Sean and I decided to spend the weekend in Sydney and so got up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am on Saturday morning. Heading towards the Federal Highway, this is what the world looked like. Canberra's winter fog-fest has definitely kicked off.
We arrived at RoseRed's house in plenty of time and Mr RoseRed drove us all into the city, whereupon RoseRed and I headed off, leaving our Knit Widowers to go and amuse themselves at the Apple Store, book stores and a pub lunch.
First stop for the day was the Inner City Knitter's Guild meeting, a delightful meeting at Circular Quay, with knitting. Oh if only all meetings could involve knitting, and show and tell. Standing up to show a room full of knitters your brand new February Lady Sweater and have everyone ooh and ahh is exactly what meetings should be like. So good to be with such a fine bunch of people!
From there, a bunch of us headed out, decked out in all our knitted finery, to catch a bus across town to Darling Harbour.
I really, really wish I had been carrying my camera in my hand instead of buried at the bottom of my project bag. So many missed opportunities. I am cursing myself as I type, rest assured.
At Darling Harbour, we were greeted by a long, curving line of tables outside the Bayside Lounge and over the next little while, EIGHTY knitters showed up.
This isn't all 80 of us. The space outside ran out fairly quickly and others went inside. Ordinarily a group of this size would do my head in - all that noise and chaos and fifty gazillion conversations happening all at once. But actually this wasn't like that. Noise levels were good I coped rather well!
I sat mostly with RoseRed, Kylie, Donni and WebGoddess but got up several times to mingle. Lovely, lovely opportunity to see friends and meet new ones. I feel a little bit now like I have three knitting communities. One in Canberra. One in Sydney. And one in Wollongong. How good is that?
It was extraordinarily well organised by the hard working Sally and a few others. We had buttons and bags and t-shirts with the event logo.
At some point, I railroaded Knitabulous Ailsa into taking some photos of me in my February Lady Sweater.
1. fls1, 2. fls2
And naturally, being a place where there were lots of knitters, and especially lots of knitters who went next door to the annual Craft Fair (I declined; I just knew not to engage in such tempting behaviour) there was beautiful yarn and beautiful knitting to be seen.
1. A sock and an Ishbel, 2. habu 1, 3. habu, 4. donna
When the afternoon eventually dwindled to a close, there was a quickly grabbed bite for a few of us in Chinatown and then home, full bellied and worn out, to don PJs and socks (hand knitted, obviously) and watch a movie into the night.
A great day, spectacularly put together and well worth the early start to get there!
Bells
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