Wow its been such a long time since my last post! I have recently started a new job and I’m just trying to get my time sorted out so that I can still crochet and my blogging has suffered a little. This is just a small post about my first visit to a yarn show, a (late) review of Crochet Society box 6 will hopefully follow in a few days.
I have always loved looking at the beautiful yarns that others have bought at yarn shows and really wanted to go to one myself. The opportunity came on the 17th November when I attended the Yarn Expo at Nottingham Conference Centre. I got a discounted ticket by buying in advance online and entry cost £8, reduced from the door price of £10. I unfortunately caught a cold the week of the show and ended up with no voice so I didn’t get to chat to as many of the show attendees as I perhaps wanted to
I really enjoyed looking – and squishing – the beautiful yarns. There was a large contingent of the hand dyed community present and I was immediately upset with myself for setting a spending limit. It would have been really easy to spend thousands of pounds on yarns that day but I had limited myself to £100. That was probably more than I could afford but I realised from previous discussions on a Facebook group that it was not going to be a cheap trip.
The first thing I noticed when going round is that a large proportion of the vendors at the expo mainly focussed on knitting; of the stalls that had completed projects on display, not many of them were crochet projects. There were lots of knitted shawls and socks on display and only a few had crochet offerings.
After a quick visit to the loo for our little girl, my husband (official photographer of this trip) and I started on the lower floor of stalls. My plan of action was to first look around, make a mental wishlist and then narrow down the selection to actual purchases. This plan lasted for all of 5 minutes! I had been admiring some skeins of silk blend lace weight yarn on one of the first stalls I looked at and trying to convince myself that £30 for 100g of yarn wasn’t too much money after all when I came across the next stall that had a ‘Bargain Bucket’. Now I am a girl who can’t resist a bargain, especially when that bargain is two 100g skeins of silk/merino blend for £20. Needless to say they found their way into my shopping bag and my credit card was a little bit lighter.
I did manage to behave myself for the rest of my first look around though it was very hard not to keep spending. There were so many beautiful colours and textures, there were a lot of the lighter weight yarns – mostly sock and lace – though there were also selections in DK weight and one or two offerings in an aran weight yarn.
My eyes were drawn instantly to the Cuddlebums stand as I passed it on the upper level, such beautiful colours! This was one of the stalls that I did eventually buy from as I couldn’t resist the absolute rainbow that greeted me, and the stall holders, a husband and wife team were also incredibly friendly and welcoming. I bought two skeins of their mint rainbow yarn (from the bargain box again) and a 12 days of Christmas advent calendar which contains 12 mini skeins of sock weight yarn.
One thing I had planned on looking out for on my visit was more crochet patterns. I didn’t notice too many around but I did find some lovely shawl patterns at one of the stalls so bought them to add to my collection.
On finishing my look around and being hurried along by both my bored husband and equally bored (and hungry) three year old, I returned to the Yarn Mixology stall where I had earlier spotted some beautiful cakes of yarn that was a gradual gradient similar in style to the Schjeepes Whirls. I had planned on buying one cake and ended up buying two, partly because the one I had planned on buying was for a shawl I plan on making for my Mother-in-law and had seen another colourway that I loved for myself, and also partly because the gentleman I was speaking to (I believe it was the husband of Christine, the lady who creates these beautiful cakes) was so engaging and even though he himself was not a creator himself, he clearly loved the yarn his wife created.
So that’s it, I am £100 lighter and have some beautiful additions to my stash. Overall I really enjoyed my first visit to a yarn show, though I wondered about the price for entry. I had assumed that there would be more in the way of handouts as we entered. I wasn’t expecting loads of freebies but a small bag with maybe a stitch marker, a set of needles or crochet hook, possibly even a free pattern or two. As I assume that each of the exhibitors had to pay to be there I thought an entry fee of £8 was a bit high, perhaps half that would have been better – especially if you look at the prices of the yarn that you will be paying once inside. Maybe it’s me being a bit of a miser, though I will reserve judgement on yarn shows in general until I have been to a few more.
