Tag: Yarn Show

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Since we’ve no place to go…

Yesterday I was admiring the fuchsia that was still in flower, and today everything is covered in a thick blanket of snow! As I type this, the snow has stopped for now and there are lumps of snow falling off the telephone wires and the thinner tree and bush stems which makes them ‘ping’ back up dramatically. There’s also a blackbird in the garden on the hunt for food and I hope it finds the holly berries and rose hips soon as they start to reappear.

I forget how the snow changes the quality of light in the house – everything is brighter and it seems like a good day to make a short tutorial video or two later on.

On Sunday we were at Stollen & Wolle, held at the RiverKnits studio in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire. It was a lovely day, being surrounded by the smell of mulled wine, happy creative conversations and, in the afternoon, live music from Becci, Markus and others on the accordion and fiddles! We even had some vegan stollen during the day that was very tasty indeed. I came away with a skein of gorgeous DK yarn from Fruitful Fusion that will be knitted up into one of the samples for a new design coming out early next year. I wound it up before remembering to take a photo of it in the skein.

I also completely forgot to take photos of the other vendors’ stands. There were nine of us visiting vendors in total and I think I got to chat to nearly everyone. As well as us, RiverKnits and Silly Gooze (the printers who share the studio with RiverKnits) there were: Fruit Fusion, Daughter of a Shepherd, Skein Queen, Rauwerk, Telling Yarns, The Wool Library, Allium Threads and ButtonedUp.

It was a beautifully sunny morning at RiverKnits and we were pleased with how many people came – it was a really busy and buzzy atmosphere.

Rain began a little by the later part of the afternoon which led to a wet and dark journey home and there had clearly been some accidents on the road. As I get older I find night driving in the rain more stressful than I used to and many people I’ve spoken to say they feel the same. Do headlights and spray from other vehicles bother you when driving at night?

Today, I will not be travelling anywhere. I have declared a snow day, as have all the local schools. We may go for a walk later (Becci from RiverKnits recommends a snowball fight, which might be a plan if followed up with hot chocolate), but the car is staying on the drive!

That does allow more time for knitting – and video recording as mentioned!

This coming weekend we will be in Welwyn Garden City for Wool-in Garden City – the second time this year as the first one was in January! On Saturday 23rd I will be teaching in the Pop-Up shop in the Howard Centre and on Sunday 24th we will be one of the 19 vendors exhibiting at the wool show at Oaklands College.

Tickets for both brioche workshops are still available at £30 each – you can book a workshop place here (scroll to the bottom of the page, click in the ‘Choose an option’ box, and scroll to the bottom of the list for the two brioche workshops). Entry to the wool show on Sunday is £7 on the door or £6 in advance.

As I’ve been knitting on samples for two new designs, there has only been a little progress with the new cardigan:

That’s all from me for today. If you are coming to Wool-in Garden City on Sunday, please say hello! (I’m hoping the snow will have cleared up by then!)

In the meantime, stay warm and dry as much as you can, and do something that makes you happy. K x

Stollen & Wolle, RiverKnits, Weedon Bec, 17 Nov 2024

I am so pleased to have been invited to exhibit at the second woolly winter market at RiverKnits in conjunction with RiverKnits’ studio friends Silly Gooze!

There will be a lovely small selection of yarn, art, and artisan craft businesses to exhibit alongside limited edition artworks and printmaking demos. It will be a great opportunity for gift buying while supporting local, creative, and sustainable businesses.

RiverKnits also be serving traditional festive fare, German Christmas market style. Your ticket entitles you to one free drink. There will be alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks available. Please bring a designated driver if you plan on sipping the glühwein!

Exhibitors

Allium Threads
ButtonedUp
Daughter of a Shepherd
Fruitful Fusion
Kath Andrews Designs
Skein Queen
Telling Yarns
The Wool Library

Tickets

Early Bird tickets are now available at £5! A ticket entitles you to one free drink.
Tickets will be available on the door at a cost of £7 per person.
Under-18s may come free of charge, but must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times.

