Thursday, May 21, 2015

Iknit Fandango

I'd booked a ticket for the Friday of Iknit Fandango a while ago, and on the day I had a cold and really didn't feel like dragging myself into London. I probably wouldn't have gone if I hadn't already got the ticket and didn't want to waste the money spent on it. And, I'm glad I did go. I only stayed for about 90 minutes, as I didn't really feel up to much more than that, but I really enjoyed it when I was there.

I liked the venue, at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Hall.  It was nice and light, which made it easy to check yarn colours. It's not the biggest hall in the world, but this wasn't a huge festival, in fact, it was just the right size to see everything without getting overwhelmed with colour and people and stuff.


There were several rows of stalls to make your way round.  I did one complete tour of the whole thing, looking for yarn companies I know I particularly like and particular things I was looking for.


These animals are from Edward's Menagerie on the Toft Alpaca stand.


And another picture of their stand.

These are the ladies on the Knitting and Crochet Guild stand, who were winding skeins into balls for people.


There were refreshments on a sort of gallery level, provided by the Finchley Women's Institute too.

And what did I buy? Well, I was very taken with the yarn on display on the Triskelion, Easyknits (especially their Deeply Wicked line in amazing colours) and Sparkleduck stands.  But I was aware of the yarn diet, and in the end I was most tempted by the Wollmeise stand. This is a 300g ball (approx 1500m) of Wollmeise Lace-Garn, in the "Spicemarket" colourway. There is enough there to knit me a cardigan. Hmm, a cardigan in laceweight, that's going to take a while?! It also came with a little bottle of wool wash.


And from Toft Alpaca, I bought a copy of Kate Davies' Yokes book, which I've wanted for a while. Lots of lovely patterns, and lovely detail about the history of knitting. And it came in a cute drawstring project bag. I was also on the look out for some Knit Pro Symphonie 3.5mm needle tips, which I found on the Knitting4fun stand, so mission accomplished!


It was also good to see a few people that I knew from blogging and Ravelry, although I suspect a lot more were going on the Saturday.

1 comment:

Victoria said...

I think a cardigan in lace weight yarn sounds heavenly *to wear*... perhaps a bit tedious *to knit*, though. :)

That book Yokes looks interesting. Kate Davies really comes up with some very vivid and interesting yoke designs, doesn't she?