I'm Back...The Madness of Socks and Skipping North

I have returned! (Well, actually, I returned somewhat sleep deprived but none the worse on Sunday evening, but boy has it been busy!). When there's so much happening in a week, you know it's going to be a long post and plenty of pic's to make up for the lacklustre performance of recent posts. I shall begin at the end...


...The completion of my round 1 Sock Madness Socks - Zombies! The competition started in earnest when we were all e-mailled the pattern at 5pm U.K. time. Unfortunately, it was an hour before I could start but I did my darnedest after then, knitting until 11.20pm that evening (good job I did a big pan of stoup earlier in the day!); woke at 6.45am with hubbie then spent two hours knitting in bed before taking the dogs for a walk, watched 3 Harry Potter movies back-to-back and various other recorded stuff (couldn't tell you what, I wasn't exactly concentrating!) and knitted on-and-off all day until 11pm Friday night.

I must admit, the half bottle of Prosecco definitely helped extend the knitting time that day, I'd been seroiusly flagging but I think it relaxed me enough to continue. I woke around 9am this morning and reached straight for the needles, knitted in the car all the way to my brother's (hubbie drove!), had to put the needles (so close!) down for lunch but finished straight after. It was a mad dash for camera, cable, laptop and e-mail but I completed around 2pm ish, coming a very respectable 3rd in my division. Plenty of time to relax now and wait for the other 37 to finish then it's onto the next round!

Anyway, now I've got that out of the way, I can tell you about the weekend..last weekend, that is! Which started on Friday morning when I left home around 10.20am, driving myself through Liverpool and along the M62 to what I presumed would be Halifax and on to Haworth, my destination for the next 3 days. Bizarrely, the Sat. Nav. brought me off the motorway the other side of Manchester (Rochdale) and proceeded to direct me up and over the hills...literally! Retracing my steps on my return (it was a pretty route!) I discovered I'd driven right over the top of Pendle Hill and a couple of others as well as across a narrow reservoir bridge. It was somewhat nerve wracking on the way through as I didn't have a clue where I was going and when it complained of low battery and the screen froze in the middle of nowhere on a B -road I freaked!

Luckily, I did have a map with me and the route was quite straightforward, plus once I'd pulled over I'd found a dismiss option on the Sat. Nav. and it lasted the rest of the journey anyway though I was a bit of a nervous wreck by the time I arrived here...


...It's a wonderful old Victorian pile that has now been converted into a Youth Hostel providing inexpensive accommodation (and rather nice food here...)

...There were lots of original features like the stained glass in the front doors and an amazing huge window on the stairs, this is just one little sample.

Beautiful, isn't it? There were painted images of pomegranates, lemons and birds and a wonderful decorative hallway and landing. But enough about that, what did we do?

Well, Friday afternoon/evening we had 3 workshops, dyeing with Kool-Aid, Modular Knitting and Colour Theory after which we had our first evening meal, soup, Beef Lasagne and a rather nice Apple Crumble with ice-cream. We were free to chat and knit the first night and I turned into bed around 10pm but as I was sharing the room with 5 other people and the lady in the bunk above me came in around midnight PLUS it was roasting and I was probably wound up from the drive meant minimal sleep that night, perhaps an hour tops. I wasn't exactly on top form the next day! However, that didn't stop me from spending rather a lot of cash here...

....Ain't he cute? That's Pete, one of the organiser's little'uns and a real sweetie, always on the go! Doesn't he look at home amongst all that yarn? This is one tiny corner of Coldspring Mill, about 5 mins out of Haworth and a goldmine of fab yarn, more about that later.

After flexing the wallet there, we drove roughly half an hour away to a place North of Leeds called The Skep. It was so tiny that the group split in two and we walked a short trip up the road to this fab haberdashery shop (sorry, it was a last minute thing so I don't know what it was called).

See all the boxes on the back wall there? A whole wall of buttons...no kidding, I spent over £20 on buttons in there, it was amazing and not expensive either! After the Skep, we went to the Knitting and Crochet Guild at Holmfirth (I've pic's somewhere, that'll be for another day!) and I managed to pick a few more bargains along the way.

This room was where we spent most of our evenings. the lounge in the hostel. It was quite crowded when we were all in there with half of us on the floor so some relocated to the Dining room which had better light.

The next day (with slightly more sleep - perhaps three hours!), we re-boarded our coach and headed off further afield to the fibre heaven of Winghams.

That's me in the dark coat, a few pics were taken of me during the weekend (not on my camera) but they haven't materialized yet so this one'll have to do. I may have picked up an odd thing or two!

So, I'd charged the Sat. Nav while I was there and whenever I tried to find a route home, it insisted on taking me a totally different route! I thought I'd outwitted it on the return voyage by, with the aid of the map, retracing the first part of my hilly journey which it then recalculated to include...then took me back to the alternative route anyway! In a way, I wasn't too bothered as the motorways it chose were quieter and it took me through my old stomping grounds so when the battery finally gave out it wasn't a problem.

I got home around 5.20pm, turned straight around and took the dogs for a walk as poor hubbie had been working overtime all weekend, (typical as it's pretty rare!). I am pleased with my driving, particularly the journey home when I was pretty knackered but I loved the return trip over the hills, it's the perfect sort of car for those conditions and even though the weather was lousy, it was FUN!

But that's only half the story, d'you want to see the haul? (Well, it's what you've been waiting for, isn't it?)

From Coldspring Mill, 2 hanks of pure wool aran for just over a fiver each and lovely supersoft chunky singles wool only £3.30 for a 330g hank, that's a penny a gram!

There was a seconds hank of beautiful pure bluey/purpley wool, only £4 for nealry a kilo, the one above was intact and only £7! The ball-wound skeins are half skeins of sock wool, again a penny a gram...

...And I was beside myself when I found these..Noro Cash Iroha and Noro Kureyon, almost half the original ball price!

From the haberdashers 2 bags of assorted buttons and a whole heap of chosen buttons too...must get around to sorting them out and bagging them seperately.

From The Skep, 7 x 100g balls of pure wool thick 'n' thin yarn in the most luscious pinks, purples and greens that I loved so much I had to swatch it the evening I got home plus a ball of sock wool.




From the Knitting and Crochet Guild (from their penny a gram yarn mountain); 2 skeins of laceweight I would gess wool or wool-mix, a shiny (probably silk) space dyed thickish and very thin yarn and a suspiciously shiny wool-feeling yarn in black, either 4-ply or lace but I reckon wool/silk and a bargain for £13.30 for everything!

Plus a little indulgence, some lovely Zephyr laceweight plus 10% discoult for becoming a new member of the KCG. It's wonderful stuff if expensive!

And from Winghams, a whole heap of fibre, black Shetland, Wensleydale dyed curls, dyed tussah silk, rainbow merino and more!

And Mel...
...I know it's a tease, but this is what I picked up for you! Plenty of fiberly goodness.

I picked up a few freebies too...

On the right is My kool-aid creation, on the right some gorgeous silk yarn that someone was giving away..must plan something special for it!

I'm off for a well-earned rest but be assured normal(ish) service will resume shortly!