I knew about the wool mountain at a penny a gram but had forgotten about there other wonderful stock of knitting things, so I cam away witha pattern that I had admired on an american website for a triangulat modular cardigan, two skeins of unpainted opal sock yarn, a hair pin lace tool and some odd balls in green and pink to experiment with. At one point the guy who was trying to take payement for all the items seemed to get a little ovewhelmed, but I have to say I think I may now going to join the guild as the conversations I had with the ladies there made me feel a lot happier about there attitude to knitting.

Sheep


So we returned to Haworth once more for another fun evening and I was no earlier to bed lol but had given in any hope of finishing the washcloth so I decided upon a glass of sherry instead and some hairpin experimenting.

Sunday morning and off we go to Winghams, it is a bit of a distance from Haworth but it was so worth it Ruth welcomed us with open arms and had things all set out for us and had opened early especially for us which was wonderful, this place was my down fal though, every nook and cranny is filled with something interesting to look at and the one and only thing that I had on my shopping list for this weekend was some trinoble nylon (I know the spellings not right but brain is starting to freeze after such a long blog) and that is the one thing I didn't buy lol, but I did manage to pick up a much needed niddy noddy which I hope by the time I get back to the studio will be sitting on my door step.

So on our return to Haworth we had tea and cake and some wonderful show and Tell which were all truely inspiring I am now in the look out for a wool twister and more lace weight yarn. Also me and Lixie learnt how to refill the water in the wind screen wipers. We bid our farewells (and my thanks goes to LIz for our emergency supply of green and black for the journey home).
On the journey home we managed to make good time and arrived back at Lixies at 11 rather than the midnight I thought it was going to be. Thank you to everyone that made it such a good weekend, it was great fun and roll on Skip North 2007.

I promise to post pictures a little later as I am at Andy's at the moment for a couple of days of R and R and can't down load my images yet.