Tag: Wonderwool Wales

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Twist and Shout

I’ve got to an exciting point in the sweater design I’m working on. I recalculated various points:

  • the cast-on and full stitch counts for all sizes
  • the underarm cast-off numbers
  • the length up to the underarm
  • the length from the underarm cast-off to the shoulders

And I’ve knitted up to nearly the shoulders of the back in the sample size.

This afternoon I re-calculated the shoulder cast-off numbers for all the sizes. So, later on today I will be able to finish the back and start the front.

When I say ‘all the sizes’, there are eight sizes to fit chests from 34-64″, so it’s quite a bit of maths, but not as much as in Sugar Loaf Cardigan where there are 20 sizes and two length options! I am eternally grateful to past me for learning how to crunch some of the numbers in Excel.

I wish I could share photos with you, but I can’t yet, not until the design has been published. So you’ll just have to trust me that it’s looking good!

I’ve recently updated my moebius knitting workshop notes and changed the way I’m going to teach it. I’m looking forward to leading this workshop at Wonderwool Wales this coming weekend (both days – both sold out!) and also next month at Buxton Wool Gathering. There are spaces on the Buxton moebius workshop if you’d like to learn this fascinating construction method.

Knitting a ‘true’ moebius is a lot more than knitting a thin rectangle and putting a twist in before seaming the short ends together. It’s all to do with how you cast on, to create a piece with one side and one edge and one cast-off: mind-boggling for a three-dimensional piece of fabric!

These are pictures of my four designs that use a moebius cast-on (Mirror Mirror Moebius, Forest Ferns Moebius, Twisted and Gnarly Roots which includes both a moebius and a ‘straight’ version in the pattern), plus the headband we will knit in the workshop and also the striped cowl that was my first foray into the wonderful world of moebius knitting. I started with the blue, changed to purple, then green, then black, then cast off. The same colours also magically appear below the central colour where I started! And, because you see the back of the knitting on the lower half and the front of the knitting on the top half, with Twisted, my brioche moebius cowl, you get to see both wonderful sides of brioche at the same time!

If you’d like to attend a workshop that isn’t about moebius knitting, I’m also teaching an introduction to sock knitting and an introduction to lace knitting, both at Sew Woolly in Cheadle, both on Wednesday May 28th. The sock workshop is in the morning (10-12.30) and the lace workshop is in the afternoon (1.30-4pm). To book, message the shop through their facebook or instagram pages. This screenshot of their Facebook page also includes a phone number if you’re not on either platform:

Another part of my preparations for Wonderwool Wales this year has been deciding which samples I’m going to offer for sale. This is not something I’ve done before! These are all designs for which I have other samples that I use on display. Some of them have been used as display samples, some haven’t, but none of them have been worn. The prices range from £30 to £90. That might sound expensive, so let me tell you how I calculated them. First I took the price of the yarn, as it cost when I bought it, not what it would cost now – for example £20 per skein for 100g hand-dyed 4ply yarn. Then I took the meterage of the yarn and multiplied that by 17.5p. So, 17.5 pence per metre. That’s the labour charge – it’s not the cheapest price per metre for sample knitting (which tends to vary from 12-20p/m), but these are mostly lace or brioche samples, so not the easiest knitting. I used the full meterage of the skeins as most of the designs had very little left over and it was a lot easier than weighing the samples (and you’re about to see another good reason for not worrying about the exact meterage!). Add that to the cost of the yarn. And then? I halved the number. That’s right – in half. So, if £90 for a hand-knitted brioche shawl in hand-dyed yarn seems a lot to you, remember it *should* have been nearer £180!

There’s a Drifting Leaves, a Beth March shawl, an Amy March shawl, a Llandudno Promenade shawl, a Calon Cariad shawl and a Croeso Baby Blanket to choose from. The samples pictured on the website in the links aren’t the ones for sale as those are my new samples. There are of course, only one of each of these, so when they are gone, they are gone. It’ll be really interesting to see if folk want to buy these samples – I always get one or two people asking if samples are for sale at events.

