We've just added a couple of extra classes for the Weekender. The number of places is strictly limited for this class which is extremely popular!

Miriam Tegels, Speed Knitting.

Gxx

Stitchlinks Memory study at I Knit Weekender

Betsan from www.stitchlinks.org will be with us at the Weekender. One of the projects Betsan is working on is a knitting related study about memory.

Betsan has been working on the project with volunteers throughout the summer in Cardiff. Many potential volunteers are based in London and were unable to make it to Cardiff on the designated dates. Betsan has a message for you, whether you live in London or not...

Cardiff University and Stitchlinks have recently carried out a study on knitting and memory. Results were interesting but need to be further corroborated by testing 15-20 more volunteers. When we initially put a call out for volunteers there were many from London who were unable to travel to Cardiff, and others who weren’t able to attend during the week.

I Knit has very generously offered us two rooms at the I Knit Weekender on Saturday 11^th September where we will be able to extend the knitting and memory study. If you can spare 75 minutes of your time, please get in touch with Betsan Corkhill at Betsan@stitchlinks.com for an appointment time.

Volunteers will get free entry to the I Knit Weekender for Saturday 11^th. Hope you can help us out.

Betsan Corkhill

Stitchlinks

If you are able to help by being part of the study, please get in touch

Gxx

better late than never

Coral is 21!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Her is the birthday girl admiring her beautiful community knit birthday gift blanket.

Coral writes her own blog. Just sayin'.
Gxx

I Knit Weekender 2010

The Weekender is almost upon us. It’s an exciting, exhilarating and rewarding time. It’s also very welcome because it means we are just about due a little holiday.

Friday 10 and Saturday 11 September. Woohoo!

We’re thrilled to have so many fantastic names attached to the event again this year. Some of the finest names in British Knitting!

Debbie Bliss will be with us for a free presentation/workshop on Saturday morning. We’re very lucky that one of the busiest women on earth is able to join us. I also know that Debbie is looking forward to speaking to us and also promoting her new book, Design It, Knit It – For Babies. The book is published later in September so this is an EXCLUSIVE . Debbie will also be signing books later on Saturday afternoon.

Talking of EXCLUSIVES, Alice Starmore will also be will us for workshops and book signing. The workshop is ‘Celtic Knotwork and Emblematic Patterns; perfect for the new fashion of chunky cables! Two of Alice’s long out of print books are being republished later this year and we have managed to secure an amount of advance copies! Fisherman’s Sweaters is the first, Alice will be signing copies at the Anova Books stand. The second is Aran Knitting. Alice will sign copies of this at the I Knit London stand. Both books are often in the top ten of knitter’s wish lists as they are both incredible. Original copies of the books sell online for £100’s!

Erika Knight will be teaching Novice Knitters on Saturday afternoon and on both days Erika will be presenting a fashion show with Martin Story and Marie Wallin. They will delight you will their latest designs for Rowan, plus more! Martin will also be teaching as will Marie who will also be promoting chunky cables for the coming winter.

There are so many to talk about that you could be here reading all day, so I’ll just drop a few more names. Woolly Wormhead, Anniken Allis, The Dutch Knitters, Biggan, Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer, Ragga Eirikdottir & Helene Magunussen, Miriam Tegels...

We’ll have lots of fashion/catwalk shows again this year. Friday we will have a huge vendors fashion show which will include garments from all of the vendors. It was so popular last year and we are looking forward to doing this again later on Friday afternoon. Saturday will mostly be dedicated to recent graduates of knitwear design. Four or five graduates will present their work for your inspiration.

The list of vendors has been published, you can see it below. If you want to book tickets we are not yet sold out, or classes, only some of the classes are sold out so you still have time to register.

See you in September!

I Knit Weekender Traders

We can't wait, there'll be so much yarny fabulousness...