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C’est Magnifique

Unusually today is not only blog day, but also the first of the month, which makes it newsletter day as well, so there will be quite some overlap in content between the two!

Yarndale was amazing, if a little chilly! If you came by the stand to say hello and have a browse, thank you so much. Customers said some lovely things about the samples on display and I heard a ‘C’est manifique’ from a group of French knitters which made me very happy. We also sold lots of patterns, kits and calendars during the weekend.

If you didn’t come to the show yourself, then here are a few pics to show you how the cattle pen (yes, that is what it usually is used for) was transformed over the course of three and a half hours on Friday afternoon:

My lovely wife Sue can be seen in one of the pics above having a very well earned sit-down after transporting most of the contents of our stand the entire length of the auction mart on the trolley (the car park was at the opposite end to where our stand was!) She was amazing and also held the fort for much of Saturday afternoon whilst I went to teach an Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop to ten intrepid knitters.

While I was at the stand later on Saturday looking for a pattern on the table, my badge caught on Tiffany (pinned across the front of the table) and snagged it quite badly. Nothing broke, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to fix it to look as if this had never happened!

I’m going to video the process which will hopefully encourage others to fix their own snagged knits.

We made some new friends as well as catching up with old ones – both other vendors and visitors to the show. I think one of the great things about yarn shows is that it’s a rare chance for most of the vendors see each other, so we make the most of catching up in snatched moments between setting up, or even when queueing for the loo!

I told you last week that I was racking my brains trying to work out how on earth I was going to put my banner up at Yarndale and that I eventually bought two mops with handles that unscrewed and had loops in the top. As you can see – the mop handles worked! Cable ties attached the banner to the metal mop handles and lots of string ties the mop handles to the metal rails of the pen (hidden behind the black sheets and Nevern Throw).

If you came by the stand you will have seen the little display of McIntosh yarns with the two designs that I have created with them. County Shawl was launched on Friday and I’m very excited about it. It uses the wonderful Donegal 4ply yarn in three colours. This semi-circular shawl may look complex but all the stitch patterns are slip stitch, knit and purl with a few little short rows to create the rows of bobbles, so it’s very achievable.

James McIntosh has put together three stunning colour-way choices for you as shown in the picture above. The grey and natural yarn pack also includes a gorgeous dark green which is shyly hiding behind the other two skeins. When you select your colour choices you can also choose to have a set of 3.75mm 150cm circular needles from Addi included in your kit. These needles are really nice to use and are very smooth. 

Every kit includes the pattern and I get paid the full pattern price (£6) for every kit sold, which is rather splendid.

I am out and about with my designs again later this month. Ewe Felty Thing are hosting a ‘Designer Day‘ at their shop in Conwy on Saturday October 26 from 10-5, and I will be one of 5 designers taking part. It’s free to come along, so if you are anywhere near the North Wales coast, it would be lovely to see you! 26th October might seem like a long way off now, but it’s actually less than four weeks away!

I have been enjoying knitting my DK version of Into the Vortex and I have nearly finished Part 5 of the seven parts. That’s really good, as something exciting arrived in the post today and means I should be able to finish at least one project before starting a new piece of deadline knitting!

You know the routine now, I think. I’m not going to be able to tell you what it is or who it’s for, or show you my progress with it, but I did want to show you the yarn as the colours are so lovely and the shine from the Tencel content is gorgeous.

Speaking of deadline and commission knitting; keep an eye out for the new issue of The Knitter that comes out later this week as I believe it will include a new design from me!

That’s all from me for today.

Wool-in Garden City Wool Show, 24 Nov 2024

I am very pleased to be exhibiting at the Wool-in Garden City Wool Show 

Sunday 24th November, 10 – 4 pm

Oaklands College, The Campus, Welwyn Garden City AL8 6AH

I will also be teaching my two Brioche workshops the day before (Nov 23rd) at the Wool-in Garden City Pop-Up Shop in the Howard Centre – more details coming soon!

