Over the last 12 months my heart just hasn't been in knitting. No real idea why as I was still going along to my weekly knitting group, but I was finding that at home I often wouldn't pick up my needles from one week to the next. That all changed at the end of July when I was fortunate enough to have a child-free half day at Fibre East with some of the wonderful ladies from my group.
As soon as I walked into the first hall I just knew that it's where my crafting mojo had been hiding for the last year. Surrounded by gorgeous things to look at and touch it was impossible not to feel crafty motivation coming back to me.
I had gone with intentions of not spending much at all, but all those good intentions went straight out of the window once I saw what was on offer.
My favourite purchase of the day, and the one which had strangers coming up to me asking questions, was this absolutely gorgeous basket from Basket Basket. This large Bolga basket was made in northern Ghana by women in an association set up to help them improve their quality of live through education, loans and mutual self-help. It got so many admiring glaces from people and several asking if they could stroke it! It's now a fantastic project basket and means I can keep all my knitting stuff together out of the reach of the children, but it's so easy to get out again when I have a "spare" five minutes.
I thought it quite telling that the very first stand I happened upon was selling loads of vintage knitting and sewing accessories and in the middle of them all I also found a collection of crafty vintage Ladybird books. I couldn't help but pick up these two, but so many more tempted me!
They weren't the only vintage things for sale though as I also picked up this wonderful pattern for just 50p! It's got both a boy and a girl's pattern in it so I'm hoping to get my act together and knit them one each.
It goes without saying that some yarn also came home with me. My first project was this lovely pair of welly socks with a pattern from Knit n Caboodle and some Knitcol Merino. The pattern was very easy to follow and they've knit up really nicely. Being LMC's size they didn't take long to make at all.
I also came away with a fair bit of coloured cotton yarn which is for a bit of a secret project – all to be revealed later – and also a ball of My First Regia which will hopefully become a pair of socks for Master C.
All in all it was a lovely day out and my knitting mojo is well and truly back. The only thing I'm lacking now is proper "me time" to be able to get big amounts of crafting done. I was hopeful that having Mr C home all summer I'd be able to have at least a couple of full days where he looked after the kids, but that's not been the case. Still, term starts in just ten more days and LMC will be off to pre-school five half-days a week and Master C will have a day a week at nursery. I just need to be organised enough to make the most of my four child-free hours to squeeze as much craft in as possible.
Oh wow that fibre is just luscious! I think my knitting mojo took a hit over the summer but it’s coming back slowly. The lovely thing about knitting is that it’s all about cumulative action – you can just do a few stitches and put it down again if you need to.