Yarnporium 2018

Well, what a day! I didn't make it to Yarnporium until the afternoon after losing my house keys (they were still in my front door...) and suddenly doing an epic deep clean of the house to find them. Then there was a mad dash to the post office for some parcels, left the house, went back for the yarn needed for my class and my purse then ran down to the train station. I'm not good at adulting...

I arrived at Central Hall Westminster, snapped a quick photo of Westminster Abbey and headed inside. #tourist

I had around 40 minutes before the class I booked to look at the yarn market. Go go go! There were loads of different vendors, all of whom can be found here. I was really grabbed by the mini skein chains by River Knits, they had different colour groupings from autumn colours to blues to greens. I didn't buy them but they're on my future wish list.

Here starts the hurried photos of a late person. Although the marketplace wasn't packed, every stall had customers in front of them. Out the way! (not really) Chatting to The Loveliest Yarn Company, the business had been steady and I hope it has been enough to balance the cost of the show. I wonder if the yarn industry is getting saturated? Or if there are too many yarn shows? Every vendor is highly talented but knitters represent a relatively small amount of the population and can only go to so many events per year. If I could attend every one I would!

Garthenor

Travel Knitter booth - love the map table cover!

This is Il Burato, one of the incredibly intricate double knit scarves designed by Nathan Taylor aka the Sockmatician in 4 ply yarn by Travelknitter. Also my teacher for the afternoon for 'Demistifying Double Knitting'. En route to the classroom I bumped into Amy from Stranded Dyeworks and Caroline of the Knitting Vicariously Podcast. Lovely, lovely people - have a listen to their podcasts on YouTube.

I forgot to take a photo of Nathan in the class, he taught with so much energy and enthusiasm that you felt you could make anything!

The double knit cast on:

Side A:

Side B:

Double knitting is a technique where you produce an inverse mirror image of a pattern on either side of the knitting. And both sides are knit stitch. Simple right? Actually if you can get past the basics, it really is. But it takes absolute concentration at this stage. Nathan explained each step really well and encouraged the exploration of mistakes to learn how to fix them at home. I'm halfway through the sample knit and will post the finished piece here when I'm done. I was in a friendly group but the sheer level of concentration meant conversation was out of the question! It's given me the double knitting bug and I want to try a beginner pattern Nathan has designed called Peano No. 1.

It was so nice to see various podcasters, shop owners, designers and dyers. I also saw a few familiar faces from the London Yarn Crawl last year. I say this a lot but the knitting/ yarn world is really friendly and welcoming and I feel lucky to have found it.

I wish I had more time to spend in the marketplace today to properly look at every stall and next weekend I'll make sure I head to Festiwool earlier in the day. And also keep track of my keys...

I bought some stash but I'll leave that for another post - its Saturday and its G&T time!

I'll leave you with Westminster Abbey late this afternoon.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Charlotte and Harvey x