And that was Fibre Flurry

Hard to believe that Fibre Flurry was almost a whole week ago now. Been feeling ever so slightly lost and deflated all week without the manic energy of show prep that has been driving every waking hour for the last couple of months.

I’ve been terribly lazy all week, although I have made loads of new stitch markers. I’ve barely looked at my sewing machine. I have cut out various custom orders but that’s as close as I’ve come to actually doing any work. It’s been… I want to say blissful but it’s just felt slightly odd and decadent!

Anyway, I had promised I would blog from the show and post photos and so on but the Wifi wasn’t working when we got there and by the time it was smoothed out, we had customers and well, that was pretty much it for the rest of the day. We hardly stopped chatting to people for long enough to scratch ourselves. It was wonderful!

Here are a few pics of the stall all laid out and a few of some of the other vendors in our room. I had fully intended to wander around at some point and take photos of the venue and other stalls, to tempt and torment you with all the pretties. But the only times I left the stall were to feed Elias or grab much needed tea/coffee.

My new banner. Took me ALL DAY on Thursday to finish it. It’s not perfect but it does have bunting left over from Alex’s bunting making escapades earlier in the year. Comforting, like having a little bit of Alex watching over us on the stall or something. And it was bright and colourful and handmade, like everything else on our stand. I think it represents my ethos quite well!

You can also see the dishes of stitch markers set out. We went for a mostly pick and mix approach, although following on from your feedback earlier in the week, I did make up a bunch of pre-packaged themed sets which seemed to go down quite well too.

All hail The Great Pumpkin

Behind our stall we draped some black velvety cloth and Anna very carefully pinned her beautiful samples. She had a couple of new shawl designs to launch. The runaway successes of the show were Pumpkin Patch (the orange beauty on the right) and a Firefly themed shawl, ‘If it moves, shoot it’ AKA the Zoe shawl (centre stage). I love them both but I think the construction of the Zoe shawl is particularly clever, all modular triangley bits that result in something that kind of looks like wings.

Here’s another example of Zoe in different yarn:

The way the shawl is shaped, it naturally lends itself to snuggling round your neck. It’s on My List. Although I plan on knitting the Pumpkin Patch shawl next. I’ve even got the yarn all picked out. More on that another time 😀

Here’s a glimpse of some of the fabric goodness we had on offer. The pile of hooky pouches was totally decimated by the end of the day and everything else was fairly depleted too.

Best moments of the day for me:

• having people turn up to the stall looking specifically for patterns. That was wonderful. It really pleases me to see Anna having success as a designer because I love her patterns. I think she writes patterns that are sometimes brain bogglingly clever and difficult but always fun and beautiful. So it was awesome having people turn up specifically to purchase one of her patterns. Hurrah!
• getting to see some of the other stall holders I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of years. Especially Joy and Jon and Roy. Always a total delight to see them, some of my favourite people.
• Meeting Sarah from Purlessence was really lovely.
• Getting to check out a new (to me) dyer: Natural Born Dyers who were lovely and had gorgeous yarn. I may have had to purchase some of their lovely wares.
• Meeting lots of people I’ve chatted to on Twitter or on Ravelry. Always such fun!

Best moment of the whole day has to be finally getting to meet someone I made a custom order for last year. I made a special nappy bag, which Alex delivered in person at Fibre Flurry last year and the lady I made it for swung by the stand to say hi and she had the bag with her! That was particularly awesome for me, I love seeing things I’ve made out in the wild, being used and getting to chat to the people I’ve made them for. It’s one of the only downsides to having a largely internet based business: not getting to actually meet a lot of the people who buy/commission stuff from me. Hence I really love going to shows!

Oh and Simon from The Yarn Cafe swinging by with his Vader knitting pouch was super cool too!

So yeah. That was Fibre Flurry. It was great fun and I cannot WAIT to see what the next show will bring!