Knit Weekend 2013 aka Shitknits

Last month I went away on a knitting weekend with some of the ladies from my awesome little knitting group. We all needed a weekend dedicated to 'me time', a bit of a get away from it all and above all lots of knitting. And that is what we got.

We stayed in a great little barn in Suffolk and ate, drank, knit and visited a couple of nice fabric and yarn shops to round it all off. We mainly knit though. Did I mention that there was a lot of knitting?

There were certain points where the drink and the knitting converged, which produced some disastrous knitting issues and the catch phrase of the weekend 'Shitknits!' This was exclaimed each time someone messed up their pattern, dropped a stitch or generally did something wrong/ stupid/ drunk with their knitting. There were a lot of Shitknits moments over the weekend.

Although we were all busy stitching we did manage to get out and about too. We went to Fabric Rehab which just so happened to have a sale going on. As you can see there was a bit of a fabric frenzy among us, with Nicola, wearing purple above, who was simply a blur of fabric hunting. This has nothing to do with my poor photography skills I assure you.

Then we went to Twist in Woodbridge, which is a great little yarn shop, with lots of lovely stock, from the regular Rowan and Debbie Bliss to Fiberspates, Noro and Jamieson Smith. 

I didn't really want to leave.

So we stayed and rubbed some more yarn on our faces.

Finally, some fabulous skeins got bought and then wound in the shop by the lovely staff and we left with wallets a little lighter but heads full of inspiration and happiness. That large prosecco at lunch time probably helped too.

Our highlights of the weekend, apart from the shopping, were the gorgeous wood burning stove in the barn, some terrible singing to the Les Miserable DVD, a hell of a lot of cake and getting sore hands from the many hours of knitting we managed to do. The pain was so worth it, look at what we accomplished:

Katie, did a ton of work on her chunky cardigan. It was her baby.

Adela was insanely productive finishing 2 kids hats, a cowl and some teddy bear trousers. Although there were a fair few shouts of 'Shitknits' along the way.

Karen finished her chunky cardigan which was a bit bigger than expected but extremely squishy and comfy. 

Karyna started her fist pair of boot socks and knitted all this over the weekend.

 Aarti started this oh-so-cute rainbow baby blanket.

And Nicola spent a lot of time sewing up this gorgeous cardigan for her daughter. She did some other stuff too but this was her biggest victory.

Finally, I worked on my Fieldwork cardigan and even managed some sewing up. There were a lot of shouts of 'Shit Knits' while I did this as I sewed one piece on completely the wrong way round. Doh!

We had such a good time we started planning the next one before we'd even left the barn. Can't wait for Shitknits 2014.