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.