Summer's here and the time is right for knitting in the street...

Quick, it's sunny, get outside! At the Wednesday night knitting group we spilled out onto the pavement and enjoyed a few bottles of organic cider on a balmy summer's eve. For a few hours it wasn't London, it was St Tropez. OK, maybe not, but it was lovely, and the square, as I always go on about, was certainly one of the nicest places to be in zone 1 of an evening! Wednesday nights are still my favourite night of the week and I even gave myself a little time to knit instead of working. It was great to see the place full of knitters, new faces and old, getting on like old pals. Ah, the unifying power of knitting (and cider)! It felt good. One sleeve to go and the cardy's finished...only I've just gone and lost the bleeding pattern!

This hot spell has gone to Gerard's head a bit and with the autumn edition of KnitSimple magazine arriving yesterday he's done two hats in two days...ready for the cold weather! I'm not quite decided on this little number, in (Colinette Point 5 Zebra), especailly the long tassel at the back, but I do prefer the one below in Rowan Big Fusion. And it's true what the mag says: 2 hour hats! Either that or Gerard is just dead quick.

It's now about 8pm on a Friday and the boy's night is in...err...full swing. Well, we've settled into a small but committed group of knitters, but there's a couple missing tonight. Boys...where are you? The omnipresent Tom is here (left), and although he admittedly comes for the gossip and the booze, he's a lesson to all those who say you're too old to learn new tricks (although he did learn to knit about 60 years ago, he just took his time getting round to finding his groove!). Funnily enough G and I have downed needles, I to write this blog, and G to flick through the book of chocolate recipes (b'day pressie from Jon) - he's going to make us all a big cake! Hurray.

One more thing to mention - I saw Hairspray last Sunday and, well, it's just about the best time I've had on me own in a dark room for a very long time! Brilliant.

What's in your stash...?

Ooh, Gerard is a naughty boy, letting the cat out of the bag in the previous post...but, honestly, we are thrilled to be part of what will surely become a regular fixture on the knitting events calendar...watch this space!


Meanwhile, back in the world of IKL...our Friday night men who knit gathering was an interesting one last week, not least due to the new 'member' who turned up, unexpectedly. Since we opened the shop and sanctuary for knitters we've had a number of bags of old yarn, patterns, books, needles and other knitty stuff brought in by folk, from friends who can no longer knit or who have sadly passed away (we have a growing collection of dead ladies' knitting, one of which is a slightly eery half-knit jumper, still on the needle, which I like to think was the last thing she saw as she drifted off to sleep, clicking needles in hand). We use much of this for classes and events but for about a month we've had a huge sack of yarn stashed away in the back that was donated by someone (we honestly can't remember exactly who dropped it in) and which we have still to sort through. On Friday, Sue decided to delve deep into the sack to see if there was anything worth filching and out popped:

THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION MAY WISH TO LOOK AWAY NOW!

the gap below is for a reason!

Much hilarity ensued. Perhaps this was the last thing...actually, hold that thought!

Now that smokers have been banished to beyond the cosy environs of bars, we seem to have another problem to contend with on our knitting adventures - not the demon drink, but the gloom. We had a really good night at the new bar at the BFI Southbank for our regular weekly knitting group, and they even sell our newly discovered favourite tipple, Weston's Organic Cider. Only problem is the lights went down after a couple of hours and stayed down - they called it 'ambiance', we call it 'annoyance'. We asked nicely for a bit more light but to no avail...we didn't push the point, so we settled down with conversation and good company for the rest of the evening (and the waiter was cute so we really didn't want to upset him!)

Gearing up for hanging the knitted river from the roof of the National Theatre this weekend. We're hoping to see lots of WaterAid supporters down there from 2pm to 5.30pm on Saturday, and fingers-crossed for a sunny day.