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Flying the Shawls

Beth March Shawl, a hand knitted brioche shawl in a cloudy sky forming the shape of a diving sparrowhawk.

Well, last week’s post hasn’t yet united Simon with his mitts and hat – but I live in hope that he will indeed have kept my business card and contact me soon now it’s September.

I realised a while ago that I haven’t done much spinning at all this year, and towards the end of last week I set about putting that right. I chose a lovely vibrant braid of Rambouillet fibre in a colourway called “Lucy” dyed by Sealy MacWheely that I’d bought at Wonderwool Wales in 2023. It reminds me of watermelons and summer. Rather than do anything fancy with it like try to split the braid lengthwise, I just started spinning from the end of the length of fibre and kept going. There isn’t much left to do now! Either I have got faster at spinning or I sat spinning for far longer during the two sessions I used to spin up what’s now on the bobbin than I thought I had. I’m very pleased with how it looks at the moment.

It’s got long blocks of colour at present with some gentle blends at the colour changes. When I get to the plying stage that could change completely depending on which plying technique I choose. If I do a 2-ply and start from the two ends working towards the middle, I could get something quite funky. If I do a 3-ply chain-plied technique the colour blocks will be largely maintained. I’m undecided! Maybe I’ll do half as chain ply and half as a 2-ply and compare the end results!

I’ve been knitting up a storm this week and I’ve used up nearly 200g of 4ply yarn (that’s 800m!) but I can’t show you as it’s a commission. I am really pleased with it and I’m looking forward to seeing it finished and blocked.

It’s a very long time since I went to a gym, but today my body feels just like it used to the day after a big workout! We’ve been trimming the top and sides of the hedge – and it’s very tall – with our pole hedge trimmer. It’s incredibly good at the job, but it’s so heavy! And it’s quite awkward when you basically have to stand with your face in the hedge to reach the very top! It’s getting there though, looking more under control, and we are gradually reclaiming some of the space it had taken from the garden.

If you follow me on social media or subscribe to my monthly newsletter, you will have seen that I have something new and very exciting in stock. Desktop calendars! Bear with me. That may not sound exciting in and of itself, but the pictures really are! When my lovely wife and I photograph my shawls she has long been in the habit of lying on the patio and getting me to throw them in the air above her head. She somehow takes lots of shots while the shawl is in the air and they often create the most amazing shapes!

Sue has been carrying Ronnie and Elastic band desktop calendars in her shop for a while, and she kept saying that a calendar of flying shawls would be just the thing for me! Well, we selected 12 of the best shots that we could also give interesting names to and the finished calendars arrived last week. They are available in my shop and I will also have them with me at Yarn Gathering (Mold, 15th September) and Yarndale (Skipton, 28-29th September).

As an introduction to the calendars, here is the front cover (which is also December), titled “Beth March as ‘Sparrowhawk'” and March, titled “Petulia as ‘Swimmer'”. By coincidence, these both happen to be brioche shawls!

I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am to have a really good wool shop (Yarn O’clock) so close to where I live. Mold is a small market town near me, and it has a great variety of independent shops, including Yarn O’clock. I can think of at least three more proper yarn shops not too far away, each in small North Wales towns (Find Me Knitting in Betws-y-Coed, Ewe Felty Thing in Conwy and Wayfarer Wool Shop in Ruthin).

Today I am visiting Liverpool with my lovely wife, sister-in-law and nephew and, although I don’t need any more yarn in my stash, I decided to look up wool shops in Liverpool. Reader, there aren’t any independent wool shops in Liverpool that show up on Google! There’s the haberdashery in John Lewis and Abakhan in Stafford Street which I may well visit, but I can see nothing else that is an independent ‘destination wool shop’ for a visitor to the city to explore. I imagine the city centre rents are far too high.