I made a vegan fruit cake at the weekend – the same recipe I usually use for Christmas cake, except we didn’t have one this year. It’s for Mum’s birthday and was specifically requested and I’m so glad I re-checked the recipe in advance. I always seem to forget that the fruit has to be soaked overnight before making the actual cake! Maybe if I made it more frequently I would remember this. Actually that’s not a bad idea. I had to buy a packet of xanthan gum specially for this recipe (and it only uses 1/4 tsp!), so I may as well make the most of it!

By the way, the singing from the bell tower last Thursday went really well! We had to go up twice, once in rehearsal and once in the service, with strategically placed bags for life at the bottom of the spiral staircase to put our cassocks and surplices in. There was no way that going up the steep and tight spiral staircase would have been remotely safe whilst wearing our choir robes!

If you celebrated Easter in any way I hope you had a good one and if you didn’t I hope you had a lovely weekend doing whatever you did. Will I see you at Wonderwool this coming weekend? If not, I’ll tell you all about it next week. K x

Wonderwool Wales, 26-27th April 2025

I am so excited to be exhibiting at Wonderwool Wales once more this year. I will be teaching there as well! I won’t be adding the workshop (or ‘woolschool’ as they are called at Wonderwool) to the website as it is already sold out on both days!

I will be in Hall 3 again where the sheepwalks take place. It’s a great space, with plenty of seating and coffee available too.

 

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And… relax

Well, Wonderwool Wales was absolutely fantastic!

The organisation was amazing and the team of stewards managed to stay cheerful throughout the day whether directing traffic at 8am/6pm, helping man stalls so folk could go for a loo break if they were on their own or modelling items on the Sheepwalk. It really makes a difference when you know that if you need help with something, asking a person in a crocheted version of a hi-vis vest will actually get you the answer, or point you in the direction of someone else who will know! I hope that Chrissie and her team are taking a well-earned rest now.

It may seem strange to start by talking about the organisation and ‘backstage’ part of the show, but until I started exhibiting/vending at yarn shows (and then helping to run one myself!) I didn’t have any idea about what was involved. Getting 205 different companies set up in three large agricultural sheds for a weekend, when everyone has at least one vehicle they need to unload from and we all want to minimise the carrying/wheeling distance is no mean feat. The set-up time was from 12-8pm on Friday and although a lot of folk arrived at 12 or shortly after as we did, it was spread out over that time period. Not so the get-out. The show finished at 4.30pm on Sunday. Everyone packs down their stand and returns any hired tables and chairs to the show office or nearest steward (thanks Amy!) and goes to reclaim their furniture deposit. Then everyone wants to get their vehicle out of the exhibitors’ car park, load up and go home. It could have been chaos, but it wasn’t. A short wait in the queue to get out of the car park, told the steward which hall we were in and where we wanted to go to load up, and we were loaded and out of the show ground by 6pm!

So, what about the bit in between? The actual yarn show? It was amazing. I had to keep pinching myself that we were really there. After so many years as a visitor thinking “I’d love to do this”, now I actually am! I loved every bit of it – talking to visitors, explaining patterns and techniques, pulling my on-the-go brioche swatch out of my pocket for an impromptu brioche tutorial (many times!), modelling Meg March Shawl and Twisted moebius cowl on the sheepwalk (four times!) and helping folk choose which patterns or kits they’d like to buy.

The Sheepwalk was fun. When I first went to Wonderwool I saw the Sheepwalk listed in the brochure and thought it must be a livestock display. There are plenty of animals at the show after all – sheep in particular. But that’s not it at all – it’s a fashion show of items from different exhibitors, some modelled by the makers/designers themselves (as I did), some by stewards and volunteers from the audience and it happens twice each day.

I loved catching up with some of the other vendors too – though I didn’t have time to talk to everyone I would have liked to. I also completely failed to take any photos other than a few photos of our stand. Sue did get a pic of a customer’s Nevern Lap Blanket though. She had chosen to use just one of the charts with a whole range of colours of tapestry wool and omit the garter stitch borders, and it looks amazing. This is a photo of the photo on the customer’s phone.

Another knitter arrived wearing Tiffany, which literally made me gasp. I still find it a little surprising and a whole lot delightful when I see people wearing my designs that they have knitted. And someone else showed me her Forest Ferns Moebius in progress being made with two gorgeous yarns held double.

