Crafting / Friends / Knitting

Dutch Knitting Days

Last week it was that time of year again: the Breidagen/BH-dagen/Knitting Days arrived! As opposed to the last two editions, this time spring didn’t arrive with it. It was cold. Very cold. Perfect weather, though, to wear all of your woolly goodness!

Just like the two previous years, I went there on both days. On Friday, I went by train. In Utrecht I met some knitting friends (Kerstballetje, Snorrepot, Lienbosmol and new friend Melleke), and together we took the sneltram to Nieuwegein. There was a queue already, and after getting my ticket, I could enter.

At half past eleven, I had a workshop by Loret Karman, which was very interesting and inspiring. She taught us about colour by giving us exercises. The first exercise was to extract a palette of seven colours from the picture of a painting, and glue that next to it in the dummy book we all had to bring. We also thought about so-called “guilty colours”, interpreted the term “meeting” in one single scrap during the coffee break, and made collages about contrasts.

After the workshop, it was already one o’clock, and I went to the hall to meet my Ravelry friends and to check out the stands. The first took quite some time, so by three o’clock I was finally ready to walk my first round across the hall. It was so nice to see everybody again! There was a nice, large knitting table, and Bloem had brought flowers and easter eggs to give it more atmosphere. There were quite some swaps to be made as well, everybody had been saving them up until the Breidagen to save on postage.

I sold some yarn that was not my colour and made some people very happy, and bought some yarn that was good for me, too. I also found the cutest little bag with artsy cats on it. Usually, I don’t especially like stuff that has things printed on it that I like, I like those things, not their images, but in this case, the colours and the beautiful artwork of the bag won me over. As for yarn, I bought some beautiful Posh from spectre120, some Indigodragonfly from fiberrachel, and then I bought two skeins of Krokus in beautiful muted greens and purples from DutchKnittingDesign and greenish blueish lace yarn from Loret Karman.

On Saturday I didn’t have a workshop, so I had all day to just enjoy the company and the yarn. I picked up Gloryfied, because today I went by car, and we arrived at around ten. Today even more Ravelry girls were at the BH-dagen, and it was great to see them all again. I walked around the hall with Gloryfied, and bought the Shilasdair I had been admiring yesterday. Two skeins of light blue and two skeins of dark blue will together be knitted into a Sundry.

Later that day I would also buy two skeins of pure silk for a lace shawl that I still want to design, and I picked up the Wollmeise DK in Bussi from Bloem and the Wollmeise Lace in a beautiful green from passepartout. The Lace will become a frietzak (our loving name for the Viajante shawl).

In the afternoon, I joined spectre120 in her duties as a Pattern Doctor, including wearing the white Doctor’s coat. We didn’t have many patients, but it was fun nonetheless. After lunch we walked across the hall a bit more, taking our time to take it all in, because there was so much to see. In the late afternoon we also announced the winner of the spinning challenge by Bart & Francis, the Belgian Boys, and the winner was cjadam, followed by tudbspinster, paarsetulp and lienbosmol. Congratulations to them all!

After two intense, great days, it was finally over. It was wonderful to see all of my knitting friends again. I feel very blessed to be part of such an awesome community!

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