Knit Nation Day One

Just popping in quickly to report on the first day of Knit Nation 2011, before heading back into the fray!

The train down on Thursday night was enlivened by a very noisy child (seriously, they have quiet coaches, can’t they have child-free coaches? This one chattered loudly most of the way, with no apparent attempt to quieten it), and a twenty-something in a suit opposite who seemed to think that he owned the entire floor under the table, and could put his feet anywhere he wanted. When I asked him to stop kicking me, he told me I was very rude. This is the trouble with public transport, the public will use it…

But Lucy and Kerri met me at King’s Cross, and we retired to Carluccio’s at St Pancras International for food and chat, in the shadow of the enormous kissing couple.

I do love St Pancras, it’s just so civilised. And there are more shops downstairs than plenty of small towns have, including two branches of M&S. When you compare it to the horror that is King’s Cross it just makes the latter look even worse. They are trying to do it up, but it’s got a long way to go.

Anyway, yesterday K & L were up and out early as they are helping out at Knit Nation, I had a more leisurely start, including an unscheduled walk around South Kensington when I was slightly over-confident in my abilities to navigate to Imperial College from Gloucester Road tube. But the sun was shining, and there are some pretty building, and I had my iPhone to get me out of trouble, so no harm was done.

I spent most of the day just chilling and chatting, as I’m not doing a class until Sunday morning. We walked up to Waitrose to grab some lunch, and I couldn’t resist this.

I have to say I was amazed at Waitrose! But it made me chuckle, and it tasted good :)

But the main excitement of the day was the marketplace preview. Or the marketplace scrum, as it possibly should have been called. Lucy had joined the queue at least an hour before the doors opened, so she was pretty much at the front, and for want of anything better to do I sat next to her on the floor with my knitting and chatted to all comers. During the next hour the queue lengthened until it was reportedly more than the length of the room outside – this is the bit I could see from the door!

Lucy and Marja were pleased to be at the front of the queue!

The object of their queuing was of course the Wollmeise, which this year was on the Loop stand. Sadly there wasn’t nearly so much as last year, and it was crammed into a corner, so within about a minute of the doors opening there was a sad crush of people all with one intent.

This doesn’t actually show it at its worst – I got in and then couldn’t get out for ages, and the queue to pay just got longer for pretty much the whole two hours the marketplace was open.

I was actually fairly restrained in my purchases, although this could change as the weekend goes on. I just bought two skeins of Wollmeise, in solid colours for shawls (Fliederbusch and Dunkle Kirsche, for those who know about these things).

And then the gorgeous soft cashmere on Skein Queen’s stall caught my eye, especially when I realised that you could make the pretty shawl that was hanging up with two skeins.

That’s all for now, but I’ll take my camera with me today and I’ll be back soon with more photos! I’ll just leave you with this bag I saw someone carrying, which made me laugh :)