The only reason I was able to take part in the Sheepwalk was because Sue was with me at the show, and was able (and happy) to look after the stand and customers while I wasn’t there. She was an absolute trooper throughout the entire event. I am so proud of how much she is able to tell folk about the designs now and how many questions she is able to answer too! It’s quite a luxury to be able to do something you love with the person you love. Sue’s help also means I’ll be able to apply to lead workshops at more shows in the future, something I haven’t done as much before due to running the stand on my own.

There are a couple of things to learn from this year’s Wonderwool for the future. One is to bring more patterns and kits that tend to sell well. I brought 20 copies of each of Nevern Throw and Nevern Lap Blanket and by the end of Saturday we only had 2 copies of the Throw and 6 of the Lap Blanket left – and they were all gone by about 11.30am on Sunday! We also sold out of the large Twisted kits (partly thanks to the Sheepwalks I think!). Another is that when we’re staying somewhere with no lift that’s on the third floor to check we’ve got the soya milk out of the ‘under storage’ part of the car boot… There were 65 steps up from the ground to our apartment and we have bungalow legs! On both days we’d got to the top before realising something important had been left in the car… It was a lovely apartment though and I’d happily stay there again – even with all those steps!

There was lots of interest in Sugar Loaf Cardigan with its ‘Coming soon!’ sign and I’m hoping that will be ready to go up online and be printed out for Buxton Wool Gathering which is less than 3 weeks away!

I had taken a sock to knit during quiet times, but there weren’t really any. I did a little on it each evening and it can be my yarn show project for the next few months. The yarn is from Weku Yarns (they’ve stopped dying yarn now, which makes this skein even more special) and the pattern is my Bodelwyddan sock pattern. The colours in the yarn are creating some really interesting patterns – this is called pooling.

The past couple of days have been about checking stock levels, making sure the numbers add up correctly in the takings, analysing what sold (and what didn’t), reprinting some patterns and starting to plan new ideas. There are several – ideas for new knitting designs, about stand layout, whether to get another collapsible brochure display stand for my designs etc.

You may also have noticed that my website looks a little different. I kept getting a message that my website ‘theme’ was incompatible with ‘AMP’ (I’m still not sure what that is, but it seems important) and that I needed to change it, so I looked through the themes that were listed as being compatible, did a preview of this one, and changed to it. The computer seems to think this theme isn’t compatible with AMP either, but having just had to rebuild my homepage from scratch, I’m not changing it again just yet! What do you think of it?

Take care one and all, and I’ll tell you more about some of my future plans next time. K x

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It’s Really All Happening!

There are only a few days left before we travel to Wonderwool Wales! I’ll be in Hall 3, Stand W16.

Late this afternoon and early evening I’ve been going through edits on Sugar Loaf Cardigan from my tech editor. It’s getting there! Sue did a fabulous job of modelling the cardigan outside at the weekend so I could take some proper photos and the pics were really well received on social media:

I made the sample in this size as it’s the size of my mannequin, but I hadn’t realised that the mannequin has no shoulders and therefore the cardigan doesn’t sit right on it. A real person shape complete with shoulders was needed for the photos, and I was sooo grateful that Sue agreed to be the model!

Note: The final thing I do when I write a blog post is to choose the title of the post. I initially chose “It’s All Happening” as that seemed to encapsulate the week. But I did my usual check in case I’d used that title before. And I had! On December 5th 2023 when I’d just cast on the sleeves for Sugar Loaf Cardigan! So, I tweaked the title a little to avoid a repeat, and because I like the link between two posts referencing the cardigan!

Even before we go to Wonderwool, I have a workshop tomorrow night – and there’s still time to book! Introduction to Brioche Knitting is the same workshop I taught at Wool-in Garden City and it’s a great one – and tomorrow I will be teaching it at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley.

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago I updated my website with pages that grouped my designs by yarn weight. I now have a new events page as well!

This replaces my “Where I’ll Be” page and hopefully will be a better way of seeing what workshops are available and which shows I’m going to be at.

See that ‘Beginners’ Knitting Workshop’ on the drop-down list above? That’s taking place at Ditzy Rose in Tattenhall on May 23rd.

