What a fabulous weekend!

The sun was definately shining on Frating this weekend and we had a fantastic day again.  It was a great turnout (over 30 people!) and quite a few new faces which is always good to see.  Our flyers are obviously working!  The weekend meet is always a lovely day as we catch up with people that can't always make it to the regular knitting group meetings and it gives a chance to meet people from groups that are a little further afield too.  This time I think we had people from Ipswich, Harwich, Mersea, Clacton not to mention all the Colchester based groups.

There were lots of lovely cakes again, the trade table as always was a roaring success and yarn sales from The Bear Necessities and The Yarnsmith and beads from Sue.  Sara was official photographer for the day and will be along with snaps to embarrass us all!

The workshops were much smaller this time, mind you having had 25 people all want to learn to crochet from scratch last time around was a bit of an eye opener!  This time around, we made a couple more crochet converts who went away with their first ever granny squares.  All in all, another success and we hope to add a different workshop to the next meeting.  Watch this space or the ravelry group for more information and remember, if there's a technique you'd like to try or you have a suggestion for an alternative workshop, just let us know and we'll see what we can arrange.

Anyway, here's to another great day and to the next one too which will be:

Saturday 26th June 

We'll be back with more yarn, knitting and cake for a Marie Curie Blooming Great Tea Party.

Weekend workshops Saturday 6th February

To keep things interesting, this year we're introducing workshops to our weekend meets.  By general consensus the first ones will be "Basic Crochet" and "An Introduction to Spinning" but over the coming months, we've got all sorts of other ideas lined up including beading, finishing techniques, more advanced crochet, felting.... the list goes on but we'll post more as we come up to the next meeting.  As they're being run by us for us, they'll be included in the cost of your entrance although you might need to provide some of the materials yourself.

"Basic crochet" will begin at around 11am and cover everything you need to get starting to crochet.  By the end of the morning, you should be well on the way to making your first crocheted item.  Once you've learned the basic stitches, we've devised a simple scarf pattern that'll practice some of these stitches.  There'll be plenty of help on hand to assistance you and we've got some hand outs you can take away with you too.  We suggest you bring a 4mm crochet hook and a ball of DK (double knitting) yarn although there will be hooks and yarn available on the day if you need them.

"An introduction to spinning" will start after lunch at around 1pm is aimed at getting you started spinning with a spindle.  There'll also be a couple of spinning wheels on hand for you to try out too.  If you've already got a spindle (or wheel), please bring it along.  We do have some fibre for you to practise with but if you've got some stashed away, it'd be helpful.

Remember, the workshops are in addition to the regular meeting so there'll be all the usual knitting, chatting, cake eating and general catching up.  Hope to see you there :)