Do you have a good wool shop near where you live? If not (and if you are a knitter or crocheter), how do you find quality yarn to work with and discover new brands or hand-dyers? Maybe this is a good time to remind you that we will have 16 amazing vendors at Yarn Gathering in Mold on Sunday 15th September (and Anne will be opening Yarn O’clock between 12-1pm as well that day)?! They are all fairly local to Mold, all being based only an hour or so away. And there will be 201 independent dyers, designers, bag makers and other wonderful folk who work with textiles from all over the country at Yarndale in Skipton on 28-29th September.

That’s all for today – I may have some plied yarn to show you next week! K x

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There is a Season

A large rose bed with sweet peas growing up a wooden support.

Each yarn show has its own ‘vibe’, its own season and particular designs that you predict might be popular. The Pop Up Wool Show last Saturday in Port Sunlight is a summer show – and it’s never rained while I’ve been going there – and, as such, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that What Do Points Make? is a popular seller.

The thing that does surprise me a bit is that this garment has been a good seller on all of the three occasions I’ve attended this show! Maybe the fact that I wear this item during the show helps – folk can see how it drapes on a real human. I’m sure the fact that it only takes 1 skein (800m) of lace weight yarn for all except the largest size (shown in blue and purple) is also a big plus! It’s reassuring to me that a knitwear design can be popular for more than just one year.

What Do Points Make? was originally a mystery knit-along for Yarn O’clock and folk had no idea what they were making. The way the garment is constructed (starting at the centre bottom of the back) made several knitters think after knitting Part One that it was going to be a top-down triangular shawl!

I like the fact that there are consistencies when returning to a yarn show. You know how set up works, where everything is, and roughly what to expect during the day/weekend.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that the Pop Up Wool Show was my first ever ‘proper’ yarn show in 2022. I’d had a stall quite often at the local pop up shop before Covid, but that was a general crafts/gifts/small business type pop up shop and not one where the customers were specifically coming for wool related stuff. It’s been really interesting over the past couple of days to look back at the photos from my first stand there in 2022 and comparing it to Saturday’s set-up. I’m quietly proud of how it has developed – though of course several of the designs are still present and correct!

Here’s 2022:

And here is 2024!:

The next show is Yarn Gathering in just under a month, followed by Yarndale just two weeks later. I had thought that Yarndale would be my final show of the year, but there are some more dates sneaking in (!) and when they are confirmed I will add them to my events page on the website. I’m going to be teaching workshops at most of these new events too which is very exciting.

Some yarn arrived yesterday for a commission, with a deadline of (you guessed it) the day after Yarn Gathering. Fortunately I only have to email the pattern to them and not get a knitted sample through the post by that date which does make things simpler. I can’t tell you any more details yet, but it will be out in the world in January 2025.

As the yarn has arrived I have, of course, cast on and started knitting. The pattern is actually already charted out and just needs a written version, including finalising the number of repeats, the yarn usage and measurements – all of which will be confirmed by my actually knitting the item.

Today we had a trip to Bodnant Garden to meet up with some holidaying family members and my lovely wife offered to drive so that I could knit in the car. Very helpful of her and enjoyable for me – and I’ve done an extra 20+ rows that I wouldn’t have been able to have done by now otherwise.

Bodnant was glorious; sunny but not too hot and with lots of plants in flower.

We got there at opening time as well, so it was almost as if we had the place to ourselves at times! The roses smelt heavenly and we now have a new rose on our wish-list – Princess Alexandra of Kent. My photo top right in the block above doesn’t really do it justice.

My car is fixed now by the way. It was so nice to be able to put my foot down a bit on the way home from the garage last week and feel Floella (my car is named after the amazing Floella Benjamin who I idolised on Play School when I was little) react as she should.

