pensnest | (no subject)

It rained.

Still, if we let the rain stop us doing things practically everyone in the UK would have been holed up at home for the last several months. So today, I spent the morning travelling to/from and being at the Fibre East show, on a farm not very far from Bedford. Just as last year, the marquees (three of them, this year) were full of beautiful yarns, fabulous buttons (probably the best displays of buttons I've ever seen), spinning paraphernalia and so forth. I'd even had the forethought to note down details of yarn requirements for several knitting recipes, but these sadly failed to match available yarns. I think most of the patterns are American, so there's stuff like 5-ply in there. Hmph.

I didn't find anything for any of the sweaters, but there's no urgency. I did succumb to some utterly fabulous camel/silk skeins, because I kept stroking them and they were glorious. And a few octopus buttons and some new needles for my kit.

Sadly, though, it was horribly, horribly muddy. It was umbrella-up time between the marquees (and that umbrella is now destined for the dump, it's completely fubar), but even inside the marquees the floor—by which I mean, the ground—was wet and squishy and covered with hundreds of juicy and bewildered worms. Some efforts had been made with webbed mats, and bark chips, and cardboard, but to little avail as we mostly sank through them... My shoes and jeans are filthy—I wished I'd been smart enough to wear wellies.

Still, it's a nice little show, a good size and filled with pretty, strokable things. I expect I'll be back next year, but I hope the Bedfordshire clay won't have been saturated in 2013. Squish.