Showtime… my favourite time of year!

As my friends and family know, I spend most of September (and part of August) panicking about preparing for the Autumn shows but when they actually come around, although they are incredibly hard work,  I love it!  Getting out and meeting other exhibitors and the lovely knitters that visit is a real pleasure.

This year I have been lucky enough to exhibit at Yarndale in Skipton and The Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace.  I spend a lot of time planning the stand and trying to make it look as lovely as possible and this year my major purchases were my sparkly trees.  I was told at Yarndale that you could spot the tree from the other side of the Auction Mart which was great.  The reindeer and Santa in his sleigh looked fab hanging from the branches.

For Alexandra Palace I splashed out on two more trees (don't tell my husband) and WOW was it worth it, the stand looked fabulous (in my opinion) and the trees showed off all the mini Christmas projects beautifully!

We were really channelling Christmas this year with a new book, Mini Knitted Christmas, a yarn kit to accompany it and two new kits.  The Yarn Starter Kit was a real success and worth the hours of planning what to pop in the lovely brown box.  The kit contains seventeen different yarns, toy filling and two pipe cleaners (or their more politically correct title - chenille sticks) and gives you a really good start on the projects in the book.

The new kits this year were also Christmas themed (apologies to those of you that didn't want to think about Christmas in September)…

The Chunky Robin was a sell-out success at both the shows, closely followed by the Chunky Holly Kit and it was lovely to hear from people what they had planned for their holly leaf garland.

Of course, visiting the shows gives me an opportunity to catch up with my knitty friends.  It was great to see the wonderful Erika Knight and her gorgeous daughter Bella.  The knitters we meet are fabulous, one lovely lady came to show me the gorgeous little polar bears she had knitted for friends, here they are looking so cute!
                                                     


I did manage to take a bit of time off the stand to make some purchases… but that's a whole new story!