every couple of years the nsw knitters guild, of which i am a member, holds a ‘camp’. knit camps around the world are totes A Thing and knitters who get to go to them love them. they are generally the source of much amusement before, during and after. also, they’re usually covered by the ‘what happens at camp stays at camp’ rule. so i wont give too much away. this version was organised by my amazing, clever and resourceful friend kristine, and i know how much work it was, how much care and thought she put into it, and how freaking stressful it was. but it paid off kristy, because i think this was probably the best camp i’ve been to. even though i only went for the day on saturday, rather than overnight fri/sat night, i had a great time.
the venue was this fantastic little spot only about 20 minutes north of me, which meant that a whole heap of my sydney friends ventured south for a change. i was at work on friday and having a really bad day. and i do mean bad. im not just making that up. like, shut the door and cry with my head on my desk bad. eventually, it got stupid, and i left. i knew some sydney siders were slowly winding their way down the coast so i went and met up with some of them for coffee and cake, and then i bought roseredshoes home with me. we had curry for dinner
and i worked on transferring the provisional cast on stitches
for the turned hem on my cardigan onto a second needle. and then i unzipped the crochet chain (mostly smoothly) and voila. a turned hem.
i still had to knit those two rows together to close the seam and i was sitting in my lace knitting workshop on saturday morning
working on that rather than on my lace decreases and i found myself staring out the window
feeling my frazzled, jangled, raw nerve ends, and i just had to go outside. it was a gorgeous day, sunny and mild with a cool breeze, and with everyone inside the lodge in classes
it was lovely to just wander around and smell the flowers
and finally find a nice spot to sit and watch the sky
and finish that hem
which i eventually did.
then there was lunch, where i won a gift voucher to one of my favourite local yarn sellers and i traded it on the spot for this beautiful red alpaca laceweight.
i sense another long jared flood scarf in my future winters. then there was more sitting outside,
and talking and laughing and me not reading a pattern properly,
and then dinner and sitting in circles in the hall in our liberty pyjamas donna
(and no i will not sing along to Uptown Girl!). it was great to catch up with so many people i havent seen for a while, and start new friendships with people i’ve only met online, and then when it was late and we were tired and sore from laughing and eating rosered and i came home again and crashed out.
this morning i went and picked lila up from trents – i missed the little ratbag even though she’s still busy killing every soft toy i can get my hands on
and she came for a ride back up to camp so we could drop jane off and she got lots of cuddles from people who know all about her exploits from The Twitter. then i came home and worked on my job application
and got a lovely email from my head of school who is overseas telling me not to fret about the thing i was fretting about. so i stopped writing to knit a bit more of the cardigan
do you see the bit where i had trouble reading the pattern? im not going to say, in case you cant, but i’m going to leave it as is. this is the front right hand side, which has been separated from the body to create the inset pocket seam. i’m totally in love with this, the yarn (spud & chloe fine that i bought at purl soho), the pattern (northmavine hoody from colours of shetland). kate davies herself even responded to me on twitter the other night saying she liked the colours! they are very me, and i am enjoying the slow back and forth on this.
thank god for knitting, and knitters. yet again, they save my arse.
a lot.
k xx
