So hands up who was at the annual Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace this weekend? Saturday was my first time at the show and it was pretty awesome! Surprisingly I managed to come away spending a rather modest amount of cash, which given the amount of gorgeous yarn inside the Victorian “People’s Palace” was near on impossible.
It turns out that all the photos I’ve taken are of the exhibition pieces, rather than the yarn related goodness. I think once I was in the room full of wool I managed to forget everything else, and just went about squeezing skeins. So if you are here looking for yarn-porn, I apologise!
I was really drawn to this installation by Debbie Smyth, being a lettering geek at heart and loving the pins and thread style that took me back to my childhood. Looking on her website I would love to see some of the more pictorial installations in the flesh.
Another piece that jumped out at me in the same space was Betty Pepper‘s One Shade of Life. Again another artist previously unknown to me, I have learned from her website that she is a textile/jewellery maker exploring different textures, media and techniques.
These next two exhibits were fun and I wanted to include them, the results of a workshop with Alice Wolfe and The Guild of Machine Knitters, and the Knitted Village competition.
It was a long day for us, getting up at 6.30am to jump on a train from Bristol. While my stitch and bitch buddies went about purchasing some of the softest yarns I’ve had the pleasure of stroking of recent, this was more of a networking event for me and I set off on my merry way chatting to lots of lovely ladies about knitting and making new connections.
I met some lovely people – Purl Alpaca Designs (their yarn was scrummy), The Toft Alpaca Shop (there’s a theme going on here isn’t there!) I sort of regret not buying a fluffy pompom from them for shear fun factor 🙂 and Jo Stori was also really sweet, and has some great chunky designs worth checking out too.
The day ended with a meal in Zizzi’s at Paddington and a sleepy train ride home, where a couple of us were still awake enough to knit. Though only once I’d woven in the ends to my mittens and declared them “finished!” did I notice the mistake right back at the beginning. Probably best not knit when tired or in a hurry.