The Great British Sheep (and the great British summer)

Today we were on the South Bank, outside the National Theatre, to take part in their annual Watch This Space festival. It was the Alternative Village Fete and it was wonderful. Things didn't bode well, I must say, when I woke up and carried a huge sackful of wool around to the NT at 9.30 this a.m. when it was pouring with rain and I got soaked through. But the unpredictable British summer saw us through and it turned out to be a lovely day, perfect for knitting with wool!

Today we launched our latest project, The Great British Sheep, which we like to call a "celebration of British wool, knitting and sheep". With over 60 native breeds, more than any other country, you'd think we'd have British wool coming out of ears...but, really, can you go to your local yarn store and pick up a few balls of it? I'm often dismayed by the cravings for foreign brand yarns which don't come close to the quality and gorgeousness of their British counterparts, but which are snapped up by knitters who think it must be good because it's number one on Ravelry and everyone's knitting with it in the States. Sure, there are some very special yarns from all over the world, but why do we have such disdain for our own homegrown stuff? Honestly, whilst collecting yarn for this project I've been amazed by the range and quality (and the price) of some our British wool, most of which you wouldn't find unless you visited the farm from whence it came. It's this that made us want to start the project in the first place, and one of the reasons we are still very proud to be the only yarn shop in the capital with a regular stock of pure British wool, from Shetland, Wales and Wensleydale to name a few.

Rant over. What a brilliant day! The sun shone, the spinners spun, the knitters certainly did knit...a lot. We thought we'd see regular faces and knitting group folk, but, in fact, most of our friends stayed away and we met hundreds of people who have been hiding somewhere, all keen and excited to get their hands on the wool. Free wool! We thought we'd have every knitting group in the city down there getting some stitches in! As it was, during the course of the afternoon hundreds of knitters joined us and took part, and to them we say "thanks". Accompanied by entertainment of the distinctly weird and wonderful kind, surrounded by vegetable sculpture, cake decorating and WI stare-out challenges, as well as guinea pigs, rabbits and ducks from Vauxhall City Farm, we covered our sheep statue in loopy stitch and more.

But, it's not over yet....in two weeks we head for Camp Bestival at Lulworth Castle in Dorset where we hope to finish our sheep's 'knitted fleece'...and we need more wool! You can see a list of the breeds we still need, plus links to all our generous suppliers so far on the Great British Sheep page - but, if you have ANY 100% British wool in your stash, please send it in to us at the shop address, whether we have that breed or not. We'll be teaching more people to knit and getting more folk involved and we need more yarn!

Our first batch of photos are now online here, and if you were there you can add your own to our I Knit photo group.

As a final note for now, we both want to personally thank Yvonne, who has so brilliantly captured our idea and designed and built our fabulous sheep. Thanks Yvonne.

Craig

London's newest knitting shop...

Sort of.

It's been just over two years since Gerard and I started I Knit London. Back then we were a regular knitting group, organising weekly meetings for knitters in London pubs. Every Wednesday we'd choose a pub, send out a newsletter and wait for people to arrive. So far, so easy. It's only ever worked because people came, what we did was really nothing at all. So we'd teach people how to do stuff, and sometimes they'd teach us and we all had a few drinks and got on like a house on fire, made new friends and made stuff. But there was more to do, there was a Sunday market stall at Spitalfields, a decision based on the fact Gerard couldn't buy any recylced sari silk in London, so thought he'd do it himself. Those very early Sunday mornings were very hard work and even if we didn't make back any of the stall rent, we met more knitters and we invited them along to our weekly pub meetings too. Our circle of friends got bigger and our plans did too. but, the last thing we wanted was a shop - why would we need another full-time job on top of the two we already had?

One of our local hang-outs was the Bonnington café, where I'd meet Gerard for lunch when it was my day off from the National Theatre, and he was working around the corner for WaterAid. I don't remember when it was that I first suggested asking about the corner shop, at that time looking pretty grim with the metal shutters down and a blight on the square to be honest. Gerard was working from 8am til 4pm so we thought we could run a shop for people after work, open from 4 to 9 and still give ourselves a little time to have a life. We'd close on Wednesdays so we could still go to the pubs and knit and all would be well. We knocked on a few doors, found the owner and decided to give it a go....and it's been an unexpected journey.