• Hedgehog Equipment
• The Herdy Company
• The Natural Dye Studio
• Knitwitches Yarn
• Bart and Francis
• Easyknits
• Kal Media
• I Knit London
• Knitting 4 Fun
• Dutch Knitters Cafe
• Ingrid Wagner Rug & Art Creation
• Artisan Threads
• Halifax Spinning Company
• Well Manor Farm
• Artist Palette Yarns
• Debonnaire
• Tall Yarns ‘n’ Tales
• Anova Books
• Textile Garden
• The Toft Alpaca Shop
• Natural Fibre Company
• Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop
• Wool Craft with Wensleydale
• Woolfish
• Purl Alpaca
• Handscapes Creative Knitting
• Knitting Iceland
• Nimu Yarns
• Flews Group
• Habu Textiles
• Millamia
• The Knit Box
• Ann Kingstone Designs
• High Fibre
• Ida’s House
• The Knitknacks
• Picperfic’s Fluff-N-Stuff
• The Wool Sanctuary
• Yarn to Knit
• The Bothered Owl
• Sparkleduck
• London Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers
• I Knit Links
• Stitchlinks
• St Mungos
• Morsbag
• Arthritis Care
• Vauxhall City Farm Spinners & Dyers
• Knitting & Crochet Guild
• Mencap
• The Knitting Noras
• Knit Expo

WWKIPD Treasuer Hunt

Our annual World Wide Knit In Public Day Treasure Hunt is this Saturday.

I really can't wait because I love this event. It's been (still is) quite hard work putting it together but fun, too, and I know it's going to be fun.

There is a bingo theme this year! There will be 90 pieces of knitting - graffiti knitting - around London each with their own number. Hunters will have to find all of them to be in with a chance of winning as well as getting lots of other treasures and photographs.

There will be lots of prizes and lots of opportunities to win. Prices include, YARN, DVDs, BOOKS, BOOZE and some other tings not yet acquired.

There will be a couple of surprises on the hunt, too, to keep you entertained and there will be refreshments available at the shop during the marking and awards!

Teams will be up five people, at least one person must be a knitter as you will have to knit as you go as the longest piece of knitting wins a prize. Teams will also need a camera. Things that could be helpful is a London A-Z, a clipboard, a pen, comfy shoes and jelly beans.

Bingo sheets and dabbers will be included! See you on Saturday.
Gxx

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://iknitlondon.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://iknitlondon.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

I Knit Weekender AND Design Competition

We're made up, as we say in Liverpool, that the I Knit Weekender tickets are now on sale. We're a bit later than usual, because we've been so busy and also because it's kind of our birthday this month.

Happy Birthday to us! We're four. Well, four and a bit, really. It's hard to beleive. Sometimes it feels like eight years, other times it feels more like 4 minutes.

So much has happened in the past 4 years and the UK knitty world has developed so much, even since I Knit started. I love being part of this world, as I'm sure everyone who knows me, or who reads this blog or has ever had anything to do with I Knit will in fact already know. I do go on, I know.

Anyway, the Weekender. Last year was so much hard work, that it's hard to beleive it's all happening again. It's not really hard work - planning for our contribution to the Ideal Home Show has been hard work. Say it with me, 17 days. 17 whole days! It's been traumatic, to be honest, but that's because of the organisers, who maybe should have a less ironic title. Least said soonest mended. or something. Hopefully.

Erm...yes, the Weekender. We've booked lots of stuff, and teachers, most of them the Best of British and we are very excited. The class schedule will be published very soon. The market is looking great again this year. I thought last year's was a little too big so it's a little bit refined this year. There will be just as much gorgeous yarns, I can't wait already. I don't have to, though, because I've already had an overload of Knitwitches yarns.

We are currently the only people in the world selling Knitwitches hand dyed swiss cashmere and silk. There's almost non left, to be fair. It's so soft in your fingers you can hardly feel it. I also got a good dose of the Knitwitch herself because she delivered the yarn in person, she is seriously gorgeous and I wish I saw her more!

The star of this year's Weekender will be the knitting design competition, I'm thrilled to say. The competition was launched earlier this week. I'm thrilled because there is so much knitting and design talent out there and I want to see more!

There are three categories to the competition. Lace. Accessories. Full size garments. Submitions will be judged by a panel of independent industry professionals, aka independent adjudicators. There will be 1st, 2nd and 3rd places in each category which means you have nine opportunities to be a winner, with three top prizes of £250 and the chance to be published in a knitting magazine I suppose the competition gives you the opportunity to be the star of the show!

Guidelines are available from Lorraine.

With all this going on it's not surprising, I suppose, that my knitting and design work has taken a beating. I'll leave you, then, with the beatiful words of Little Dragon as featured on Empire Ants on the new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach. Without this album (and coffee) Imight be a mere shell of a man.

little memories, marching on
your little feet working the machine
will it spin? will it soar?
my little dream working the machine

I Knit at The Brits

I Knit is well used to the unusual nature of the requests we get such as a toilet seat cover for Phil Tuffnell or a badly knitted pink jumper for Danny Wallace or life size monsters (made in 4 days) for the premier of Where The Wild Things Are.

