To a knitter the term ‘unravelling’ usually means the act of ripping out your knitting. However, if you are lucky enough to be in the London vicinity in February, it can have an alternate definition: the act of attending the Unravel Festival of Yarn at Farnham Maltings. This year, Unravel was especially nice because I went with Emma.

We took the train there which turned out to be easy peasy, much better than trying to park the car once you are there. We went on the opening day, in the morning, so although it was fairly crowded, it was still perfectly manageable to see everything and move around without being crushed.

We had a lot of fun exploring, squishing lots of yarn, having fun conversations with like-minded people, and admiring all of the beautiful hand-knitted garments being worn. We came home with some very nice treats:

If you remember from my last post, I have joined a KAL to knit one of Erika Knight’s Signature Collection garments produced with Walcot Yarns. I chose to knit the shawl called A Walk in the Park, and ordered the yarn in the original colours. I did want to see the shawl in person, and so our first stop at Unravel was to head to Walcot Yarns, where Carmen had brought along samples of all the pieces. Here is Emma wearing the shawl:

I like this shawl, but I was having two niggles about it. The first is that I just don’t like the triangle shape for shawls, particularly for worsted weight shawls. I have a secret plan, however, to change the shape. (You will need to watch this space to see how that transpires.) My second niggle was with the set of colours. I like the dark brown and white, and I love the greens. But, once I had the yarns in my hands, I really wasn’t crazy about the pink. Emma and I spent some time trying out different options and decided to keep the original sets minus the pink, and to replace it with – a stronger pink! Here you can see the originals (on top) and my new set (with the lilac-y pink Fireweed replaced with the fuschia-pink Petunia).

I really think this one change is amazing; it makes the whole thing pop for me. The KAL starts soon, and I am now all prepared to cast-on.

I purchased a skein of very fluffy boucle yarn from Kettle Yarn Co along with a skein of grey Northiam DK in order to make the Beanie Number 6 pattern by My Favorite Things:

Emma tried on a very fluffy, cosy scarf designed by Maxim Cyr called Field:

She then proceeded to get advice from many, many assorted people on which shades of yarn to buy so that she could knit one. The two yarns on the top of our goodie photo are for this shawl, which will combine a silvery grey Fluff yarn with a beautiful DK from Les Garcons in a deep green blue (although it looks mostly blue in the photo). Max kindly posed for a photo with Emma:

We also bought a bunch of odds and ends and haberdashery, including some new Chia Goo Forte circular needle tips, a bottle of Soak, and two little tartan notions pouches.

It was altogether a fun expedition, and to make it more fun, we had a nice lunch afterwards. It was Valentine’s Day and we were surrounded by couples having romantic lunches.

We spent some time winding all of that yarn into cakes:

I especially like the below photo of the two yarns for the hat pattern, perched on top of each other as in the hat:

Isn’t it cute?

I was going to bore you with more photos of the event, but I am worn out, so you will have to imagine it for yourself. Now, despite all of this yarny fun, I have yet to knit a stitch in days, so I am off to remedy that.