It has been one of those days!

The club yarn was due to be posted this morning, but despite 3 days of drying it is still not dry enough to post.  It was touch and go but in the end I decided it just wasn't worth the risk of the yarn getting musty on it's travels because it wasn't absolutely, completely dry.  So sorry club members, but I will get it in the post to you tomorrow.

Knitting classes were due to resume today, and so I was spending the morning getting bits and pieces together for all the students.  Everyone wants to do something different, but something that is challenging for them, so I was looking out various patterns that offered the opportunity to learn different techniques (knitting in the round, socks, aran, lace, fair isle) as well as putting together as many examples as possible that I could find in my own portfolio of knitting.   I was trying to find examples on Ravelry of free patterns that offered a variety of possibilities, and then print them off.

Except the printer wouldn't co-operate!  I should have known then that the day was doomed.  It would print one page, and then stop.  Frustration reigned.

Some students had already said they wanted to learn how to knit socks, so while waiting for the patron saint of computers (i.e. Stevan - a title recently bestowed on him by a friend) to sort out the printer I was winding wool off hanks to take to class.  Now this is a job I've done over and over again in the past, except this morning the winder kept misbehaving, resulting in yarn getting wound round and around the little gears that turn the mechanism.  Another clue to my fate!

Last year the knitting class was held in the evening, but there were problems with the weather and sometimes folk simply couldn't get to class because of the storms that raged.  So this year we decided to hold the class during the day, so that at least students could travel in daylight.  Good plan, I hear you say.  Well, yes, except today there was one almighty power failure in Assynt.  The whole of the district is now without power, so knitting class has been cancelled as the hall we use would be freezing and there would not be any way of heating it without electricity, added to which we'd be unable to have the essential tea and coffee that always goes with knitting.

So, I have given up fighting nature and I intend spending my unexpected free time sitting in front of the fire working on a new design to go with my yarn.   Hopefully next week nature will be feeling a little less aggressive towards our knitting class.

And talking of nature, I leave you with a photograph of the sock club yarn from a couple of months ago.  The colourway is called Heather and Rock, and I took a hank up on to the hills to get a photo of the yarn with some heather.  It is a purple/grey/black colourway, reflecting the heather, rocks and peat of Assynt. But Peggy decided she wanted to be in on the fun, and the instant I snapped the shutter she sped across the back of the heather, showing that her colours perfectly matched the yarn, with her black fur and purple collar!

peggy-and-peat