Some of the requests I sadly have to turn down because people really do ask for life size versions of the monsters from Where The Wild Things Are to be knitted in 4 days. A request to knit at the Brits Aftershow party came in mid January and I certainly didn't refuse that one.

The organisers wanted I Knit to 'man' a shed that would be the knitting area where we could show off our beautiful knitted things and teach people to knit - should they want to learn. The party started at 10.30pm and finished at 2pm.

I gladly said yes to that gig, providing we got a couple of tickets for the show. I've never been to a big pop awards, many an afternoon was spent in my youth wishing I could be at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party but dreaming was as close as I ever got.

Below is the view from our seats at the event (I took my friend Amy). Just to prove I was there. I didn't get a nose bleed but I did have to take a break halfway up the stairs to the seats!

The picture shows hots Peter Kay. He is brilliant and worth every penny, not just for introducing Lady Gaga as 'New York's version of Sue Pollard'

This is our view of the special people. Lady Gaga herself is sitting in the bottom left corner but you can't see her huge her in the picture, we could see it from our seats, two miles up.
If you saw any of my tweets on the night you would know that I wasn't enjoying it as much as I'd expected (or wanted too). I think a combination of old age, wine and altitude sickness rather hampered my experience. Either that or it was just rubbish.

My favorite part of the awards was the Dizzee Rascal and Florence and the Machine Duet. Florence is pictured below. I did also love seeing Lily Allen dressed like orphan Annie.

I am only slightly ashamed of saying JLS are the dregs

of our culture as while I do very much believe it I should

maybe not say anything if I have nothing nice to say.

The aftershow party was great. Not many people wanted

to knit but we had a great time anyway. Thanks to Sarah,

Lorraine, Vanessa, Coral, Alix and Ros.

I did some galivanting at the party which included Karaoke.

It was my first ever Karaoke and I wish it didn't happen.

It will definately be my last.

I sang, with Amy, Don't Go Breaking My Heart. I was Kiki

and Amy was Elton. Which is really where the problems started.

We kind of lost our place on the script and we just stopped

singing half way through. I remember thinking, this might

be a good time for a 'wooo hooo' a couple of times and then

realising it wasn't. Oh well, you live and learn.

Overall, we had a great time and I hope they ask us back

- I doubt it though, as we left an hour early!

Gxx

Haiti Fundraiser Tea Party

It's been so long since we blogged, I can hardly believe it. To offer a brief explanation, running I Knit takes a lot of time and effort and it's difficult, sometimes, to keep up with all the the blogs tweets, ravelry, updates, newsletters, organising events, managing events, stocking the shop, selling in the shop... we love it, though, and we wouldn't change any part of it - except maybe the blogging part, we should not have stopped.

Anyway, we got out of the habit of blogging and it's been a little difficult getting back into it. However, here we are, blogging! Hurray.

Last Saturday we had a fantastic afternoon tea party. We love the tea parties. They are full of friendly faces, knitting, tea and cake. The regular tea parties happen for a number of reasons -book launches, celebrations and, as in the case of last Saturday, to raise money for charity.

IKL were very saddened by the earthquake in Haiti. We donated a bit of money to the relief fund and later thought we could do a little more by organising a tea party to raise more money.

We asked people, as usual, to bake a cake to bring along to the party. The cakes are then shared among the people who come along and each person pays a little for the tea and cake they consume.

This party was over-run by cake. So many people baked cakes. Cakes in all shapes and sizes. There were flapjacks, fruit cake, rum and chocolate drop cake, chocolate and beetroot cake, cup cakes, brownies, biscuits...I could go on.

After a few hours of eating cakes and a little bit on knitting, after the word searches, pass the parcel, guess the name of the teddy and the marvellous raffle we managed to raise the incredible sum of £650.

Thank you so much to everyone who took part. We had a brilliant time and I am so proud to have been part of this event.

It's important to remember that the people of Haiti are living an unbearable nightmare since the eathquake and we hope that the money we raised will help towards making life a little easier. We donated the full amount to MSF. You can donate if you follow the link, now.

You can see more photographs here.