It was such fun spending time with Amanda – it was the first time I’d met a blogging buddy, and it was lovely how we felt we knew each other already!

I couldn’t leave this beautiful area without sharing some pictures of it, so I stopped by Bassenthwaite lake to take some photos. I spent quite a bit of time in the Lake District as a child, as my father worked in Grasmere a lot, and I have many fond memories of our visits there.

However, I did end up feeling rather like a character in a Jane Austen novel this weekend – the type of character who catches a chill from not wrapping up warmly enough, is almost dead by chapter three, but then recovers only to appreciate the foolishness of her previous ways … I’m not almost dead, and I’m quite fond of my foolish ways, but I did catch a chill, either from not wrapping up warmly enough, or maybe from just being too much of a soft southener!

Amanda and I were saying that, to our friends, we are both pretty knitting obsessed. At Woolfest, however, we felt like lightweights. There were people here taking home huge bin liners full of fleeces, I’m not sure if they actually met the sheep and shook its hoof first, but that would almost certainly have been possible…

There was this lovely lady with her shepherdess frock and crook. I didn’t see where she had left her sheep, but they must have been somewhere nearby.

There was the Big Knit Project, raising money for breast cancer – the lovely Lily had a go at this:

There were some amazing and beautiful yarns, painted, dyed and spun by some fabulously creative and talented people. This is what Amanda bought:

And this is what Lily bought:

And me? I thought if I posted theirs first, Steve would realise it would be clear to all just how abstemious I have actually been …

So, I’m sitting in my room at the hotel where I’m staying in Cockermouth, and I can hear in the sitting room next door a group of lovely ladies who have spent two days travelling here from the north of Scotland. They are carding, spinning, knitting and crocheting, and I’ve been chatting with them every time I’ve gone to or from my room. In the next room to me is ClaireUK; we’ve just got back from a knit-and-natter at Graysonside, where I got to meet Amanda and her lovely daughter Lily!

Graysonside is a campsite and b&b that has been completely overrun by taken over by knitters for the weekend. I had a bit of a role reversal there: I left my knitting in the hotel, so I was the only person there without needles, a hook, or even a spinning wheel!

I do most of my knitting on the train, where I am always the only person doing it, so it was funny to feel like the odd one out for not doing it!

Cockermouth is about a six-hour drive from where I live, or nine hours by train. Instead of either of these, I used some airmiles to fly to Manchester then hired a car to drive the rest of the way. Not only was this the quickest way to get here but also, scarily, the cheapest!

Well, it would have been the cheapest if I hadn’t got distracted by the Bobbi Brown duty free make-up place… I went to buy a lip gloss, and also came out with this:

Look! Detachable bits! It’s such a neat idea – a compact with detachable eyeshadow and blushers, so you can buy your favourite colours and keep them all together! (Shallow? Moi? Absolutely!)

My other goody for the day is a bag of fabulous home-cooked cookies given to me by Amanda:

They’re delicious, but I have to stop eating them or I am going to be sick…