Quite a few people have asked us why we moved back to Australia during the southern hemisphere winter. Truthfully, it's just the way it worked out. However, in addition to the Norah Gaughan class at Sunspun, another great woolly reason to return home in winter is the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show.
Alternatively called 'Bendi' or 'Spendigo', the Sheep and Wool Show is really the highlight of a fibre enthusiast's calendar in Australia. There are a few other events in Australia, but Bendi is the biggest and brightest.
Half farm show, half wool festival, Bendi brings wool lovers from all over Australia. There are sheds, barns and marquees with indie yarn dyers, designers, bag and tool makers and this year I noticed quite few wool millls in attendane - Adagio Mills, Nundle Mill and Great Ocean Road Mill.
As well as the wool products there are lots of sheep to look at (and book for a stud service if you needed that), fashion shows, and a very impressive sheep shearing demonstration. Not to mention the delicious food - so much amazing lamb to eat.
I bought a few things - wool, fudge, jam and chutney, and was sorely tempted by all the lovely yarns and had a lovely day out with some knitting friends.
While I was still in London, I managed to book myself into a lecture and a class with Norah Gaughan at Sunspun in Canterbury - so I had something to look forward to when I arried backk in Australia. The lecture was really interesting - Norah mostly focussed on the way she builds cable designs, that is the cable stitch pattern itself. Broadly speaking, once Norah has a starting point she then follows a logical flow - looking to expand, carve parts out, contract or flip the stitches, or substitute different cables in amongst an existing stitch pattern. She also talked about taking a dreamier approach - turning the swatches over and around, playing out 'what if' scenarios.
Norah brought lots and lots of samples forus to try on. There was the Circlet Shrug from issue 3 of Making Magazine and also the Flared Pullover from Norah's Cable Sourcebook that really caught my attention.
The class that followed the next morning was focussed on hats - Norah gave charts for different styles of hats and different cable patterns - all interchangeable, and interchangeable with other cable patterns in the Cable Sourcebook.
I came out of the class, and lecture, feeling really inspired to incorporate more cables into my knitting - whether that's simply adding a cable stitch pattern into an existing pattern, substituting cables for others that are more appealling, or even knitting more of Norah's designs as is!
It also encouraged me to incorporate more of the techniques I learned in the Di Gilpin crazy cabling class at Edinburgh Yarn festival to make the cables really pop. First up is a shawl pattern called N-ogee and then a cardigan that incorporates the circlet shrug stitch pattern, but in a garment style that suits me better!
