On Saturday I went on the Knit Nottingham (voted the Midlands top LYS/ local yarn shop!) coach trip to Yarndale, a new event in the Knit and Stitch calendar, where fibre suppliers could showcase their yarns, fleeces, rovings for spinning, implements of mass construction and other woolly delights. There were displays and workshops but just walking round the site (an animal auction, super scrubbed up 
) with its couple of hundred stalls was a feast for the eyes:
Eleanor in the bunting and amazeballs outside the front entrance – I loved the baubles, particularly these:
I won’t be able to use that idea in a public installation, because the knitting needles constitute a hazard (though they got them past H & S hmmm…) but their playful simplicity really appealed to me
And then we went in:
There are hundreds more images online, but you get the idea!
I came away with an empty purse (well, my cab fare home and my bus fare for tomorrow, that’s what I call sound financial management at an amazing event like that!) 3 bags full of fibre-y goodness, a head full of colours and textures and lots of new ideas
I was walking slowly through the crowds and took many opportunities to pace, stopping for a sit-down on my trusty Rolls. This meant I could take in a lot of the colours and combinations a lot more slowly, more reflectively than when I went to Harrogate Knit and Stitch, where I was darting to stalls then going back to the seats provided. What came over me was an urge to create complex cloth, to paint with fibre…
I had already bought sock yarn (I am going to a workshop on toe-up socks on Friday) in super amazing colour combos from http://www.theknittinggoddess.co.uk/ourshop/
Colinette’s chocolate and aqua set me off on the complex cloth path though, I chose harmonising rovings from https://twitter.com/Threshing_Barn (washed and dyed fibre before spinning) to work in by sewing machine or embellisher, Ice pompom yarn to add interest and embellishing threads to add line…which will also work for whispering wall
Kaleidoscopes of images are whirling round my happy mind and although I slept for most of the following 21 hours - could finally keep my eyes open enough to make food about 9pm on Sunday! – I feel really inspired and nourished, with materials for the two installations, and the sock workshop, and now for some complex cloth. And today I started that complex cloth!! That is worth a separate post though
