I’m starting to really love my annual trip to Unravel at Farnham Maltings with my lovely friend, and this year was no exception.
I enjoyed a good squish of many different yarns, and delighted as usual in the vast array of colours and patterns available for purchase, and those being worn by all the yarn-addicts wandering the rooms and manning the stalls.
I largely failed to get any photos, mostly everywhere was too packed with people to get close enough to squish, let alone snap the gorgeousness.
My split needle was very kindly replaced free-of-charge by Knitproneedles.co.uk. I was less successful on the quest for extra yarn. The lady at Debonnaire Yarns was as helpful as she could possibly be, but unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) she didn’t have any more yarn that matched my original grey. She has actually completely changed her yarn ranges and didn’t even have anything that came close to that same colour. She suggested using a contrast colour for the edgings, but I’m not quite convinced that will look right. She said she’d have a rummage back at base for anything that might do, but I think I may have to do something a bit different with the sleeves. I have just about enough yardage between the two colours to complete the cardigan, but the sleeves may need to be more predominantly done in the contrast colour, rather than striped as per the patten. Frustrating, but not entirely unexpected. I knew I should have bought 3 skeins of the grey in the first place.
As for everything else, it seems I was very drawn to grads this year. I particularly loved the Sweet Georgia yarns, and their Party of Five grad mini skeins, which I realised afterwards were the ones Cassy at Knitthehellout recently used for her daughters latest tunic. But I was very good and resisted the temptation to stash without plan. I need to finish my Crazy Stripes first, which was my Unravel 2015 yarn purchase, and then I need to use the grad I purchased at Unravel 2016 for the shawl I’ve been planning for years. After that I can start a new project and buy some more pretties.
Even my friend was very restrained. She was rather taken with a pair of socks she spotted at Hand Dyed by Kate, but since she also has projects on the go from the last two years of Unravel, she also resisted.
So, instead of indulging any further, once we’d thoroughly explored the festival, we headed for home, and spent a rather enjoyable afternoon sitting on the sofa working on our respective WIPs, feeling very virtuous for having resisted the call of the yarn! We’re off to the Knitting and Stitching show in a couple of weeks, so we can always indulge then if we feel we’re missing out on something!
Jack of all Crafts 