Porpoise Knits: Rocking Kitchen Retreat: a stash-enhancement photo essay

So this past weekend, I headed up to West Yorkshire to spend some quality time with fellow knitwear designers at the first ever Rocking Kitchen Retreat, run by Joeli of Joeli's Kitchen, and Ruth of rock+purl. It was a great opportunity to meet a bunch of other UK designers, and swap ideas and tips and stories in a vast house for two days.

Ruth has been teasing us all on Twitter with 140 character hints about what was going to be in the goody bags, and the most recent vast box of yarn that had arrived at her studio. On Friday, we finally got to see the goods, as it were.

All of this yarn was crammed into a not-very-large bag. Along with the shade cards,

(that's not all of them), and a couple of books, and some needles and notions and OMG it was totally wicked!!!!

That was only the beginning. On Saturday, our hostesses pulled out a vast box of other yarn for people to dive into, plus some totally glorious taster skeins that were available for swatching. So, I swatched:

Yarns from Cascade, Lorna's Laces, Blacker Yarns and The Island Wool Company.

This is the final haul I brought home, after all was said and done. I'd like to be able to give you an actual yardage count, but I haven't yet found time to sit down and figure it out - it's gonna be a big number though! It was a fantastic weekend with a great group of people, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for some fellow designers! You can sign up for the Rocking Kitchen newsletter here, and that will keep you in the loop on any future goings on.

Without any further ado, here is the great and grand list of sponsors for the weekend - many thanks to all of them for their generosity and excitement about working with independent designers!