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| Lioness Arts display |
Where to begin?
The Edinburgh Yarn Festival was a huge success.
The staff in the cafe must not have known what had hit them!
I arrived at noon and the Drill Hall was heaving with excited knitters / crocheters / spinners. After an initial recce, I realised that I needed to step back and hope the crowds would thin out enough to let me actually get to the wool!
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| Skein Queen treasure chest |
So Christine, my mother and I joined the queue for cake :D
Priorities, people!
Christine had a class to attend at 1.30, so I established my mother at Base Camp, on a comfy sofa with a heater nearby and a cute dog to talk to (not ours!) and then… ahem… worked the room.
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| The Yarn Pony stand |
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| Yarn Pony Mustang |
It is fair to say that I wanted to buy everything on the Yarn Pony stall. But because I am incapable of making decisions, I did NOT buy the amazing shimmering bronze silk mix or the ashes-of-roses alpaca or enough charcoal-shaded gold to knit a cardigan.
I did buy a skein of Mustang sock wool (100% superwash merino) in a handpainted (possibly gradient-dyed?) mix of charcoal greys and midnight blues which positively shimmers. A shawl?
You need some Yarn Pony in your stash. As soon as her online shop opens, I will be there!
It was great to see new indie-dyers and small businesses represented at the Festival. So often, such events are dominated by the big established companies, but they were nowhere to be seen – hooray!
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| Sky Blue Pink Designs (£170 for this piece. No, of course I didn’t!) |
It wasn’t all about raw materials – there were a few sellers of ready-made handcrafted goodies.
I loved the felted scarf pictured above, from Sky Blue Pink designs. Gorgeous colours!
I met so many people I knew and others who knew me from the blog and came up to say hello – which was lovely! My mother was bemused by this. It was only afterwards that I realised she has never been with me in a situation where I know people and she doesn’t. Usually, she does that thing where the grown up speaks for the child, even though that child is now in her 40s! For once, she was on the back foot and I was the one making confident conversation about knitting / myeloma to “complete strangers”. An interesting turnaround!
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| Lioness Arts BFL sock in Pan |
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| Skein Queen Entwine 4 ply sock |
Where was I?
Oh yes – I bought two other skeins of yarn. On the left, Lioness Arts BFL sock, a light-weight fingering with 435 yards in the skein. The colour “Pan” is slightly more mossy than my photo suggests, with shots of rich wine and forest green. It called to me.
And on the right, the one that almost got away! I spotted this on the Skein Queen table as I was doing my photographic tour, but didn’t have any money with me. I scooted back to Base Camp to retrieve my purse, but when I returned, the skein had gone – nooooo!
“Um… I was here a minute ago and there was a skein of brown wool just there… has it been sold?” There was some sheepish giggling, and the Skein Queen herself rummaged under the counter and produced “my” skein. She had just that moment decided to reserve it for personal use! I promised that it was going to a good home ;) It is the most wonderful marled cocoa wash on a pearly two-ply merino / nylon base, which will be perfect for another Rachel Coopey sock pattern. I am so very pleased to have brought this home with me!
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| Jamieson and Smith 2 ply laceweight from 1992! |
I also brought home some vintage shetland laceweight, which my mother bought in 1992 to knit a shawl for my son-to-be. At the time, she said it was entirely the wrong colour for a baby, and ordered some nice safe lemon instead. I thought she had returned the heathery mix of blues and lilacs – but no! She had buried at the back of a cupboard, and only found it again last week! Isn’t it lovely?
I deliberately avoided taking pictures of people. You’ll find plenty of those photos around the internet soon enough, I’m sure. I didn’t want to add a layer of awkwardness to the day by cornering celebrities for blog-snaps. Ysolda smiled at me, and that ‘s enough!
There were a couple of men wandering around with video cameras, and I was conscious of being “captured” knitting my sock on the sofa. Let me know if you come across that footage, please! I don’t know who they were.
I was home by 9pm. FL and I stopped for fish and chips in the village, then I stayed up to stalk some vintage sewing patterns on ebay. Fortunately I lost the bidding war. I don’t need 45 more patterns, really I don’t!
Today, I want to do some sewing, but the house is a tip. FL spent yesterday asleep / snacking / rearranging newspapers, and it looks as if the dog went mud-rolling, so there is trail of devastation to be dealt with before I can relax. Such is life!
Oh – and I dyed my hair this morning. I need to avoid strong wind, because there is a hideous deep purple tide line above my right ear… which is just not fair when the overall effect is fairly subtle. You will have to believe me when I say I have violet slices of colour where the grey used to be – FL says he can’t see them at all!
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| Violet enhancements |