Now that I’m knitting a deadline piece I think I will probably have to put the new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl aside for a few weeks. The border is growing, albeit slowly. I’m up to about 880 stitches per row now and I’ve been averaging three rows during two episodes of Silent Witness (we’ve got up to Series 21 now) – that’s about 40 minutes per row. (I don’t knit much slower when I’m not watching telly). Here’s a little section of the border, photographed pinned onto its project bag (I rather like how these colours go together!):

That’s all for today – I’ll get back to you on the progress of the deadline knitting next week!

Take care all, K x

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Piece by Piece

Since spending four or five days at Mum’s last week going through ‘the fabric’ and many many other things in the middle of a heatwave, then the next four days photographing and listing many (but not yet all) of the things we brought back onto eBay and Vinted, I feel a little boggled.

One box contained just silk. Now, you probably know that I’m plant-based and I don’t use silk in my knitting, so I’m not going to be using silk fabric to sew with. And there was a lot. If you get the ‘featured photo’ at the top of the post (I know some people don’t see it if they receive the blog by email), that set of three pics is just some of it! There were some factory offcuts from Beckford Silk, lots of post-project offcuts, some whole pieces, one of which was 3m long! I’ve separated them out by size of pieces, bagged them up and listed most of them on eBay. There are some bargains to be had if you like using silk, especially if you like using small pieces!

Did you know you can search by seller on eBay? On the left-hand panel the categories and search filters are listed. If you scroll to the bottom, there’s a ‘More filters’ option. When you click on that a pop-up box appears and one of the selections is ‘Seller’. Select ‘include’ and type in the seller’s username. I’m “knitting33”.

You’ll find a host of other things too, including 7 or 8 Wentworth jigsaws and some Prinknash pottery!

I did go through the three large boxes of patchwork fabric and wadding and managed to organise the fabric by colour. This was partly so it would be easier to work out what I would like to keep or not, and partly so I could find three pieces of fabric to take to a Beginners’ Patchwork class on Saturday! As Mum said last week, “If you’re going to take all that fabric and keep some of it, you’d better learn how to do patchwork!” and she paid for me to go to a Jo Paloma Makes workshop at Amanda’s Fabrics in Mold. Last summer I quilted some placemats that Mum had already made the tops for, but apart from sewing some little hexagons together by hand over paper templates, I’ve not done the actual patchwork before.

Well, Jo is an amazing teacher. I learnt how to make pouch bags at one of her workshops. And she was very thorough, clear and encouraging throughout the four-hour workshop, which quite honestly flew by. We learnt all about the equipment needed and how to use it, whether we were left- or right-handed. I was really pleased that in a class with four students we were equally split between the lefties and righties! I’m usually the only one!

We made a nine patch, photographed it and then cut it up to make a disappearing nine patch. The idea of cutting up the piece that we’d just so carefully measured, sewn together and pressed made me feel for the students of my steeking workshops. That’s where we knit something, reinforce the area we are going to cut, and then take our scissors to our knitting! I had a little of the “But I’ve just made that” feeling that they get! It was worth it though, because the final piece is very pleasing and so different from the basic nine patch!

I can now understand why quite a few of the ‘fat quarters’ in Mum’s stash only had a small corner taken out – it was for the single square in the middle!

One of my friends said to me on the phone yesterday, “How do you have time for patchwork?”, and he may well have a point, what with the day job of designing and knitting, the crochet, spinning, embroidery and lace-making (the last few of which to be fair, I haven’t done much of this year), let alone the occasional baking and trying to keep on top of the garden, but we’ll see.

However, I have done some more on my new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl, and I’m just over two thirds of the way through the centre square! On current progress I should be on the border by next week, if all goes well. I do seem to be having a green phase…

I am starting to get everything ready for the Pop Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 17th, 10-4pm. It’s a lovely show and if you’re anywhere near the north west I thoroughly encourage you to come. Tickets are £4 and are available on the door. The image lower right is my stand at last year’s show.

I will have my Barragán shawl pattern with me for the first time, the whole Bargello Aurora Collection, and copies of most of my other designs! As I currently have 60+ designs in my portfolio I can’t bring all of them, but if you are coming to the show and there’s a particular pattern you would like to see, let me know and I’ll make sure to bring it with me.

