Around the world in 177 days

Today, quite out of the blue, Interweave Knits Fall ‘06 arrived in my post box. It was a re-send, as the original failed to arrive. I’ve already received another re-send of Fall, and a Winter re-send, plus my Spring ‘07  which actually arrived here in good time without incidence.

But what happened to this particular Fall issue, that I gave up on long ago as MIA?

Well, it was postmarked as sent on Sep 26 2006 from Escondido CA, USA.

It was correctly addressed, and franked with adequate postage.

It’s taken 177 days in the mail – almost 6 months to the day – to reach me.

And this little stamp on the outside of the envelope tells me just why:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All my bags are packed and I’m ready to go….

Well, almost packed. On Tuesday I’ll be out of here for a couple of weeks. Heading first to Port Fairy for a week, culminating in the Port Fairy Folk Festival for the 4 days of the long weekend. Then onto Melbourne with my trading stand at the Stitches & Craft Show, 14th – 18th March.

I’ve been going to Port Fairy Folk Festival for several years now, and it’s the perfect way to combine business and pleasure. Trading during the day, concert going during the evening. As Mr Knitterly Notions isn’t such a great music lover as I, he’s more than happy to man the stand for periods during the day too, so I can nip off to a singing workshop or an unmissable artist!

This year we’re heading down a few days early, with the aforementioned bicycles hitched onto the back of my campervan. We’ll be spending some time idling around the locality, getting ready for the chaos and fray of the big shows to come.

Well, let’s hope it’s the usual chaos and fray. I’ve been over to the Stitches & Craft Show website and have to say, there’s far fewer knitting related retailers listed than is usual at the March event. Granted, it’s a huge outlay for even a small sized patch – I think my sites at these larger shows averages $5000. Then add the cost of travel and accommodation, and it puts it well out of the range of some of the smaller retailers, particularly as you’ll need to take at least double those costs before you even start to turn some profit. I know I’m always nervous for the first days of the bigger shows, until I know I’ve passed over that invisible line, from loss into profit.

But then I don’t have such large outlays as some – I have my campervan in the nearest caravan park for accomodation, and self-cater for most of my meals; no need for expensive motel bills or restaurant food every day. In fact I love ‘roughing’ it in the campervan. At the end of a frantic day of trading it’s like coming home to an oasis of calm. I usually pour myself a glass of red, settle down in front of the TV and snuggle in for the night.

But the shortage of knitting stalls doesn’t bode too well for this month’s show; I usually find business is far more brisk when there are lots of yarn related retailers together in the one place, rather than just a sprinkling of knitting sites across the show.  And also, from the perspective of the knitting public, there’s not so much to draw them there in the first place (assuming they’ve looked at the exhibition website and the list of exhibitors there). If they do actually make it to the show, will they return again the next year if they’ve been disappointed with the limited representation of their craft? And will they tell their friends of their disappointment?

I wonder what the future of these large craft shows is. I personally believe they try too hard to be all things to all people and never really achieve acclaim in any of the areas they do business. Now, my idea of the ideal craft show model would have to be the Knitting & Stitching Show in the UK. Have you ever been there ? The largest is held at Alexandra Palace, the people’s palace in the London suburbs, and there’s shows in Harrogate and in Dublin (Ireland) too. I’ve managed it to Ally Pally a couple of times from Australia, and it’s Heaven. Why does it work ? My views on that will have to wait for another day – for now I must get back to packing.

See you in a fortnight or so – or drop by and say hello if you happen to be visiting the show at Caulfield Racecourse.

Cycular Knitting

Somehow I’ve become a cyclist. Here I am, at the age of 50, having not regularly ridden a bicycle since before my teens, and now I have my first ever shiny new bike!

I have to say we did a trial run first with a second hand  ’70s vintage Raleigh Stowaway folding bicycle bought on eBay last year. I needed to have a low step-through (none of these uni-sex cross bars for me!), and something fully adjustable to cater for the assortment of injuries I’ve gathered over the years. I also needed to gain a lot of confidence – I’ve got spectacularly awful balance problems  at times which can (when I get an MS flare up) mean me toppling over every time I turn my head , so I needed to be in as much control over my fate as possible. But, much to my surprise, after a few weeks practise I was ready to upgrade.

So I’m now the proud owner of a Malvern Star ‘Bayside’ hybrid, and it’s working out very well. The bigger wheels (27″ as opposed to the Raleigh’s 20″ or  22″ish) mean I expend much less energy to cover the same distance, and last weekend we did my longest trip to date – the 30km Capital City Trail around Melbourne, with an extra 4km detour added on.  The ride starts at Flinders Street Station, goes along Southbank and Birrarung Marr through Richmond & Burnley, following the banks of the Yarra river all the way. Sometimes even on the river, as they’ve done a sort of floating boardwalk/cycle path  in places. Then onto Hawthorn and Collingwood (through the children’s farm) and up towards Yarra Bend and Dights Falls. It was from here that we took a detour to The Fairfield Boathouse, parked our bikes and then devoured the most enormous afternoon tea of scones & cream and iced coffees (and I thought cycling would help me shed some kilos. How wrong was I !) We then picked up the Merri Creek to Rushal, and rode back into Melbourne where we’d parked at the University. There’s no doubt, riding around Melbourne on a bike gives you access and views that you never get to see in your regular commute. Another trip we’d done was from Caulfield out along to the coast, up the Bay to Port Melbourne and back to Caulfield via the Elwood Canal. There’s another little world to be found among the backwaters of the city and suburbs, which is usually lost to those us who are in a hurry to get from A to B by the quickest route possible. We’ve also done a bike trail from Eltham to Diamond Creek via the aquaduct, and back through to Eltham, which offered some delightful scenery and surroundings.

Now, whilst there are many advantages to riding a bike, there is a huge drawback. You can’t knit and be in proper charge of the machine at the same time. Not that I’ve tried, I hasten to add – though I did once holiday on the Isle of Wight with a boyfriend on a tandem bicycle, which could have provided suitable knitting opportunities.  I just peddled in time at the back, without really having to worry about steering the thing. But this does mean that this new found mode of transport and recreation takes away a great deal of knitting time, and I suspect that could well have been one of my partner’s ulterior motives as he encourages me to pedal on to greater things.