It’s an afternoon workshop, 1-3.30pm, so it won’t suit everyone time-wise, but if you know anyone who would like to learn to knit, or return to knitting after a long break, then please point them towards this workshop! Nikki, who hosts all the many and varied workshops at Ditzy Rose, is lovely and welcoming and will be providing drinks and cake as part of the £30 price of the workshop.

All the details are on my Events page about it as well as the Facebook event page. If you’d like to book, email nikki@ditzyrose.co.uk

I have actually done quite a bit of knitting as well this week, but guess what? I can’t show it to you! I did, however, ball up a skein of gorgeous sock yarn that Sue chose from Weku Yarns when we were at Wool-in Garden City. It never ceases to amaze me how different yarn can look in a skein and in a ball. And different yet again when knitted up! Of course, if I was super clever I’d have made sure I’d got a photo of it in the skein before I wound it up, but I didn’t, so here it is all wound up.

I’m going to have to keep this one short today as my head is a bit mashed after driving down to Mum’s yesterday and then back again today (followed by the number crunching). It was a quick impromptu visit in advance of her birthday and it was lovely.

I’ll see you on the other side of Wonderwool and have lots to tell you next week. K x

P.S. If you come to Wonderwool, please do come and say hello!

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Meg and Mog

I posted on social media today that I’m exhibiting at Wonderwool Wales in a couple of weeks’ time. Held at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells, Wonderwool is an aptly named show that I really recommend (it’s always been by favourite to go to as a visitor) and I’m going to have quite a few new kits (including six kits for Meg March Shawl!) and one or maybe even more new patterns with me.

In case you don’t access social media, here is the content of my post (apologies if you’ve already seen it everywhere):

In just a couple of weeks I’ll be exhibiting at @wonderwoolwales for the first time!

Hall 3 Stand W16.

As well as samples and patterns, I will have lots of kits, some handmade project bags, hand burnt wooden items and printed postcards of my designs. 

Come and say hello if you are visiting the show. 

27-28 April at the Royal Welsh Showground.

Pictured are: Top – Meg March Shawl (patterns and kits available), Bottom, left to right – stand display from Wool-in Garden City; Lichfield (pattern available); more of my stand from Wool-in Garden City.

Something else you may already have read about if you follow me on the socials is that I’ve done some work on my website and you can now browse my knitting designs by yarn weight.

The Patterns page has a set of yarn weight links as well as the original links to the pages that organise the designs by type:

Clicking on one of the yarn weight options will take you to the relevant page where all the patterns that are designed for (or also work well in) that particular yarn weight are grouped. These are the first six designs on the DK page – all designs on each page are listed alphabetically:

Even quicker, the yarn weight page links are also options in the main menu, so you can jump to the one you want straight from any page:

I am going to be doing some more work on the website during the year, setting up a WooCommerce store which will give folk lots of different ways to search for what they like – I can’t give any promises on when that will be done by though!

a black cat sitting on a pink and brown checked rug looking at the camera

Cleo, my mum’s cat, has been on my blog before. This photo was taken in February when she was slowing down, but still doing ok. The past week has been a fast decline for her though and yesterday, when I arrived at Mum’s, I could see she wasn’t well at all. This morning I took her to the vets and for Cleo it was a one way trip. It’s been a very sad day as you can probably imagine, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I stop here and leave you with Cleo’s beautiful eyes.

Take care, look after yourselves and do something that makes you smile this week. For me that will be casting on the full version of a new design that will (I think) be out in August. K x

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Housiversary

Part of a crocheted octagon motif from the Persian Tiles blanket by Janie Crow. It is in orange, red, dark blue, teal, yellow, light blue and cream.

Twenty years ago today we moved into our bungalow. Moving from our little flat we thought that we’d never run out of space again. How naive we were!

Regular clear outs and de-clutters have to happen to help us still fit into our home that has become more and more ‘us’ over the years. During the time we’ve been here, pretty much the only things that haven’t been changed are the walls and the bathroom (apart from the basin which had to be replaced). The garden has grown along with us too: the daffodils we planted in the lawn last year are starting to come up, the roses and fruit bushes are ready for pruning and the hellebores and snowdrops look beautiful.

