Worth it?

Following my stressful week (which wasn't helped when on Friday afternoon I rang the SAGE only to find that they had given away our wedding date after I'd asked them to book if for us several times) I had a lovely weekend in Beadnell with my knitting chums. I love being by the sea and I was so excited to get up on Saturday morning and find that it wasn't raining and the sea was looking very blue and lovely.

I was even more excited later to see the harbour at high tide, with the waves crashing over the wall.

To add to this Emily had brought her ball winder so I got to wind all the skeins in my stash into lovely centre pulling cakes. Now, I don't want to paint a picture of myself as a sad person, who hasn't got out much recently, but it really was one of the funnest things I've done in a while. I just love mechanical processes, and I love them all the more when they're so simple and produce such lovely results.

On top of all this excitement I also had some fabulous food cooked by Emily, Helen, Jen, Lucy and Glenda. Yum!

It wasn't all frivolity and excitement. I did spend quite a considerable amount of time trying to wind a skein of Hipknits Silk into a ball. It turned out to be impossible to wind on the ball winder because some parts of it were so tightly wound and the skein was just a mess. I ended up winding it onto Becca's stick thing by hand. I'd just watched her do some and she came out with a nice, neat centre pulling ball. Mine ended up a right mess (anything to do with the wine I was drinking, or my wondering attention???). I won't go into too much details, though I feel I must apologise to the other ladies for the stream of expletives issuing from my lips for the majority of the evening. The nice thing about doing this in the company of knitters was that not one person suggested that I was getting unreasonably irate, or a bit obsessed. Everyone was very sympathetic.

I did think that I wouldn't want to look at the stuff again, but then I got home last night and started this. I actually feel like it was worth all the pain.

(Yes that is a wooden spoon the yarn in on. The ball was starting to collapse.)

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in organising the weekend. Particularly Lucy.