Create @ Late

Alas, in this case I don’t have many pictures. I took video last night but I have yet to edit it and that’s pretty far down the priority list at the moment, so you’ll have to wait. Sorry!

Last night, the Museum of London had its monthly late night opening (link may rot) but for this occasion it had a crafty theme.  There were booths of people making felt mustaches, animals out of pipe cleaners and wool, a diorama of London with plasticine sculptures, a sign language music video about London and in the other room the booths of knitting, crocheting and spinning.  You can guess what room I was in!

First I met up with my acquaintance, the lovely Claire from PurlPirate, who was teaching hyperbolic crochet which makes a coral-ish sort of shape.  She gave me several pointers about the second row issue (using a larger hook to cast on, not trying to get “under the v” when stitching into the chain, etc.) so I hope that I will be able to improve when I try it again next week.  She also had quite a crowd of people trying out the hyperbolic forms, including many totally new to crocheting.  Go Claire!  She was also teaching people how to crochet with plastic bags and gave an excellent demo on how to cut them up into jag-less strips.

Next I met Rachael Matthews and Louise of Prick Your Finger  (their blog), a yarn and fiber shop that I am sad to say that I have not yet made it to.  Especially since they are involved in the Walking Stick Cozy competition with Missability (run by Felix).  (As an aside, I am sad that I have not yet been able to make a cozy for any of my walking sticks, I think I need the Knifty Knitter Bloom Loom for that to get the right sized tube and shall get one this summer but alas, too late for the competition which ended yesterday.) Bethnal Green is geographically closer to me than Waterloo (home of I Knit) but it’s harder for me to get to due to the weird nature of the London bus system, and that’s why I have yet to go to Prick Your Finger. 🙁  They were demo’ing spinning and had drop spindles available to play with and a big bag of what I think is Black Welsh Mountain fiber.

I sat there forever and made this bundle of yarn:

Not bad for my third time on a drop spindle, but all the credit goes to the fiber, which was sooo easy to spin and wanted to be spun so fine it was almost scary.  Just in case it was the spindle rather than the fiber I tried a bit of my signature flouro pink roving but it came out crap as always. The moral of the story is that I am not very good with roving but am much better with carded batts, so I need to card my fiber!  I have handcarders but man, I covet a drum carder now.

Black Welsh Mountain is a mountain fiber so it’s very scratchy.  I don’t know that I would use this sort of yarn for much of anything but it was heavenly to spin so I shall endeavor to get to PYF before I leave for the summer to get some more to play with!

Finally, I went to meet some of the lovely ladies of Stitch and Bitch London.  I’d only just signed up for their newsletter about three days ago so I haven’t had a chance to attend their events yet (I couldn’t do their sewing up event on the 30th as I had to rest up to go out on the 1st). But it was very nice to meet people and show off the world of loomknitting.  Photos of me will probably be appearing on their blog in the near future.

I didn’t really have anything to do with the other crafty things,which seemed either aimed at kids or designed for people who aren’t usually crafty to dip their toe into the waters and have a little fun.  I have nothing against that, I just wasn’t in the mood.

Still, it was a very fun evening and many thanks to all of the lovely ladies I met who made it such a great experience!