Shortly afterwards Gerard was promoted and had to stay on til 5pm. It's only an hour difference but somehow 5 to 9 each night didn't seem proper, so we got someone to sit there for afternoon, usually on their own, pretending to run a shop, only with no customers. This is when we decided to get our licence to sell alcohol and decided that we'd alternate our weekly knitting group between shop and pub, giving everyone a chance to come and discover IKL and to live up to the 'sanctuary' part of the name which we'd been adamant about from the start. And so it went on....

Recently I've been hearing that because we're a 'business' we're different to other knitting groups; somehow this makes us less worthy of praise, as if our 2 years of work is somehow reaping financial rewards. I only wish! True, Gerard did, finally give up his full-time job at the end of 2007, meaning he can now spend his time and energies on his first love, but it's also true that it means from two incomes we're down to only one! I'm glad the 14 hour working days are over, I'm ecstatic that we won't have to give up our flat and live in the shop again (well, not as far as we plan it anyway) but with only two of us running the shop and the knitting group, not to mention organising SnB Day last year and this year's I Knit Day, it's still a long way from time to relax and put our feet up.

So, the last thing we need right now is more stress and more sleepless nights - but we genuine love IKL so much that we're going to do that anyway...and we're moving. Bonnington Square has been good to us, it's been a beautiful place to rest our knitty heads and it will always be part of our IKL story...but there's always time to move on. Next week London has it's newest knitting shop, at 106 Lower Marsh, Waterloo, SE1. Open late, licenced bar, gorgeous yarns and still a place for knitters to drop-in, put their feet up and have a natter. We wouldn't miss it for the world and we hope knitters from London and those visiting the city think so too.

From a weekly pub knitting group to what we consider to be a very good local yarn store, it has been a long hard slog. We won't be retiring anytime soon and we'll continue to do our best to offer London's knitters what we think they want and need. To all those who think it's easy you are welcome to have a go, and for those who think we're in it for the money - well, I can only laugh! The one thing I will say is that I am never a do-er, I'm always a wannabe! Thanks to Gerard this has been the most interesting (most stressful, most exciting, most unpredictable, most fulfilling...) 2 years of my life. If you want to do something just do it...we are no businessmen, and I still feel like I'm making it up as I go along. The clever part is making it look, apparently, so easy.

I Knit London will open at Waterloo on Saturday 15th March....until then, there's lots of painting, scrubbing and shelf-building to get done!

Hanging out on the SouthBank...

Today we hung the knitted river form the roof of the National Theatre in London. It looked amazing, and WaterAid's volunteers were on hand to talk about WA and the river to the hundreds of people walking by on the SouthBank. It certainly grabbed folks' attention which is what it's all about - every time we do something like this I always feel quite humbled by it - we started the whole thing over a year ago and knitters around the world took the idea and ran with it...thanks, as always, to everyone who contributed. If you still want to help WA you might like to offer your services longterm - they hold hundreds of events all year round and are totally dependant on the time and efforts of their campaigners. Volunteering can be a really rewarding experience in more ways than one! Check their website here for how to get involved in the UK, USA or Australia.

Wednesdays by the river and Gormley spotting...

I love Wednesday nights! We can close the shop and go to the pub, which, when you're working from 9.30 and closing at 9pm most days is a blessing! OK, so we're still knitting but we're doing it with beer and with other fabulous knitting folk and it's a real midweek wind-down. Gerard is just happy there's no website for me to update or computer to sit in front of because that's where I usually am, tweaking something or other in cyberspace. But Wednesdays is my chance to actually do some knitting, although the other night had a few false starts, I got there in the end, thanks to Jon who doesn't get bored with counting stitches or unpicking. I, on the other hand, have a short attention span. Jon and Esther also brought along their finished pattern for our sock club and if you've signed up you're in for a treat too. Still time though to plug it though and you can still join for June/July/August here!



