Tasting notes!

If you encounter any of us on the street, you'll know us by the wide grins we've been wearing since last Thursday. We had not one but two exciting events, you see: the launch of Carol Feller's new book, Contemporary Irish Knits, followed immediately (and overlapped for a hour) by Yarn Tasting 2011. So here's a brief recap! Working in the Powerscourt Centre, we're really blessed to have access to the loft. It's a lovely space, full of light and air: There it is, waiting for the fun to start. But before that happened, there was a considerable amount of loveliness to put in place: Kate Davies' table was simply covered in the most wonderful colourwork (of this, more later), and we had lovely cabled things by Carol Feller to show off too: It was such a honour for us to host Carol's book launch, and we're glad to say that she seemed to enjoy it (you'll find her account of the night on her blog. Even the cake provided by the Pepperpot had cables on it! And then the Yarn Tasting started. Sixty knitters all avidly trying out samples of new yarn, exchanging opinions, taking notes, and generally being boisterous in the best way: We had an impromptu catwalk show, featuring several of Carol's garments modelled by various This Is Knit workers and friends: Kate's talk about her work on handmade textile culture and her views on design was wonderful. She has blogged about her visit here and here, and she too would appear to have had an absolute ball. We knew her to be an impressive scholar and an excellent designer, but when presented with her colourwork, we felt like Jared Flood did on encountering Elizabeth Zimmermann's Green Sweater: "At that point I muttered to myself something colossally obvious yet seemingly so epiphanous: “ really knit!” That picture is the wrong side of Hare and Tortoise. What perfect stranding. And in return, Kate was terribly taken with AoibheNí's Dublin Bay Shawl. Doesn't it suit her very well? Far too soon, it was all over, and we had to pack everything up and leave the loft till next year... ... and some of us had slept through the entire thing! But thanks really go to all of you that came along. If you hadn't been there, it would have been just a few of us rattling peculiarly around a big white room, surrounded by yarn and with jumpers hung on the wall. It wasn't, and that was all because of you. Thank you.