It’s made me think about how things can change over time so that even though technically you’re in the same place, in other ways you’re definitely not.

When we moved in I was 30, teaching music (still part-time then) and singing as a regular alto dep at the cathedral. Now I’m 50, I’ve been out of the classroom for 5 1/2 years, I’m working with yarn full time, designing, teaching knitting, exhibiting at yarn shows and I’m singing again.

Back in the day I had made a couple of (quite simple) crochet jumpers and I loved them. I made a couple of granny square blankets too. Then I didn’t do any crochet for years, apart from the odd edging to a piece of knitting or an amigurumi, such as the unicorn I made for my sister-in-law and the Pikachu I made for Sue.

Then last year I started the Mystical Lanterns blanket designed by Janie Crow and loved it. I’ve not yet finished it, but it’s coming on. And last week I began my most challenging crochet project yet – the Persian Tiles blanket, again designed by Janie Crow. I’ve completed one octagon motif which was very successful and tried a small granny triangle which is a little lopsided at the moment.

Persian Tiles octagon motif

It’s so good to learn new things, especially when you teach – getting yourself into the place of ‘not knowing’ is really valuable to understand what it feels like for your students!

I mentioned exhibiting at yarn shows. I’ve already publicised that I’ll be at East Anglia Yarn Festival (EAYF) in Norwich next month and Buxton Wool Gathering in May.

I can now let you know that I’ll also be at Wonderwool Wales in April! This is held at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells and has always been my favourite show to visit, so I’m thrilled to be exhibiting there.

I’ll be back at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight too in August. And there may be more shows to tell you about in the coming months as well!!

In terms of designing, I’m juggling a couple of things at the moment. The sleeves for the adult Honeybun are nearly complete – I just need to work out how to add the extra shoulder shaping into the pattern writing.

Then the button band and it’s off to the tech editor! Fingers crossed it will be ready for Wonderwool.

I’m also working on a lovely reversible cowl which I hope will be out quite soon (no pics of that yet).

I bought some fab yarn at Ewe & Ply on Saturday and it’s already being used!

Caramel Slice was first published in The Knitter in August last year and the rights have now returned to me. The pattern is now in my own format and I’ve taken some new photos with Shelby modelling the cardigan. Once these have been fully edited and added to the pattern it will be ready to be published and I will have printed copies of the pattern with me at EAYF!

I’m at my mum’s until tomorrow – Cleo the cat says hello:

And I’ll say goodbye until next week!

Take care all and have a good week, K x

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Have You Any Wool?

A very colourful range of fibre braids, skeins and balls of yarn and a knitting pattern laid out side by side

Oh yes!

If you follow me on social media (Twitter, Instagram or Facebook), you will have seen my post yesterday explaining that this week’s blog post would be delayed a day. If you’ve been waiting and didn’t know, I’m sorry. It will be worth the wait though, promise!

On Sunday I went to Wonderwool at the Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells. It has long been my favourite yarn show, partly because the scale of the buildings means you can move about freely and there are plenty of areas of seating as well as a HUGE number of vendors exhibiting their wares.

It was wonderful and slightly overwhelming to be back at a real live yarn show. It’s the first one I’ve been to since Yarndale in September 2019, in the ‘before times’ and I haven’t seen this many human beings in one day since then. There were people who I’ve only communicated with online before, via Zoom or social media, that I was able to talk to face to face for the first time. I think it says something about how effective Zoom and FaceTime are that it didn’t feel as though I hadn’t ‘met’ some of these people ‘in the flesh’ before.

So, as you can see from the main image, I came back with quite a haul of goodies. Let’s have a look at them, shall we?

Fibre for spinning first!

This is a wonderful braid of British Bluefaced Leicester dyed by Sealy MacWheely. It was my first purchase of the day and the colours and softness just made me grin. That and the lovely Katie who dyed it was so great to chat to. 😊 I’m thinking a chain ply would give me a great striped yarn, but I might just do a 2-ply and go for some funky barber-pole stripes.

A braid of hand dyed fibre in sections of greens, blue & bright pink lies coiled on a pale gold carpet.

