(that’s Welsh for “Over the Weekend”)!
Well, what can I say? Buxton Wool Gathering was fab! Sunday was warm and sunny with LOTS of visitors – apparently more people came that day than came over the entire weekend of the previous year. After the show closed I was able to enjoy a plant-based salted caramel ice-cream on a bench in the Pavilion Gardens which was just the thing after a busy day.
The weather on Monday took a turn as expected and it rained for much of the morning, with a few drier hours in the afternoon. It was a quieter day at the show, as is usually the case with the second day of a yarn show (that’s why I tend to visit Wonderwool on a Sunday), but everyone who was there was having a good day and was cheerful about the rain.
It was wonderful that my lovely wife was able to help me set up my stand on Saturday. We drove over in the morning and, thanks to me believing my sat-nav knew what it was doing, ending up driving across (up?) the peaks and up the Cat & Fiddle – not quite the A road I’d been expecting! However, we still got there in good time, got everything looking beautiful on the stand and went off for an explore in the rain. The cable ties for the items on the clothes rail were such a good solution as it removed the problem of things sliding onto the floor!
We had lunch at The Herb Garden, a lovely little vegetarian cafe that was friendly and welcoming with super vegan choices. Following that there was more walking, Ronnie flew above the rooftops of Buxton, we explored some of the shops and then drove up to the Premier Inn.
After settling into our room we booked a table for dinner, chilled out and dried out a little, then walked back into the town centre for dinner. Once we had walked back to the hotel we’d clocked up over 12,000 steps!
Sue had to return to Wales on Sunday and so I was on the stand by myself, but not for long, as there were so many people to chat to, both vendors and visitors.
My immediate neighbours were brilliant company over the weekend and deserve a shout-out:
Zwölf Fibres had yarn and rugs from his own sheep and was doing his first ever show. Edelweiss Fibres had gorgeous hand-dyed yarns inspired by florals and the natural beauty of Scotland. Noodle Soup Yarns are also hand dyers, specialising in punchy colour on sock weight yarn and All Wool That Ends Wool had a wide range of full and mini skeins in bright and bold hand dyed colours.
You’ll see some of their stands at the end of this video I took on Monday morning:
I also got to meet Pod from A Happy Crow in person (I follow them on social media), learnt how to make a Saxon Vat for indigo dyeing without extra chemicals from the fab folks at Blotz Natural Dyes and managed to grab a few good chats with the one person I knew from before this show: Tanya from The Woolly Tangle.
There were lots of other fantastic folk there as well, but my brain can only remember so much today, so please forgive me if I was chatting to you and haven’t given you a mention.
A couple of designing highlights of the weekend were: when two people came round the corner and one exclaimed “I recognise that!”, pointing to Bargello Aurora Wrap which she had just finished knitting and when someone at my stall said “I’ve got a list”, and just as I was thinking she was going to ask for the whereabouts of some the other vendors, showed me the section of the list she meant – she had gone through the patterns on the website and had a list of six patterns she wanted!
There were lots of other great moments – those are just the two that stand out most in my thoughts at present.
Sue had made dinner when I got home on Monday evening and it was so good to sit down to eat a home-prepared meal. I slept REALLY well too!
This morning I combined my notes of sales from each day and was delighted to realise I’d sold 77 patterns and 4 kits – so over 80 patterns in total. That led to some very necessary re-printing (especially as I’d sold 22 copies of Tiffany) in readiness for Wool@J13 this coming weekend! That will be a slightly smaller event in term of number of vendors (about 30 rather than 50), but there will be food vans and music and workshops happening as well, so it promises to be a lively show. The stands are in a marquee in the grounds of Bishton Hall; fingers crossed the weather improves a bit from what we’ve had today and the grass has a chance to dry out beforehand – especially for those brave souls who will be camping! Not me, I’ll be extending my range of Premier Inns visited.
I didn’t get much knitting done while I was away – though I did manage to turn the heel of a sock I’m working on during a quiet patch on Monday. I will be glad to get back to the needles for a last bit of swatching for my next design during the next few days before I pack up the car on Friday and do it all again!
Did you have a good weekend? K x
I am so glad you had a good time at Buxton