The Knitting and Stitching Show 2016

After a horrendously busy few weeks at work, on Saturday the 8th of October I crawled out of bed at 7am to head off to The Knitting and Stitching Show.

It’s ages since I’ve been to a large scale craft event  – in fact, I don’t think I’ve been to a big one since Handmade Fair (you can read my blog post about that here) – and when my friend Bex suggested I come along to London and make a day of it I jumped at the chance.

Held at Alexandra Palace, it’s a fair of all things knitting, crocheting, and stitching. And when I say all things, I mean all things; there was even a stall selling nothing but high quality lamps to work under, and I spotted one selling just the very very poshest of dressmaking scissors.

Stalls, stalls, stalls! 

For crafty enthusiasts it was a total, sprawling haven. Popular names like Rowan and Stylecraft had big (and very popular) stalls, and there were hundreds of independent suppliers of everything from hand-dyed yarn to beautifully patterned fabric, all wrapped up in a wonderful setting.

The best part, though, was the fact that the stalls suited a whole range of budgets. At some fairs like these I’ve found the focus is on hand dyed and hand crafted – so you’re hard pushed to pick up a skein of yarn for less than £8 – but while there were plenty of wonderful sellers with exactly that, there were also those like Black Sheep Wools with huge piles of discounted yarn that had everyone scrabbling for the best deal.

My favourite stall, though, was definitely Toft’s. I absolutely love Toft’s designs (see my posts on making Kerry Lord’s flamingo and stork) and they dress their stall so beautifully it’s impossible not to choose at least something small to take home. The girls working on the stand were so lovely, friendly and helpful, and the ginormous flamingo and monster either side with signs inviting you to take a selfie were so fun.

They were a real breath of fresh air in a room where some of the stallholders took themselves, and their crafts, extremely seriously. I did find a few of the people on the stands were a little snobby towards me and my group of friends, and often assumed we were clueless or beginners (despite the fact that we’ve all been crafting for years, and two of us were wearing hand-knitted stuff at the event!). Mostly, though, everyone was super friendly and made us feel really welcome, and it was nice to chat to a couple of other attendees as we went along, too.

Our crafty purchases

I managed to grab a beautiful pack of Sirdar Click (in this beautiful greeny purpley colour) for just £16 from Black Sheep, while Bex took away a huge haul of £1 balls of chunky acrylic from Marriner Yarns. Lizzy also picked up a bag full of Stylecraft’s basic DK in a range of totally obnoxious colours to make a bright and beautiful granny square blanket.

One of my favourite finds was a sickeningly cute Sirdar Hayfield baby cardigans pattern, which uses the lovely Sirdar Hayfield Baby Blossom Chunky. I nabbed this plus two yarn colourways to make both cardis (and had the first on my needles the very next day).

And of course, to take everything home in, I couldn’t resist popping back over to Toft on our way out to grab their quarterly magazine and the alpaca tote, which is printed with an alpaca crochet pattern on the back!

Into the details

Overall the event was well run. Getting there was easy – we took a train from Finsbury Park – and it was well signposted once you arrive.

The only issues I found were with the toilets and food. Toilet queues were always huge (though they had installed a few portaloos outside to help with this) and there was nowhere near enough space for people to sit and eat – but the food options available were really yummy, including pizzas and roast turkey rolls.

Tickets were about £16 each, which I think was good value. We spent about four hours at the actual fair in the end, and the venue was lovely, though with most of the workshops being another £16 or more on top of this we didn’t feel like we could afford to try any out. There were lots to choose from, though, if you prefer going to these kinds of things to learn a new skill; if I’d had the cash, I probably would have gone for one of the needle felting classes.

So, all in all it was a fantastic day. If you’re worried you missed out, don’t be – there’s another show in Harrogate at the end of November, which is also such a beautiful place to visit around Christmas. Snap up your ticket, and enjoy!

Handmade Fair at Hampton Court Palace

There aren’t many people I’d get up at 4:30am for. But Kirstie Allsopp is most definitely one of them.

Last Saturday Kate and I met up at Hampton Court Palace for Handmade Fair, where we found talks, workshops and craft stalls galore – as well as the best hoisin duck wraps we’ve ever tasted.

Fangirl moment ensues ❤

We bought tickets pretty much the second they came out, having spotted an advert for the Fair in a copy of Mollie Makes and figuring that something as glorious as an Allsopp-led craft festival would sell out straight away. As it happens, it didn’t actually sell out at all – but from looking at the rivers of excited ladies we followed from the train station to the Palace, you’d be forgiven for thinking it had.

After witnessing the grand opening by Kirstie Allsopp herself, who was sporting a glorious headpiece I totally wanted to steal, we grabbed a program and launched ourselves into the Fair. We started by scoping out the food stalls – important stuff to know, seeing as we’re both prone to mega bouts of hanger. The scrummies on offer ranged from cakes sold by The Cake Bar to churros, Indian snack boxes and French cuisine; it was a really nice touch for all the food on offer to be sold by independent businesses.

Before our needle-felting workshop – which Kate wrote about here – we had time to mooch around the East Shopping Tent. With the amount of stuff on offer we had to work out a tent-exploration strategy (we lost our bearings about twenty times) and we met loads of lovely sellers including the lovely ladies from Alice’s Bear Shop, The Homemakery, Jessalli and Warm Pixie.