And then, only four weeks after the Pop Up Wool Show, is our own Yarn Gathering! I can’t stress enough how exciting it is to be bringing this little yarn event to Mold again for its third year. Anne from Yarn O’clock and I were so pleased when we had a flurry of ‘new-to-Yarn-Gathering’ folk asking if they could apply to exhibit with us, all of whom were near to Mold and some folk who we recently discovered and invited, and that is why we expanded into an extra room. Do make the effort to come upstairs if you can – I’ll be one of the exhibitors up there!

16 vendors is still small in the grand scheme of things (the Pop Up Wool Show has 28 this year, Buxton Wool Gathering was about 50, Yarndale will be 201 – yes, I counted them!), but Yarn Gathering is steadily building and it’s great that people want to come back year on year.

All our vendors will be travelling approximately an hour or less to get to Yarn Gathering in Mold (in some cases, only a few minutes!), so we really are showcasing local talent! And, it’s free entry!

There are no refreshments available at the event, but as the Mold Food & Drink Festival is happening during the same weekend, we don’t think you’ll go hungry or thirsty!

There’s lots happening during the rest of this week and I’ll tell you all about it next Tuesday. Until then, do some stuff that makes you happy, and stay safe. K x

Yarn Gathering, 14 Sept 2025

Yarn O’clock & Kath Andrews Designs are delighted to be hosting Yarn Gathering once again for its fourth year at the Daniel Owen Centre in Mold.

Entry is FREE!!

As well as being one of the organisers I am also exhibiting and selling my kits and designs at Yarn Gathering.

We have a lovely range vendors with us this year, all within an hour or so of Mold, showcasing their wonderful talents and products. Because the show is larger we are using three rooms in the Daniel Owen Centre; the cafe, the main hall and Room 4 upstairs.

See the main Yarn Gathering page for the full details.

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Bryn – in a tin!

Well, Wool@J13 (that’s ‘Wool at Junction 13’ as it’s near Junction 13 of the M6, sometimes referred to as ‘Woolly J’) is done and we are home. I still need to go through all the samples and check if anything needs freshening up with a re-block or just folding in a different way, but everything else is back where it should be.

I know I’ve said this before, but Wool@J13 is a very different kind of yarn show. First of all, it’s in a field and the parking is in a different field down the road. Most of the vendors are in the ‘shop til you drop’ marquee that is a bit like a circus tent with its yellow and white stripes, with others in individual gazebos in the ‘gazebo village’. There are also two tents for workshops. So far, so yarn show, just with a slightly different setting.

Here’s my stand in the marquee, with Sue wearing her ‘Add value, bring joy’ T-shirt. She did, and does, every day!

Then as well as the marquee and gazebo village, there’s a small stage tent, with plenty of chairs and tables arranged in front of it. Throughout the weekend there’s live entertainment and you can sit and enjoy that as you eat your lunch from one of the street food vendors, or just soak up the music as you go round the stands. Last year Jo from Second City Yarns also entertained us inside the marquee with her cello playing. However, this year she had a broken finger, so couldn’t play. Ingrid (who it is almost impossible to say no to!) asked what instrument I played, and when I told her that I mostly sing, and yes, I did sing a cappella (unaccompanied) sometimes, asked if I’d like to do a turn in the marquee? I said yes! So, on Sunday afternoon when it wasn’t too busy and wouldn’t be interrupting too many potential sales, Ingrid gently blew her whistle, and I sang Misty and Unforgettable. It wasn’t until afterwards that I told her I hadn’t sung a solo in public in about 7 years…! I did enjoy it and there’s a short clip of the end of Misty floating about somewhere on Facebook if you want to see the evidence.

Bryn, my new brioche cowl designed especially for first time brioche knitters (or, as Tamsin from The Left Hookery put it, ‘brioche virgins’…!) , was well received and the kit, forever now to be known as ‘Bryn in a Tin’, sold well. The blues colourway was particularly popular.

