Festival!

In case any of you missed the run up, Mandy and I packed up the shop on Friday afternoon and moved it to the East Anglia Yarn Festival at the Norfolk Showground for the weekend. We had been terribly nervous about it never having done this sort of thing before. We had made up kits (not enough it turned out), planned layouts, created leaflets and ordered stock for weeks in advance, and for all we knew it could all have been for nothing. Luckily that was not the case. We had an excellent two days and it was such a joy to meet our customers, both the regulars and those of you who might only have seen us on social media beforehand or vaguely heard about us at a knit group. Thank you so much to all of you who came by, chatted with us and purchased things – we really appreciated it.

Having Mandy with me on the first day meant that I could wander off and check out what was on offer there with a view to possibly bringing in some more suppliers. Of course I went to say hello to those I already stock, The Fibreworkshop and Blue Fern Yarns, both of whom had a good weekend too, I think. Blue Fern won the prize for favourite stand – well deserved. In case you missed her there, Shannon will be bringing her gorgeous hand-dyed yarn to a pop up shop here on Saturday 11 May – always a fabulous event.

As you know, although I stock yarns from Europe and beyond, my goal is to focus on British brands, so it was also good to chat with Eden Cottage Yarns, Wensleydale Longwool and The Camel’s Yarns, all of whom I am thinking of stocking in the shop in the future. If you were there and saw some yarn I may have missed which you would like to see in the shop, let me know and I will see what I can do.

I was also on the lookout for what people were selling that was new and trendy and what people were buying. The thing that popped was that a lot of the indie dyers were selling boucle wool in a range of utterly gorgeous colours. I have never knitted with boucle, but there is a first time for everything and I acquired a skein from Pigment & Ply to see what it would be like. I have no idea what I will actually make with one skein – watch this space. On the other hand, I saw that a lot of people purchased the really luxurious yarns, blends of merino and silk in particular, soft and shiny and generally very desirable. Luckily for my bank balance, the vendor at the stall where I wanted to buy some wasn’t around and I never got the time to go back, but I know where she lives!

Apart from the wonderful independent dyers, I also chatted with some of the other businesses present at the show. In particular, I touched base with The Slow Yarn Spinner who may come to Fakenham to run some spinning workshops (learning to spin on a spindle – proper old school), and a pattern designer, Hiris Makes, who had some lovely modern patterns for tops which I really liked. I purchased a basket, because you can never have enough bags, and tiny crochet cat stitch marker from the talented Josie Rose who was my neighbour. I made friends with my other neighbours, Caroline from Dyeing Made Easy who offers workshops so that you can learn to dye yarn, and the Button Box Devon who had the most astonishing range of buttons and ribbons. My knitting group on Tuesday was very excited about a bag called the Geo-Metry Cocoon – a lovely piece of leather work from Denmark, which I gather sold out very quickly at the show. I have contacted the company to see if they would be interested in supplying it to me as they do not ship to individuals in the UK.

All in all, it was an amazing show. Really well organised by Laura and her team who worked unbelievably hard to make sure the venue was comfortable and accessible. The touch that impressed me most was that vendors were able to order their lunches in advance – it made a difference to have someone turn up with lunch rather than having to think about leaving the stand to get it. I hope very much that we will be back next year, possibly with a bigger stand and more kits.

If you too were at the show last weekend I would be interested to know what you loved there!