Exhausted but happy

Well I made it home in one piece. I am so tired! It was about 1am when I got home yesterday, after the 4am start the previous day.

But it was totally worth it!

Here's some pics. It lashed rain all day but it didn't dampen our spirits!

A selection of stalls:

This is about half the stalls that were there. There was another section beside these guys:

Poor wet alpacas. If there was room in my bag the cream guy would have been coming home with me. Too cute.

I found the Jamieson & Smith stall and I ordered enough yarn to make myself a colourwork sweater. The girl at the stall said it would be more than enough, but I wasn't taking chances in running out. Anyway, they took the order and said they would post it for free so I've no eye candy to show! The best bit? I got it all for £28. I was in shock. That's nothing! An entire sweaters worth of Shetland for that??? I should have bought two.

That's all the yarn I bought. I'm really proud of that considering I molested everything else there more than once!

I did buy some absolutely gorgeous buttons that I'll show next post as tbh I'm too tired to go setting the whole thing up for a photo.

Luchtime was the part I was really excited about. The Meg Swansen talk. EZ and Meg have been such an inspiration to me. They really have enabled me to broaden my knitting horizons. The talk was great. She read extracts from The Opinionated Knitter which were very entertaining and she then did a Q & A session which lasted until all Q's had been answered.

Then she did a book signing. I bought a copy of her book Handknitting which she very graciously signed for me and posed for a picture:

I really need to fix my red eye in Photoshop. I've an awful red eye problem in nearly all my photos. Maybe it's because there's nothing behind there to absorb the light lol.

The two classes with Jared were fantastic! He's such a good teacher, really natural and concise (and funny too!) I learned loads and enjoyed every minute.

After the classes he had a great chat with us Irish girls. There were 5 of us in his afternoon class! And he imparted a snippet of gossip to me! A couple of years ago he was in Dublin on holidays and was in a pub called the Cobblestone. Guess what pattern was designed there over a pint!

For some reason I'm very proud of that.

He posed for a picture with me afterwards:

After which one of the girls mumbled "So is he going to replace your picture of Rob Lowe on Ravelry"? Too funny, but no. Well, maybe!

Afterwards we all retired to the pub, of course. A really lovely place called Browns where Jo the amazing organiser and Jared and other volunteers also retired to. So there was a big gang of us there!

We had some lovely dinner and a few jars before leaving for the train to the airport.

While there one of the girls, teaandcakes (thanks for the lift from the airport), decided to try out here steeking skillz we learned at the afternoon class:

Ooh the tension. We had a drumroll!

And success! To wild applause.

I must admit to being incredibly tired last night and still today even with a magnificent lie in. But it was totally worth it and I really hope to go again next year.

In other news, I scored an update at the Wollmiese shop on Thursday. God knows what I was doing even looking the day before the Ravelry event, but there you have it. I scored three skeins of sock yarn. Maybe I can pretend to hubby I got them at Ravelry day if they come at the same time as the shetland??? Doubtful.