I Knit at Camp Bestival

We had a marvellous time at Camp Bestival again this year. There was a definite increase in the number of young people wanting to learn knitting and crochet. Lot's of happy faces and some that look not so happy but that's only due to the levels of concentration while finger knitting for the first time!

Pompoms were well and truly on the agenda, as usual. Who wouldn't want to look as beautiful and amazing as this young camper?

There was also lots of finger knitting, as usual. We encouraged people to plait the finger knitting and make things like hats...

...or mats...

 ...or coasters.

I taught this reveller to make moss stitch and she was very proud of her new skill! This is picture and story is a little misleading, however, as I work with a team of volunteers who help me run the knitting tent at Camp Bestival. They all work so hard every year and I'm so grateful for their help, skills and friendship. Ros, Annette, Gemma, Nikki, Angela, Heather & Seb, and Mike - thank you for being amazing and making the knitting tent fabulous!

Camp Bestival is an amazing festival for families. There is so much to keep the young people entertained all through the day, not just on the main stage, with lots of treats for adults thrown in. This is the 7th year we've been at Camp Bestival running the knitting tent and we are there because the organisers want us to be. It's amazing to teach young kids (and adults!) and share our love for knitting and crochet and to be given the opportunity to do this at Camp Bestival every year is a testament to how fantastic Rob and Josie Da Bank are. They are helping to engage an army of young people in knitting and crochet and I know this because we get to see lots of regulars who return every year and when they ask to learn something new we are thrilled. Thank you to the Da Banks, your festival is marvellous.

And now it's on to Bestival in September, which is a an entirely different festival! And I can't wait.

Camp Bestival 2012

IKL and a troupe of volunteers spent last weekend at Camp Bestival in Dorset teaching and army of kids to knit. As usual (we've been to Camp Bestival every year) we had a brilliant time and we taught approximately 150,000 kids to (mostly finger) knit. OK, it probably wasn't that many but it felt like. Thanks to Deborah, Angela, Ros, Tania, Lorraine, Graham, Nicky, Heather and Becky, you are stars and I love you and I appreciate all your hard work. And so do the kids and their parents.

Camp Bestival really is a great festival. There's so much for the kids to do, the organiser really put a great deal of thought and work into it, then at night we get to dance and sing along to Kool and the Gang and the Happy Mondays!

There are so many photographs, here is a small selection.

This was our view.

Tania teaching. It's so rewarding when a person as small as this gets it and become a knitter.

I wont lie, several bottles of Pimms was consumed, after hours.

Ros, a vetaran CB Knitting Teacher, was only ever to be seen surrounded by 1000's of kids.

Lorraine (on the left) is teaching Lucia. I was thrilled to see Lucia and her mother Michelle. Michelle owned the Bonnington Square shop

Heather in pink t-shirt and Angela in black surrounded.

Graham teaching.

Graham always brings his spinning wheel. Sadly it saw no action this year as we were too busy.

The tent was gorgeous, I think you'll agree. This is the best use of a bird cage I have ever seen. The ceiling of the tent was covered in crocheted doilies.

We took the sheep and asked people to cover it in bits of finger knitting.

Deborah became obsessed with finger knitting.

Nicky, left with pink bandana, lost her voice from all the hard teaching!

just a little ciggie break.

see you next year!!!!

I Knit at Camp Bestival

Another brilliant weekend at Camp Bestival with another brilliant team! Meet, from top left, Heather, Lorraine, Tanya, Graham, Doug (aka Dig), Ros, Sara, Madeline, Deborah and Gair.

I Knit at Camp Bestival 2011 was the best so far. This is due to the hard work of the volunteers above. We have taught so many kids and adults to knit and, new in this year, crochet (thanks to Ros and Medeline).
Finger knitting was the star of the show, again, this year. I took this picture in the final hour of the weekend. It perfectly shows the level of concentration from the children who became, for want of a better word, obsessed with finger knitting.
We were so inspired by the amount of energy and time some children were putting into their finger knitting that we had a competition. The lengths of knitting were stretched out in front of the tent on Sunday afternoon and the person who could walk furthest won! There will be a separate post on that tomorrow!The Knitting Tent, packed all weekend, had changed location from the Magic Meadow to the Lower Kids Field and we noticed a fantastic change in the amount of people coming through the tent. We really were packed all weekend and the teaching shifts changed from 4 hours to 7 hours with an hour break. This has usually happened by default each year anyway but this year we really had no choice and I am so grateful to the brilliant team of teachers for their energy and enthusiasm. The ease with which every one of the teachers could happily teach so many people over the three days of the festival is inspiring, I love you!We didn't just have the best dressed tent at the festival, I think we had one of the best locations with amazing views of the rolling hills of the Dorset coast. I'm still so tired, thanks largely to the energy of the people in our production camp site - they too should be honoured for their ability to work so hard to put together an amazing festival while on shift and party like it's 1999 while they are not on shift.

