Stitch n Bitch

We've found a new venue! The Swan Hotel have said that they'll let us have the little room at one end of the bar, which has a big table to sit round, and will fit up to 20 people - which is a lot better than the shop. More than half a dozen in there, and we're sitting knee to knee. So next week, we'll be there, in our new spacious surroundings.
We also have a new gentleman in the group, who knits his own jumpers. He said this will give him a bit of impetus to finish off the three different projects he's got half-finished at home. It's nice not to be an all female group - as Joyce said, why shouldn't men knit as well?
Val Tyler is running around the country doing publicity for her books. On Sunday 11th November, though, she doesn't have to go any further than Glasbury Village Hall. She'll be there with Jenny Valentine, another local children's author, to be interviewed by local teenagers. Val wrote The Time Wreccas, and Jenny Valentine wrote Finding Violet Park, about a kid who finds the old lady's ashes and tries to find out more about her life. Jenny has a lot more to do than work on the sequel at the moment, though. She's just taken over the Wholefood shop from Mandy.
Tracy, meanwhile, is enjoying working for the King. She went with him to the U3A lecture on life under Stalin last week, and after the success of the Phil Rickman book signing, she's been approached by someone who wants to launch his poetry book from the Castle. Richard will be involved somehow in the visit to Hay of the Timbuktu delegation, and Tracy will be doing her best to organise him. What she really likes, though, is working in a real castle! She's learning to weave - she showed us a lovely shawl/scarf that she wove from her own handspun alpaca and silk mix - and she'd like to weave a wall hanging for her office in the Castle. We've made her promise to show us her new felt hat, too - which is conical with a twist up it to suggest the unicorn's horn, and has a crenellated brim.