This little beauty is a Merino gradient dyed by Cassiopeia Yarns. Again, it’s utterly soft and I’m going to adore spinning it. This one is definitely going to be chain plied as I want to maintain the gorgeous gradient effect from one end to the other. Maybe superfine for a lace shawl?

A braid of hand dyed fibre in a gradient that moves from grey to violet lies coiled on a pale gold carpet.

Rachael from Cat and Sparrow sold me this wonderful braid of Polwarth. The colourway is called ‘Ar Lan y Môr’ which is Welsh for ‘Beside the Sea’ and it is also the name of a traditional Welsh folk song. It was only today that I realised this is the same colourway I bought from her before via the online version of the Knit-Tea Retreat last year, which is now a yarn that Mum is gradually knitting into a cowl! Rachael is one of the people it was hard to believe I’d never met ‘in real life’ before as we’ve chatted online quite a bit and it was super to chat face to face on Sunday.

A braid of hand dyed fibre in shades of blue & sea-green lies folded on a pale gold carpet with a label around its middle.

I’d not come across Velvet Sixpence before, but this braid told me it was definitely coming home with me! Another Polwarth (SO soft and a delight to spin), I think this one is going to become something for my lovely wife, as orange is very much her colour.

A braid of hand dyed fibre in shades of orange lies folded on a pale gold carpet with a label around its middle.

So, that was the fibre – now on to the yarn!

The first ball of yarn that came into my possession on Sunday was free!! I went up to the Simply Knitting / The Knitter stand and was offered the opportunity to spin the wheel. Whichever colour the arrow landed on indicated the basket from which I could select a ball of yarn. Cool, eh? I was delighted to find this ball of self-striping Novita yarn. It’s an aran weight 75% wool, 25% polyamide which will make either some chunky bedsocks or a hat. The yarn is actually striped with three distinct shades of blue and a green, although at first glance you might think the palest blue is white. And I had a chat with Kirstie and the ladies too!

A ball of self-striping yarn in very pale blue, very dark blue, emerald green and royal blue lies on a pale gold carpet.

Now this yarn is something special. Northampton Shear laceweight yarn from Riverknits. It was lovely to meet Becci and Markus in person and chat away. Again, I encountered them first through the Knit-Tea Retreat and then followed them on social media (that sounds a bit like stalking, doesn’t it? I promise it wasn’t!). Markus joined in with our most recent KAL – Calon Cariad – and he knit his from this very yarn. The shawl was on display as part of their stall which was very exciting to see and I wish I’d taken a photo – though you can see it if you look at the Riverknits Instagram page. Northampton Shear is a single ply yarn that is 100% Shetland wool from Braunston, Northamptonshire that is spun & hand dyed in the UK. The way the dye is picked up over the natural colours of the wool is stunning, giving a really, rich layered effect.

Two skeins of dark burgundy laceweight yarn lie on a pale gold carpet.

This skein of ‘Dark Forest’ from Mothy and the Squid was one of the later purchases of the day. I love the range of greens in the yarn and also the black that stripes through it in places. Being a Superwash Merino / nylon mix this will make long lasting socks, but it is also soft and silky enough for something close to your neck.

A skein of dark green 4-ply yarn with some black in one of the plies lies twisted on a pale gold carpet.

I’d not heard of The Crafty Bird before, but the range of colours she had were lovely. This is ‘Crisp Autumn Day’. It’s another Superwash Merino / Nylon mix, but it’s a different base from the green above. It’s also slightly thinner as 100g brings a very generous 425m.

A skein of 4-ply yarn in shades of plum, green and orange lies at an angle on a pale gold carpet.

I love Kauni yarns with the really long colour shifts, though I’ve only used their 4-ply so far. SKD Yarns sell this and it’s really quite funny to have travelled nearly 100 miles to buy a ball of yarn from people who are based less than five miles from where I live! The colours are really me. It was my cheapest wool purchase of the day, at £8.42 for 800m laceweight – an absolute bargain!

A ball of laceweight yarn in long stripes of dark green, dark purple and blue with a paper ball band lies on a pale gold carpet.
An overhead shot of the same ball of yarn as on the left showing the winding of the laceweight and the colour changes.