Anyways, we found ourselves in the shadow of Tate Modern at Wednesday IKL knitting meet-up at The Founder's Arms, with familiar and fresh faces. Hello to everyone who came, the pub was packed but we liked it, although the scrum at the bar was shocking. An especially big thanks to Tom who was only in town for this week from Chicago - he treated us, thanks Tom! Our old favourite Tom was also back from Sri Lanka (with tea, peppercorns and vanilla essence) to make us all really jealous, and we had a visit from an original IKL knitter (Vanessa, we thought we'd upset you!) who we haven't seen for ages. That's what's so good about the knit nights, you can be sitting in the pub and have no idea who's gonna show up - sometimes it looks like we might be there on our own all night but we know the knitters of London can't hide away for too long.

Have you all seen the Gormleys standing on the rooftops of London? We first saw his statues on the beach at Crosby last year when we were up in Liverpool - it was eerie, these metal figures standing in regimented lines gazing out to sea at the passing ships. Although they were all lined up they seemed much more lost and lonely than their urban brothers. If you don't know what I'm on about pop down to the Hayward Gallery for Anthony Gormley's first major exhibition, and then hang around the South Bank and see if you can spot the Gormleys on the rooftops of buildings all along the river, north and south. This one is directly opposite the box office on the fifth floor of the National Theatre (my day job) - when you catch glimpse from the corner of your eye it makes you a bit uneasy, even when he's there staring at you all day. Aleasha has already christened him 'Johnny the jumper'.

Watched Calendar Girls tonight at the IKL film night. Never seen it before, very funny. God bless 'em! Funny how it did the WI a world of good, and yet, according to the film they weren't really all that into the idea in the first place! Next week we're showing Sunset Boulevard cos we all love a big drama queen.

Craig
IKL

Good Friday

As the National Theatre and WaterAid (our other jobs) were both closed yesterday we took the opportunity to spend the day in the shop together, and get stuff done that we'd usually leave to Sundays. We discovered our local Bookers first thing in the day which is one of those warehouse cash-and-carries loaded with boxes of stuff for shops, restaurants etc. We are stocking up on beer, wine and cider for the IKL meetings - it was fairly mouth-watering to see it all stacked high and cheap!

It was a gorgeous day in the square yesterday. Sun shining and quiet. Gerard was getting on with his Colinette Jitterbug socks - they are for his dad, but on finishing the first one he discovered that his feet might be a bit too chunky for them. Luckily we've got our own feet to display them on now. Amy popped in with gorgeous hot cross buns and we spent the afternoon nattering away - topic of conversation at one point was our first gig. I eventually decided it was Jason Donovan at Whitley Bay Ice Rink, Gerard went for a Beatles tribute band (!), and Amy trumped us both with The Ramones in New York when she was about 15. OK, so we could be cooler I suppose. She has the benefit of being born in New Jersey (it's near NYC!) and having an crazy, cool uncle though. I was listening to Shakin' Stevens records in Carlisle while the rest of my classmates were into The Smiths and Jesus and Mary Chain. I've always been a proud geek.

Amy's off to Malaysia for a couple of weeks to write for The Times, and Tom, who's birthday it is on Tuesday, flies off to Sri Lanka. Nice. Meanwhile we'll stick to London, hoping that the weather stays balmy. Tom's riding high at the moment after been discovered by chance at Vauxhall station last month by a TV director. He's landed a part in an up-coming TV series based around a set of football supporters, which will hopefully make it onto the BBC later this year. Shows you that hanging around Vauxhall of an evening can be an exciting experience! Happy 71st Tom T. We expect you back from Sri Lanka with your Giotto scarf compete and raring to get onto the next project....three scarves down, how's about a change? I know you like this pic!

Tom arrived at about 5.30 last night and after starting him off on his new project we went off to our new local - The Vauxhall Griffin. This used to be a dodgy local called Wyvil's, tucked out of the way down a nondescript side street. But it's taken on a new lease of life. It's a bit like the Retro Bar, only it's 2 minutes away from our flat. I can see we'll be in there quite a bit!

It's a quiet day here at the National today (just as well, too much beer last night). Gerard is manning the shop and hopefully enjoying a few glasses of red with fellow knitters. Meanwhile I'll console myself with a sneaky peek of Daniel Craig who's coming tonight to see one of our plays tonight.

Craig