Hello, the friendly face in the photograph above is Sue of crafts at home blogspot. Yvonne and I fought our way through the crowds at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show on Friday, to find Sue and her stand in the designers and makers section.
Sue was selling her ingenious little mirrors, magnets, badges and hair slides beautifully decorated with colourful fabric backs. We spent ages trying to make up our minds which ones we would take home with us. We especially wanted to meet up with Sue as she had very kindly sent me two complimentary tickets to the show - how great was that! It's always lovely to meet friends from the Blogosphere, and I'm sure Sue and I will meet again.
We then went to say hello to Mandy Patullo whose work we both adore. Mandy is giving a workshop at Jane-Ann's studio next year so we were mightily excited you can believe me, to see her work 'in the flesh'. I can also reveal we both came away with one of Mandy's little bird textiles, I'll have to show you in a later post. I didn't take any photographs there and then.
I was delighted to come across a new-to-me stand selling Donegal Tweed. This is such beautiful fabric and if you love wool and felt and blanket, you wouldn't be able to resist it. I wasn't! I had a lovely chat to Margaret, who is herself from Donegal, and she is sending me the most gorgeous book which I will show you next time - they had sold out on the second day of the show!
Here's Margaret, smiling at my inability to choose between the gorgeous rolls of tweed - I could happily have happily taken the entire stand home with me!
Look! What's not to love! If you google Fabric Affair, Donegal Tweed you will find their website. I can't wait to get going with my little stash! It will make great bangles, and is also great to applique with.
Here is Louise, who does much of the stitching of the samples on the stand. I didn't get chance to speak to her as she was busy with customers.
We managed to see the stands we had marked on our programme, Yvonne renewing her acquaintance with Val Holmes, machine embroiderer supreme, me finding that Jean at Oliver Twists does indeed still hand-dye the soft cotton I love to stitch with, both of us swooning with pleasure at the tactile and visual delights at 21st Century Yarns. I did indulge myself with some hand-dyed variegated wool felt. It is SOOOoooooo beautiful!
A few more purchases at other stalls and we felt we had had enough - impossible to get through the crush to the food outlet, and not prepared to eat our lunch sitting on the floor - why are these events so woefully badly organised for the comfort of the paying punters? - we decided to make our escape about 1pm. We were extremely lucky with the weather so it wasn't a bad drive both ways, though we were very tired when we reached our respective homes.
And the gorgeousness didn't end there - Saturday found us trundling along the damp and dirty November Norfolk lanes to Jane-Ann's at Swanton Novers. It was a hive of industry.
Yes, I did find and take with me the rag rug seat cover I'm working on! And I did hook away for a couple of hours too. Then I completed another bangle for Yvonne.
Yvonne finished her sunflower cushion with wonderful attention to detail.
Jackie worked on a commission from the craft fair........
Nadine got stuck in to another of her geometric rugs .......
Monica hooked away for a while then decided she wasn't satisfied so she engaged in what we quilters
call 'frogging' and rug hookers call 'reverse hooking'!
Jane-Ann demonstrated a brilliant braiding technique, made us a lovely lunch, and kept her work-space looking spic and span. I'd love to say my sewing room looks remotely as tidy as this - but that is never going to happen!
Just a few shots of the treasure trove of lovely things found in the studio.......
I hope you've enjoyed the luscious textile eye candy in this post. It has been a couple of full-on days dedicated to cloth, wool, thread and colour. We'll need a week to get over all the excitement! See you soon, have a good week.
