Knitting in Sheringham

I have just been to Sheringham, on the north Norfolk coast, for a knitting weekend.  It was mainly for the Leighton Buzzard branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild, but was open to other Guild members too.  There were 26 of us altogether, and we took over Sheringham Youth Hostel.  There were some talks and workshops, and in between we did a lot of talking and a lot of knitting.  The hostel staff provided breakfast and dinner, and it was a really good weekend - thanks very much to Brigitte for organising it.  

The theme of Saturday morning was knitting in World War 1, with talks from Rita Taylor and from Lesley Lougher of Sheringham Museum.  Lesley talked about an exhibition this summer on Queen Mary's Needlework Guild, and the activities of local women during the war.

In the afternoon, there was a programme of workshops.  Back in 2011, I did a workshop with Mary Graham on knitting with wire, and she led another in Sheringham, so it was a good opportunity to have another go.  She provided wire, needles and beads, and I knew from my previous attempt that in a couple of hours it is possible to knit something interesting. Here's what I produced in Sheringham:

Being wire you can change its shape quite a lot, so I bent it into a flatter, swirly shape and wore it as brooch for the rest of the day.  I was very pleased with my effort, though it's very crude compared to the pieces that Mary knits.  She knits things that resemble seed pods and other organic shapes, and are clearly intended to look like that, rather than happening entirely accidentally like mine - her knitting is much more even than I can achieve in wire, too.  But I'm happy with my strange little 3-d shape.

In the second workshop session of the afternoon, I repeated the workshop on slip-stitch patterns that I did at the Knitaway weekend in Blackpool last October.  It was good to see people successfully knitting very neat samples of linen stitch - or in one case a blanket square in 3-in-1 stitch, in 2 colours.

The Youth Hostel in Sheringham is only about half a mile from the sea, and we had three days of no rain - even some sun on Sunday morning.  (I think the first time I've experienced two days in succession without rain since November.)  So I walked through the town to the shore a couple of times.

Sheringham is a nice little town - "twixt sea and pine" apparently, though I didn't spot any pine trees.  It's now at the end of the railway line from Norwich, but before the Beeching cuts, the line continued and the station was the other side of the main street, beyond a level crossing.

It must have been highly inconvenient to have the traffic held up whenever there was a train, and so when the line was terminated at Sheringham, the station was moved.  But the old station is still there, and is now the start of a heritage line to Holt.

Much more attractive than the new station, which has no buildings at all - just a sort of bus shelter.  There aren't even any seats, just sloping ledges to rest on.   (I'm not feeling very warm towards the operators of the Sheringham-Norwich line, because the train I should have got on my way home was cancelled, and the next one was late, so I was very late getting home.)

You can walk miles along the coast from Sheringham, in either direction, but I didn't have time for a long walk. But you should at least see the sea when you are at the seaside.

I started knitting a small scarf last week, to have something portable and straightforward to work on during the weekend, and I finished it on Saturday.  I've wet-blocked it - I'll write about it when it's dry.