There is so much more to say about the weekend but I will leave you for now with a picture of one of my favourite knitters of the weekend. A young lady who conquered finger knitting and moved on to a the next stage, knitting herself a a purple headband.

Sunshine, sheep-shearing and SE1...

We've been a bit quiet of late here on the blog, mainly due to all the other stuff going on! Gerard has taken to Tweeting on Twitter and has been distracted by the new high-tech till in the shop (it does barcodes and everything don't you know?) and we're still working on getting the online shop up and running...it's coming soon, we promise.

Despite all of these distractions we've had time to hold the charity tea party last weekend which raised over £450 for Diabetes UK, from the sale of raffle tickets, cups of tea and cake! Thanks to everyone who popped in on the day and to all those who baked cake and donated prizes. It was a brilliant day all round and we're looking at hosting a regular tea party now and then as anything with cake involved seems to go really well.

We're looking forward to the summer now. It's been a scorchio weekend here in London. Yesterday we tottled over to Spitalfields City Farm in the East End for their annual Sheep and Wool Fayre. We love city farms. We urbanites should do all we can to make the most of such oasises, especially those of us who live in blocks of flats with no green space. Their herb and veg garden put our window boxes to shame! There was a bit of sheep-shearing (Sophie the Southdown looked massively relieved to get that jumper off), felting, spinning, knitting and cakes, of course. It was slightly devastating to see that a huge swathe of the farm had been commandeered by TFL for the East London line extension. I'm only ashamed to say we'd never been before.

With the temperature rising we can't wait for the festival season. We'll be off to the Lake District again this year for Woolfest at the end of June (as visitors only) then in July we're hosting Camp Bestival's knitting tent again. After the success of George, The Great British Sheep last year we're preparing for a deluge of activity. This year's line-up (as well as us!) inlcudes Kid Creole and the Coconuts and Chic. Discotastic! A knitting tent in the grounds of a castle by the sea in Dorset. What's not to love?

Visitors continue to arrive from far and wide to our little IKL. Holiday season in London brings a fresh influx of foreign fibre fans by land , sea and air. We love meeting so many knitters from far flung lands. Last Thursday's knit night was overflowing and we set up a couple of outside tables to cool off as the sun set. It's a peculiarly English thing to make the most of what you've got....we haven't got a paddling-pool yet but with a bit of knitting, a bottle of cider and a bowl of pear drops...well, just close your eyes and you could be a million miles away from SE1!

Camp Bestival and In The Loop

We've been quite for a while, not because we disappeared and took it easy but because we've been travelling along the south coat - more specifically to the In The Loop conference in Winchester, followed by Camp Bestival, where we hosted the UK's first festival knitting tent. More of that later....

Our first port of call was Winchester for a really special three-day knitting conference. Speakers ranged from r Martin Polley discussing Sportsmen and their sweaters: Using knitting patterns as historical reference (a favourite with the crowd due to the use of a certain undies ad featuring Freddie Ljundberg), to Sabrina Gschwandtner, Jennie Atkinson, Jane Waller and Rachel Beth Egenhofer's knitting/technology work. We were treated to a splendid array of subjects, plus got to meet the speakers, recent graduate artists and other delegates. There were many familiar faces to Gerard and myself, and hopefully we made some new ones too. Some of the talks and presentations meant more to us than others, and we were disappointed with the preponderence of machine-knitting and mass market knitwear presentations, but on the whole it was a brillaint three days. Some work by a couple of recent graduates will be shown at our I Knit Day in September and we hope to be giving our own presentation next year! If you can make it to Winchester it is well worth stopping by to visit the knitting refernece library, and, in Southampton the Montse Stanley collection which partly inspired the conference in the first place. One of the highlights for me was when I skipped out at lunchtime and did my now traditional charity shop crawl - came away with a few choice books, including Patricia Roberts Knitting Book 2. Best of all though was a market stall with a huge box full of patterns - they weren't cheap but I got them anyway and have quite a few nice 1930s and 1940s ones mixed in amongst the other stuff. They can be seen at the shop, where we are still deciding exactly what to do with all of our old patterns. After a terrible night's camping (nice campsite, shame it was next to a dual carriageway!) we opted for the posh option and stayed in a hotel for the rest of the stay!

