Please forgive me, for it has been 6 days since my last ramble. Do not, for one moment, think this occurred as a result of FB whipping me off to a few days on a tranquil desert island for that much needed rest. In fact, life has been as busy as ever.
We had friends down for the weekend who we haven't seen for 9 years. As with all true, good friends we picked up as if we'd only been out of touch for a week or so, but with non stop talking for 36 hours so we could cram the last 9 years in. We took them over the top to our favourite pub and they were very jealous of our walk to our "local":
Dear T has gone on a Geography field trip to Barcelona which involved a 4am departure from school on Monday morning. Yes - you did read that correctly - 4 am. When I did Geography O level (as it was in those days) we went to Dorset and stayed in a B&B in Swanage - how times have changed!
Knitting has been dominated by Wool Week in two weeks time - for which I have been asked to demonstrate knitting in Savile Row! On Monday, October 11th Savile Row will be closed to vehicles and will be laid with turf and filled with sheep (see here for an artist's impression). We're going up, decked out in Cornish Organic Wool finery obviously, to launch the start of Wool Week, designed to bring British wool to the fore and back into British fashion and shops - and not before time. Supported by The Prince of Wales it's a movement we strongly endorse. Having said that - how can I make a knitting demonstration really scintillating? - it's a challenge, that's for sure. But then again - if you've never seen a sock being knitted - it might be quite fascinating. We'll take lots of photos.
And now time for a teeny, weeny rant (and I've been working out how to put this diplomatically for the past couple of days). For the avoidance of doubt and before I rant, I'm sure we are all aware that patterns in pattern books are not allowed to be photocopied. Copying them breaks all copyright rules and is unfair to the designers who designed the patterns, the photographers who took the lovely pictures, the printers who printed them and, ultimately, the yarn companies who paid for them. Every pattern which is photocopied denies all these people the money they deserve and - in the end - ensures that future pattern books will be more and more expensive. Imagine then - customers who come into the shop, spend about 45 minutes looking for exactly the right yarn, checking yardages and availability until they've found exactly what they want (wool is strewn across the shop by this stage) and then refuse to buy the pattern book. They want a photocopy and this is denied them (with the law being carefully explained to them). They even go so far as to say, "go on, there's no-one else here, no-one will ever know". The photocopy is still not forthcoming. They then storm out of the shop, leaving all the wool they've so carefully chosen with the immortal line, "we'll go to our local wool shop, they'll photocopy it for us". There are 3 points to this: 1) if your local wool shop will photocopy patterns, please remember it is illegal, 2) please don't ask a shop assistant to do something that's illegal - it isn't fair, 3) if you ignore point 2) and do ask the assistant to do something illegal, please don't be surprised/stroppy/bad tempered when she refuses. End of rant. Thank you.
To our great surprise we had a small delivery of Rico's Can Can yesterday. It's flying out fast so catch some while you can - I have no doubt it'll be gone by Saturday - this yarn really is the must have for this autumn (and the instructions are printed inside the ball band so no worries there!!)
