bicheno weekend

I have just spent a lovely, relaxing weekend at the beautiful seaside village of bicheno. It was the Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild of Tasmanias annual weekend. There were about 50 ladies and a handful of men. There was lots of spinning, knitting and lots of talking and laughing going on. I always love to see what others have been doing and making. It is always so inspiring.

The theme this year was socks. I did the sock blank workshop. The wonderful Vicky and Sheree took this and I would like to to say a huge thankyou to them for all their hard work in making the blanks. Mine is on the right, my mum's on the left. The theory with mine is that I should get a row of black and then a row of colour when I knit my socks up. I have started and am really pleased to say it has worked. The blank is 120 stitches wide and 185 rows long. Then I used an old patons sock pattern that uses 60 stitches. I am happy to say it works for me. But as all knitters have slightly different tension it may be different for others. Iwould like to try a blank 240 stitches wide and get two rows of black, two rows of colour. I will post photos when I have knitted some more of my sock.

Here are some of the socks people brought along to share. The variety was amazing.

I also did a little workshop run by Kim. These are fibre swap cards. Kim is in a group where they do a monthly swap with hand made cards. The range was huge. Mine is second from the right on the bottom row.