The Ladies Tractor Road Run has been and gone and was great fun, as always. It was a very cold day. In fact, summer seems to have passed by the UK this year - it was so cold on our way to the airfield at the start of the run, that we had to warm up with coffee and bacon rolls.
I still ended up with a sunburnt face - or perhaps it was windburn? Whatever it was, it didn't detract from the 'specialness' of the day. I also raised a very respectable 300 pounds (thank you to everyone who donated!) and am looking forward to next year already! I may even already have ideas for next year's outfit...
this year's outfit - pink granny squares skirt!
Last weekend was another adventure. A few months ago I spotted a tweet asking for volunteers to teach knitting at Latitude, a music and literature festival near Southwold. I applied and a few days later received confirmation that I was part of the team. I was a bit nervous as I'd never taught knitting before, I didn't know anyone in the team and I was going on my own, but it turned out to be a fabulous weekend.
It was wet, it was muddy, we had no showers and no water, there were mosquitos galore and I lived off pot noodles all weekend, but I discovered a love of teaching that I didn't know I had. It was so rewarding to sit down with someone, give them needles and yarn and slowly see them 'get it'. The first two or three stitches would be all wrong and fiddly and they'd say 'o I'll never get this', but by the end of the row they'd be slowly making the right motions. And just working with different people all weekend - I have some lovely memories. The lady I taught to crochet on Friday and who came back on Saturday to show me the progress on her granny square and then again on Sunday to say thank you again. The teenage boys who had me in fits of laughter when they were shouting 'I'm in the KNITTING tent mate, this woman is teaching me to knit' down their mobile.
The older gentleman who told us he'd learnt to knit from his grandfather but wanted a reminder, and who turned out to be the eye surgeon who saved B's eye 30 years ago. The little girl who didn't want to come knitting with mummy but half an hour later was happily finger knitting. The Israeli lady who'd lived in the UK as long as I have and with who I shared 'living abroad' stories and who said she'd send me a pair of slippers her 100 year old grandmother had crocheted.
The visitors coming back every day to just sit and knit a while as they found it so serene. The time we were all sitting down knitting or crocheting while next door in the literary tent Simon Armitage was being interviewed, a bit further down teenage girls were learning the moves to a Beyonce track and further up in the main arena Alabama Shakes were playing - it was so surreal. I was quite sad to leave on Sunday afternoon and have been thinking if there is a way I can continue to teach knitting, as a year is a long time to wait...
Photo courtesy of Amy from Keep and Share Knitting