I will be putting this kit and several others on to the website in the next few days, so if you want one, but can’t get to a yarn show, you can order online!

I had a nice surprise yesterday. I received an email telling me I had a Payhip review and clicked on it to see the details. It was a super review from someone who had bought the Pride and Progress Pride Knitting Kit bundle:

Cute kit – perfectly packaged!

A great kit for a beginner, or someone who wants to make a Pride flag without investing in massive balls of yarn. You got plenty of yarn and great instructions all packed in an enveloped that fitted through the letter box. I made my first flag straight away! – Nessa H.

That wasn’t the only surprise though. I also discovered there were nine other Payhip reviews (all 5 star) waiting to be moderated and published! So, now if someone has reviewed a pattern or kit on Payhip, the review is there on the product page for folk to see, and I’ve selected a few for testimonials at the bottom of my main Payhip shop page. I’m not sure how I didn’t know the reviews were sitting there – some are a year old! But I’m so glad to have found them and to know that folk are enjoying what I do.

Speaking of folk enjoying my work… If you get my newsletter or have seen my social media posts at the weekend, you’ll know that I saw some of my designs ‘in the wild’ at the weekend. It’s always such a buzz, especially when the knitter tells you they’ve really enjoyed knitting the project and that the pattern was clear and really easy to follow. I mean, that’s what I always aim for, but until someone tells you that that WAS their experience, you don’t really know for sure. From the left the patterns are: What Do Points Make?, Meg March Shawl and Branwen Shawl.

My Persian Tiles blanket is making progress – I only have 9 more motifs to finish off with the last two rounds now (that’s about three evenings worth)! Then I need to block them and put it all together. Can you see the different from last week? I am glad I followed Jane Crowfoot’s recommendation to make them ‘production line’ style as you can memorise the round you are working on easily and just repeat it, and you don’t have to keep getting a different coloured ball of wool out.

I’ve made a little progress with my Bargello Scarf. It’s less than I’d intended, and I think that’s because finishing each of the crochet motifs is so addictive! I am however, nearly at the halfway point now.

I am really looking forward to being able to photograph all three samples (the wrap, cowl and scarf) together as a set, ready for the relaunch of the pattern. It’s going to look so dramatic!

I also got a bit more of Sue’s sock done while we were away. Socks are the perfect travel knitting, as they take up so little room – and that was an important consideration with the car being so full of stuff for the show. I will definitely be on at least the second sock by the time of the next show (Pop Up Wool Show on August 18th), even if I haven’t finished them by then. I’m using my Bodelwyddan pattern, making the 4th size.

Plans for Yarn Gathering 2024 are coming on well. It’s being held on Sunday September 15th, from 10am -4pm.

You will be pleased to know that entry to the event is still FREE, and once again it is happening at the same time as the Mold Food and Drink Festival, so you can combine visiting the two events! And as it’s on Sunday, there are no parking charges in Mold!

We will have more vendors than ever this year – 16 or 17 – and because of that we are expanding into more of the Daniel Owen Centre.

We have previously used the main hall and the cafe space. This year we are using those two areas again, and are also using the largest of the upstairs rooms. We know that stairs aren’t great for everyone, but (as someone who has bungalow legs myself and isn’t great with stairs) I can say that they are decent stairs. The treads are deep enough to get your foot on, the steps themselves are not too high, and there are sturdy handrails on both sides. If you can’t access the first floor at all, we can take a video to show you what is up there and bring down things you particularly want to see.

Yarn Gathering now has its own Facebook page as well as an Instagram account, and we will be posting about each of our lovely vendors – who are all still fairly local – leading up to the event. Do come – we’re sure you’ll enjoy it.

That’s all from me today. I was going to pick the blackcurrants or do some weeding in the front garden, but it’s raining (again!) so that can wait. Take care and have a good week, K x

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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