 

Once needle-felting was out the way, we had chance to check out the West Tent – but it was completely packed! We’d been lucky enough to walk around the East Tent much earlier than most people had bothered to arrive, but as soon as everyone turned up things got seriously busy, so we decided to bail and hit the food stands.

After half-heartedly considering a couple of other options we gave in and hit The Duck Truck for huge hoisin duck wraps and chips cooked in duck fat. They were a little pricey at £7.50 each (and £3 for chips) but, unlike festival food, this completely reflected the quality. Seriously. They were glorious wraps of ducky deliciousness. 10/10, would eat again.

We finally plucked up courage to brave the busy West Tent, which was lucky as it was here that we found some of our favourite sellers of the weekend as well as some seriously beautiful stalls. The cake on display at the Blossom Sugar Art stand was unbelievable, and we really struggled to tear ourselves away from the beautiful hare jewellery by Shark Alley. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the stunning branding over at Stitch and Story.

Having checked out all the stalls we headed for our #worldpomination Grand Makes Session where we tried out pompom makers for the first time. One word. Addicted. Shout out goes to instructor Rosy Nicholas for being generally hilarious, awesomely stylish and my official hairspiration. Check out her website for shoes that’ll remind you of ice cream and glass all at once, and in a really great way.

As the afternoon went on, we finally splashed our cash (we’d wanted to have a look at everything on offer first) and then treated ourselves to some cheeky glasses of bubbly before sitting down to our Super Theatre talk featuring Kirstie and Annie Sloan. The talk was interesting, but not at all what we’d expected; Annie is funny and quirky but looked like she’d be more at home crafting than stuck on a stage.

As we wound down at the end of the day, Kate and I chatted about the event itself and what we’d change. The ticket price was £29, which left us probably with too-high expectations; considering the stuff on sale and the food on the stalls themselves was pricey, it seemed like most of the ticket price went on the talks and workshops which although fun and interesting didn’t quite feel like value for money.

Considering we’d both spent upwards of £30 to get there alongside the ticket price, it was a bit of a shame that the things for sale were so expensive – though from what we did buy, we definitely got what we paid for (if not more!). For next year, though, we reckon things like a free program (it cost £5 extra for just one) or perhaps another workshop as part of the ticket price would make the event feel a little more value for money.

That said, the venue was stunning – neither of us had been to Hampton Court Palace before – and, at the end of the day, the Fair gave us a perfect opportunity to hang together, craft and chill out which, when you live as far apart as we do, is in itself worth every penny.

A DIY laptop sleeve and trial by error. Many errors.

Sewing is definitely not my area of expertise. I can do it, and I always have plenty of ideas of things I can sew and fabric that’d make them look beautiful, but once I sit down at that sewing machine things just go wrong.

I think the problem is that I just want to do things. And then I want them to be done. To me, sewing corners neatly, actually staying within the edges of my fabric and even cutting in a straight line seem like major hassles rather than pretty important components of actually doing something well.

Even though I’m totally aware that the above was my general approach to these kinds of projects, I inexplicably decided to make a laptop sleeve for my, er, laptop, and just blag the entire project rather than finding a pattern or step-by-step online. I mean – I don’t even know why. Total mistake. But more on that later.

Luckily I managed to grab half a metre of elephant fabric (adorably, it’s called Allover Elephants) from eBay for a really decent price, which I thought would prove useful considering my aforementioned ability to mess things up monumentally due to generally refusing to learn.

I also bought some brightly-coloured fabric from the same seller to line the sleeve, plus wadding to make it extra snug. I’m hugely accident prone, so I figured the more padded my laptop could be, the better.

My idea was to make just a standard padded sleeve. I measured up my laptop, then when measuring out my fabric added two centimetres to either side of each length. I figured this should account for the padding I was planning to fill it with.

To avoid having to do too much sewing, I cut two long pieces of each fabric double the width of my laptop and a little extra, which I then sewed together back-to-back, turned right-side out and filled with the wadding I’d cut to size earlier.

I wrapped it around my laptop to check for size – and I hit a snag. I’d forgotten to account for the depth, which meant there was no way it was going to fit. In a totally uncharacteristic move, though, I decided not to freak out, and left the top edge open instead.

I’m not going to lie, I was pretty disappointed the sleeve didn’t turn out absolutely perfectly, despite taking a totally random approach to doing it that was never going to succeed.

Even so, I’m planning to sew a huge button to the front and make a small strip of padded fabric into a strap, which will stop the laptop falling out of the sleeve and help to keep it extra snug. So, ultimately, I did manage to make myself a laptop sleeve – even though it wasn’t exactly how I’d planned it.

So, lessons learnt? None. I’ve learnt absolutely nothing, and would probably start a project I’d never done before with no guidance all over again.

No, okay, seriously – trial by error, even though it can lead to less-than-brilliant end results, is a pretty great way of improving. Next time I make something like this I’ll know to make the fabric bigger and account for the padding and depth a little better.

Plus, you’ve got to make the best of a bad situation. To cheer myself up, I made a new headscarf with the leftover fabric to help control my hair while I’m growing it out. Elephant headwear bonus.

 

After any of the materials in this post? I don’t blame you. The elephants are seriously cute. I’ve linked to all the products I’ve used throughout the post, so click away!