When I got older, I learned that sometimes keeping an honest account of things you've done, and not locking it away from prying eyes can get you into trouble.
These days, I can't say I really do anything exciting enough with my life to get me into trouble more serious than perhaps some people finding out just how much money I spend on yarn.
But these days journals are so last century, instead we have blogs. So I'm going to keep a blog, and here it is!
Do you need to know any more back-story than that? No, I don't think so really, so let's just dive right in shall we?
YARNDALE!!!
Last weekend I went to Yarndale, on a coach trip organised by the very lovely Eleanor of Knit Nottingham.
The coach set off from Nottingham at a totally ungodly hour, and stopped in Sheffield to pick up stragglers (my friend Krissy, and myself), then pootled on up to Skipton.
I wasn't actually paying enough attention to be able to tell you what time it was when we arrived, but arrive we did, and dived right into Skipton Auction Mart.
The Auction Mart is where on a normal day you'd find farmers buying and selling livestock. It's a big hangar-like building with a concrete floor, drainage channels, and pens for sheep and the like inside. To be fair, some of them did actually contain sheep, or alpacas, or bunnies. But most of them had been transformed into cubbies of yarny joy.
I understand that giant walls of text, no matter how carefully separated into neat paragraphs, is considered bad form in the world of blogs, and that readers will cry "TL;DR!" if you don't pander to the modern day goldfish-like attention span by punctuating any blog post with regular pretty pictures. So, here's a pretty picture:
When I eventually get it to upload, then this is actually a photo from Yarndale last year, but this year I was far too busy fondling the smooshies to remember to get the camera out very much.
I did take this photo though, which might not be terribly exciting to you, but it is to me. The reason being that the organisers of Yarndale asked last year for crocheted bunting to help decorate the building (see the photo above), and this year they asked for crocheted mandalas. Now last year, no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find the bunting that I'd sent in, but this year I found my mandala! And here it is:
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. This year we were given a lovely souvenir guidebook as we entered, and this included a floor plan, as well as several patterns, and details about each of the exhibitors. So we used the guidebook to find stall 1, and set out to see everything in order.
I had a sort of shopping list for the day - I wanted a niddy noddy to replace the improvised contraption I have been using that's made of a coathanger, sellotape, and chopsticks. I was also after gradient yarn. It's hard stuff to find, because it's difficult for dyers to dye, but if there was going to be any for sale, then I figured it would be at Yarndale. And I was after undyed yarn so that I can have a go at natural dying. Oh, I was also half looking for a sunflower swift. Those umbrella ones just scare me.
I found the undyed yarn straight away, my first purchase of the day. 100g of 4-ply corriedale. Yummy! And a bargain at only £5.00.
Next I found a selection of niddy noddies, and managed to resist all the pretty fibre on the same stand. It was Wingham Wool Work, which is actually not too far from Sheffield, so if I'm feeling flush, then I can go and visit some time.
You'll see a photo that includes my new Kromski, mahogany stain, niddy noddy at the end of this post, but just so you can see how much of an improvement it is for me, here's what I have been using up until now:
After this, I started to suffer from what the lovely James of the DancingGeek podcast calls 'yarn fumes'. It's an apt term I feel! But whatever the case, I can't actually remember all the stalls we visited, or the order in which we visited them. So I'll give a shout out to the ones I remember most:
Cuddlebums - lovely gradient yarns! I found my gradient, and even better, it was 4-ply, my favourite! I also got a gorgeous purple yarn with a splash of bright rainbow colours at one end of the skein. I've seen skeins dyed this way before by the amazing Countess Ablaze (girl-crush, you'll hear a lot about the Countess in this blog!) but I've never actually knit with one, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it knits up.
Triskelion - Oh how I love this stall! I could photograph this and put the photo on my wall to look at all day long. In fact, I'm not sure why I didn't photograph it! I bought from Triskelion last year, but sadly my meagre budget prevented me from doing so this year. They dye semi-solid colourways in astonishingly deep, intense jewel tones. Here's the pitiful start that I've made on a project using one of their yarns:
Hilltop Cloud - apparently this is the place to go for fibre. After visiting their stall at Yarndale, I can absolutely see why. I was unbelievably restrained and only bought a couple of 20g bags of fibre, in colourways named after the wives of Henry VIII. So I'm currently spinning Anne Boleyn, and Catherine of Aragon is in my stash.
Spin City UK - she sells some lovely fibre, but what I was interested in here was her drop spindles. I'd never spend this much on any other drop spindle, but these are works of art, and I had to have one! I started spinning Anne Boleyn on mine before we'd even left Yarndale:
The Knitting Goddess - more yummy gradient yarns, this time in a set of 7 mini-skeins dyed all the colours of a blackened rainbow. She had so much else available that I loved, but I managed to come away with just the gradient skeins, oh, and a cute little lapel badge that said "BFL is a gateway substance". Since my affinity for yarn and fibre has been called an addiction before, I thought it was appropriate!
Sparkleduck - always beautiful, and always so much choice of fibre content, as well as colour. I genuinely couldn't afford to buy anything by the time we reached these guys, but they are going to be at Bakewell Wool Gathering on the 18th and 19th of this month, so I knew I'd have another chance. Which is good, because I have my eye on a particular dark purple and black colourway that I think will work perfectly as Celestarum (that's an epic shawl pattern, and if I buy this yarn in a few weeks, I'll tell you about the pattern then).
Batat hand dyed yarns - I absolutely had never heard of these guys before, and their stall was tiny, but this one skein of purples with bright pops of lime green in it drew me towards it. When I picked it up and felt how soft it was I started to really fall in love, and when I turned the tag over and saw it was called "Herman Munster" that sealed the deal!
Fivemoons - another one that I couldn't afford to buy from this year, but really wish I could have. Her yarns are beautiful, and they have amazing names! Just so you can see how beautiful, here's a hat that I made from some I bought last year:
Woodland turnery - Although I didn't buy anything from these guys, I can't possibly forget them because my friend Krissy has recently begun learning to weave, and apparently these are THE guys to go to for weaving accessories. I confess that I know next to nothing about weaving, but the things they were talking about all made sense. Everything they make is tested by an actual weaver, who then makes suggestions for alterations. The end result is that everything is practical and useful. Krissy was waxing lyrical about their shuttles, which include a smooth bevelled edge that can be used for beating the weft into place, and have a distinctive decoration that makes identifying different sizes of shuttle much easier.
Lucy the Tudor - my final mention, and for slightly unusual reasons I guess. I've had connections to our local medieval re-enactment group for many years now, but most people get involved so they can learn how to fight in the medieval style. That's not really for me, but I am interested in the fibre crafting from back then. Having done some research into 15th century spinning, I'd found that many re-enactors use a modern drop spindle, when all of the evidence suggests that this wasn't the case. Lucy the Tudor, and her Tudor fellow, were selling a number of fibre-craft items from many different eras, but among them were spindles much more similar to those depicted in medieval paintings of people spinning. So I bought one of those.
Here is a photo of my complete haul for the day:
You may notice something in there that I've not mentioned, and that's because items of that type are not normally something I'd be looking for at a yarn faire. Little felted toys are not normally interesting to me. But this one is a penguin! And from the same stall I got a little canvas bag with a penguin on it too! Look at him!!!
Penguins, especially Adelie penguins, are the pinnacle of evolution on this planet, and we humans are an infestation that encroaches on their territory. Nothing you can say will ever alter my opinion of this!
Next time I update, I might actually get around to talking about knitting, but that's it for now.
Sweet dreams my darlings.
Yarndale was amazing this year! You bought lots of lovely goodies x
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