A Trip to the Knitting and Stitching Show

Hello all!

Yesterday I visited the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, London. It's about seven years since I last went so was a perfect opportunity for a browsing day out.

My daughter accompanied me as she was interested in soft wool for making scarves and fabric for her quilting and dressmaking hobbies. It was also her 14th birthday so mummy's credit card was an added incentive for her to accompany me!

I tried not to stash too much as I really don't NEED anything else (I know, I know, what's NEED got to do with it?) and I was aware of my virtual SFS budget.

I bought a little box with individual screw-top jars for my spare Mill Hill beads, two cute little charts from an independent retailer and five over-dyed Threadworx threads suitable for Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Christmas projects. These are (shamefully?) the first over-dyed threads I have ever bought. Now all I have to do is find projects suitable to use them on!

Charts - Odd Dog - Sleepy Book and Balloon by Lili of the Valley

Threadworx colours - 10592 Mercy's Spring Bouquet, 11511 Jam Rock,

1076 Honky Tonk, 1140 Moonlit Skies and 1085 Christmas Time

I also bought a couple of other things which I cannot show as they are gifts for people who I know read this blog - hi girls!

Budget wise, so far so good. But then I found the sewitall fabric stall. Uh-oh!

Some of you may recall that a number of my Challenge pieces are stitched on over-dyed aida by Fabric Flair. When I discovered the only supplier that I knew of in the UK had stopped selling it I was devastated. But a bit of sleuthing led me to sewitall.com who, I found out, are the actual manufacturers of Fabric Flair! At the moment they don't have over-dyed on their website but they do have a similar cloud-effect fabric as well as patterns such as snowflakes, holly leaves, paw prints and love hearts. AND everything comes in various aida or evenweave counts AND with the choice of added sparkles. Heaven! Go check them out - you will not be disappointed.

I could have been a very naughty girl but, luckily for me, their selection of my favourite 16ct aida and 32ct evenweave was limited and very few had sparkles. Nevertheless, I bought a good selection, even doubling up on some. Not all are in the photo, nor are all for me as I was purchasing for two others as well. So in fact I think I was actually very restrained!

Aida - Antique White with Sparkles, Cloud Green, Cloud Lilac and Cloud Brown

Evenweave - Cloud Blue, Cloud Blue and Pink, Cloud Lilac, Cloud Grey

Talking of being restrained, I did NOT buy these two kits. I cannot express how much I love the autumnal-coloured artwork of Leonid Afremov. I know that Love Thy Thread and Heaven and Earth Designs have charted some of his pictures but these are by Golden Fleece (Zolotoe Runo in their native Russian) and were £54 each which I could not justify. If they are ever released as just charts I may reconsider.

Romantic Walk and Aura of Rain (my favourite!) 

And here are some more, slightly smaller kits, by the same artist which I may purchase one day:

 Autumn Melodies, Tryst and Autumn Blues

So all in all a good but tiring (and financially fairly restrained) day out! Now to use some of my goodies.....

Happy stitching :)
Rachel x