I’ve made a pair of Raggsocks from a kit from Midwinter Yarns before and they are my mum’s favourite bedsocks, guaranteed to fit no matter what her ankles are up to. So, I thought I would make another pair and this colourway is just right for her. Mr Midwinter looked very dashing in his kilt and I spoke to a lovely lady (not Estelle, but possibly her mum) who almost got me buying a sweater’s worth of their Ulligen Recycled Yarn (made from scraps of wool from the textiles industry that would otherwise go to waste) for a ‘Confetti’ sweater by Veera Valimaki. I resisted the urge (just about), but I’m sure it’s a yarn I will be using at some point – it was fab.

A plastic bag with two balls of yarn, with each of the three plies in a different colour (dark purple, lilac and white) lies on a pale gold carpet. There is a paper pattern in the bag behind the yarn and a Midwinter Yarns label on the bag.

Finally, there were some non-wool purchases – apart from the cup of tea and vegan fruit cake that were very much appreciated!

First off all, I bought a pattern from Anniken Allis and had a nice chat with her. I know I design lace shawls myself, but this is a shape I’ve neither knitted nor used myself before and it really intrigues me. The lace patterns in it are beautiful too. I think the wedge shape in the centre makes it a Faroese style shawl. Maybe I will use some of the laceweight yarn I bought on Sunday for it and make a double Wonderwool momento!

The front cover of a lace shawl pattern (Safaia by Anniken Allis) lies on a pale gold carpet. There is a picture of a cream lace shawl hanging on a brick wall and text below detailing materials, size, tension and difficulty.

As I was travelling from Wonderwool to Mum’s on Sunday afternoon, and it was her birthday on Monday, I really wanted to be able to find her a little gift from the show as part of her birthday present. These hand coiled coasters from Lilliputwight were perfect! They’re in the centre of the picture here. Unfortunately I didn’t take a separate photo of them before I left Mum’s yesterday. She is very happy with them – particularly as they go very well with her quilted placemats and the coiled rope means they have a much more ‘grabby’ surface than the glossy picture coasters she has, making them practical as well as beautiful.

A busy image with three braids of fibre, a skein of yarn and a wooden pot surrounding four dark red hand coiled rope coasters, all on a footstool. The coasters are the focus of the image.

You couldn’t miss the amazing hand-turned pot in the picture above, could you? It’s stunning and the blue/green is from two resin inserts that were sandwiched into the wood before turning. This was a gift for Sue, my lovely wife. It was given immediate pride of place among her pen pots (which is what I thought she would use it for), though I’ve yet to show her the magic that occurs when you place a light inside the pot – it glows through the resin! The pot was from Turning Amber Woodcraft, the husband to All Wool that Ends Wool who were right at the end of Hall 2.

The same hand turned wooden pot as in the previous picture sits on a wooden bookshelf with marker pens inside. It is made of a pale wood with four vertical bands of blue/green resin inserted in the wood.

What a haul, eh? As well as talking to lots of stallholders, one of the lovely things about a show like this is striking up conversation with likeminded people when you sit down for a cup of tea. I encountered several friends during the day as well which was great – it’s always good to see some familiar faces in a crowd!

Yarn shows are also a place where you can wear your hand-knits knowing they’ll be appreciated by others for the work that has gone into it as well as the colour of the yarn or pretty shape.

A woman with blue hair and a blue dress (me) stands in front of a hedge wearing a huge hand knitted 2-colour brioche shawl in blush pink and verdigris. She is swirling it round her.

I chose to wear my Meg March shawl and got so many compliments on it. I know that knitters always want to know the pattern name of pieces they admire, so I went prepared by taking some of my Moo business cards. I’m glad I did as I ended up handing out quite a few and even sold two copies of the pattern during the day to people I’d spoken to! (Thanks Sealy MacWheely and Roy!).

It was quite a day – a real grand day out. Wearing a mask for the whole day was no problem – though I did nearly forget I was wearing it at one point when I went to sip my water – that could have been messy.

So, you can see why after that and a couple of days at Mum’s I was not really capable of writing this post when I got home yesterday evening – it’s taken two and a half hours as it is!!

The rest of today will be spent catching up with stuff, patting yarn and fibre and continuing to work on the still photos for my new online course.

Take care, stay safe and do what makes you happy, K x