That wasn't an option for rest of the weekend though, as we drove along to Lulworth castle to set up our Camp Bestival knitting tent. When Rob called way back when to ask if we'd like to do it we jumped at the chance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained! But not everything we do is a success, and there were thoughts that perhaps this could be one of those forgettable times! I'm ever the pessimist! Gerard, on the other hand, just believes everything is brilliant (he's right, of course) so all he needs to look to the heavens for is more beer (pictured). Who wants to knit at a festival anyway? Well, by the looks of it, quite a few people. The knitting tent was packed all weekend and we pretty much covered our fabulous Great British Sheep in glorious knitting. This was a genuinely family-friendly festival and the kids got so into it that the sheep now has an amazing finger-knitted necklace. But it was incredibly reassuring to see so many young people, including some very tiny ones, who could already knit, and especially the number of boys who didn't shirk from getting involved. it's interesting that they haven't (yet) received any of the stereotypes or hang-ups that quite a few men seem to encounter when they come near a ball of yarn and some needles - that said, we must pay respect to all the blokes who got down and knitted with us too. We had a brilliant team of volunteers who worked their bloody socks of all weekend and we thank them.

This was a really different festival -such a great atmosphere all weekend, mainly helped by the number of young 'uns running around. As Wayne Coyne (Flmaing Lips) said during his Saturday night headline slot, "I can't believe how many kids are here! All you people under 10 years old I want you to remember this moment and when you're older, turn to your parents and thank them for being so fucking COOL for bringing you to a festival like this!" How right you are Mr Coyle. It was loveliness all the way, and we even met up with some friends from The Shellac Sisters and regulars at the shop and knitting group too.

One of our main reasons for creating The Great British Sheep and taking parts in events like Camp Bestival are to get people knitting. We don't care how 'cool' it is, how old the knitters are, how crap you are at it, just as long as you're making stuff it doesn't really matter. It was great to see so many people getting involved and we must've taught well over a hundred people their first casting on and off. We just hope they take something away from the knitting tent and keep it up. It was certainly a resounding success and we're looking forward to doing it all over again next year.

And, if you really must say knitting's cool, then....we did have Kate Nash (pictured) along for the afternoon on Sunday and she gave the knitting tent a mention on the main stage during her set too. OK, so knitting is cool after all.

We could write so much more about the weekend, but at our age our memories don't hold much info. instead, take a look at our pictures for more...

summer festivals

I am only a little disappointed to say that I am not going to Glastonbury this year.

It's not because I'm too old it's because last year was a bit of a nightmare and by day 4 I couldn't wait to get home. The rain and the mud are not what made it a nightmare but the volume of punters. It was incredible. There must haved been about 3 million people. At least it felt like it.

The mud just got worse and worse because of the number of feet trudging through it. My legs were bionic by the end of the weekend. I was working back stage for WaterAid last year and I felt really let down by the number of hay bales that were delivered to the backstage bar to ensure people like Donnie Dickhead and Peaches and FiFi Trixythingy didn't get too much mud on their designer wellies while outside people were losing tents etc etc. Shocking.

Anyway, I should be telling you about the festival I am going to really. Camp Bestival in Dorset looks amazing. I really can't wait for this festival - Chubby Checker is one of the Headliners! - and I Knit London are hosting the festival's very first knitting tent!!!

Camp Bestival runs from 18th to the 20th July and so I'm packing shorts, deck chair and sun cream - oh and some yarn and needles.

We'll be teaching and using the knitbits to construct a glorious knitted sculpture. We'll need all the help we can get so if you are going to be at the festival come and say hello and do some knitting and maybe even a little piece for our sculpture.