On friday my mum, Kim (of Little Green Bees), Jaq (of Confessions of a Slack Knitter), Liz (of Thomasina Knits), Ellen (of Frog Princess), Ruth (I need your blog address - gimmeh gimmeh!), Jacqui (who I don’t think has a blog… yet), and me (obviously), went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham.

Much fun was had. Much fabric was bought. Lots of walking was done by all. (I am SO TIRED today.)

But let me tell you what I bought:

There is always one stall that becomes my favourite of the day. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but when I find it I find I’m drawn back to it again and again.

Yesterday it was TheButtonCompany.co.uk

I think I love them.

Firstly they had some of the cute japanese fabrics I have been kinda drooling over for a while now.

Cute waffle farmyard fabric! How lovely is that?

I think these are destined to be at least one pair of cute pajama pants for the bump, though I got a metre, so there is definately enough for at least two sizes, should they prove popular. Of course I might just hang it on a clip hanger for a while and just look at it’s loveliness. :)

So much JOY here! There is kitchen fabric (for ME!) and Amy Butler spots to go with it, plus little red riding hood fabric <3 and lime and orange robot fabric.

Actually let me pause for a minute to tell you the robot fabric story.

My sister - Kim - made an amazing bag with the blue version of that robot fabric. (I’m very proud of her.) Anyway, she was using it yesterday, and while we were at the stall, talking to one of the women running it about the fabric, Kim mentioned her bag, and held it up. And all hell broke loose in the best way! The woman had never seen the fabric worked up into something before. She wanted to fondle the fabric, and was amazed at how soft it got when washed. She wanted to show the other people behind the stall, and so - in the nicest way - ran off with it, to show them, and then brought it back to say that the other people were going to come over and have a proper look, and could Kim stick around. Hilarious. I think that’s when I fell in love with their stall.

Anyways it’s also important to point out the fabric being used as a back drop to the lovely fat quarters.

Wool felt.

Thick, amazing wool felt from france that The Button Company now stock.

(They have ordered 90 colours, and had the first 50 at the show. It was £15 a metre but they would cut from the fat quarter upwards. I would suggest calling them, and making an order, since they were pretty sure that availability was going to be sketchy for a while, while they and the tiny french company who makes it, got into a rhythm of ordering a supplying.

If I were you I’d keep a close eye on The Button Company Blog, and The Eternal Maker Crafts Blog, since there is a bit of a debate over who gets the stock all that loveliness. ;)

So yeah.

Another stall of note was Oliver Twists.

They had silk.

Hand dyed silk you could spin with.

£12.50 for the 130g above.

And frankly these days there were more spinners in our group than quilters.

So yeah, that came home with me too, and I started spinning it last night while watching the replay of the Men’s Track Points Race. (GO CHRIS!)

(Don’t know why the morning light was screwing with the colour - obviously it’s way more blue/green than that.)

I think I can get about 350m of 4ply equivalent (14wpi, and actually 3ply).

Oooh! And British people can now get iron on plastic for making ordinary fabric into oil cloth. (Kim has been lusting over US crafters who do this for a while now.) I got a metre for £3.50 from www.nid-noi.com. It’s called Lamifix.

Lastly we got to meet Amy Butler at the Rowan stand. She is lovely.

I - naturally given what is going on at the moment - bought her bookfull of useful patterns for baby things. (Actually Kim and mum - as eager aunt and granny in waiting insisted we went thirds on it.) And Amy put a lovely message inside, and managed not to get influenced at all when my mother decided to bring up a mortifyingly embarrassing story about how I apparently justified changing the spelling of my name, when I was 11 - nineteen years ago! :| Thank alot mum.

The pattern wasn’t available at the show, but I’m also looking forward the Birdy Sling bag (though I see that UHandbag have it in stock, so I’ll get my bum in gear and get it from there instead. :) (Ruth - thought you might want a heads up about that too. :)

So yeah, all in all a great day.

A Small moan that you should probably not read, especially if you have a happy glow from all the fabric loveliness above:
If - however - I had one criticism, it would be that, on mass, thousands of women in the fifties and sixties aren’t actually very considerate at all. i’m not talking about stall holders. All the stall holders were wonderful. I’m talking about the other event goers. I can’t count how many times I was bashed into - and yeah, i’m a bit sensitive about getting bashed into right now - how many times people suddenly came to a halt right in front of me in the narrow isles between the stall. How many times people blocked said isles while they made up their mind whether it was worth moving the couple of feet to the left or the right to actually stand *in front* of the stall they were looking at.

Lots of people had drag-behind boxes on wheels, or cases (I think for sewing machines, which I assume they needed for some of the classes. And, you know, fair enough.) But it would have been nice if they’d remembered that having them meant that they were taking up twice as much room when they stopped short, and at a really good ‘knock you off your feet’ height.

(The people in wheelchairs, scooters, and pushing buggies - all used to being ignore and complained about - were naturally not a problem at all.)

By lunch time - only a hour or so into the event, my mother - who is smack bang in the middle of that demographic - said ‘i’m not sure I like being around so many other women’. Which is very sad.

But frankly there were people there who needed a telling off, rather than the tuts they themselves were doling out. *sigh*

***

Which is a miserable way to end a post so full of great things.

But it’s worth pointing out that I’m definately glad I went, (as I was last year) and I hope to go again next year, so nothing was able to get me down too much. :)

Despite my general need to go into the guts of my phone and turn off whatever I turned on that started date stamping my photos, it’s kinda useful to have it here, since it’s proof (of sorts) that it *is* in fact August, despite needed my walking boots and an umbrella just to go into town.

But anyways it’s good for the veggies (apart from the tomatoes which are likely to start blighting pretty soon. But even that means we’ll just have more green tomato pickle for the winter. So really there isn’t much of a downside, if you look hard enough.

Yeah, so the bump is pretty damn big now. :)

Anyways… KNITTING!

Currently on my needles is a version of Something Red by Knit and Tonic mixed with the visual style of Gloria from Noro (Ravelry link).

The stripes are half Jo Sharp Silk Road DK tweed, which I originally used to make the Picovoli Jumper a couple of years ago (and then ripped because I loved the yarn, and never wore the jumper. I’m fearless like that.) and half the wensleydale Handspun that I have been working on. Despite W’s protests, like with the Gloria cardigan, the body of this cardigan is reverse stocking stitch, since I’m not big on stripes going the width of my body. Plus I love the dottiness of it.

Then, instead of 2×2 rib for the body, which I think might be a bit harsh so soon after giving birth, given I’m planning to wear this this coming winter, I changed it to lovely mistake rib, which gives a similar - but softer - effect.

Oh and I’ll probably make the sleeves full length.

(Aside - I wish places in the UK stocked Silkroad tweed, since it’s wonderful stuff.)

Spinning Alpaca is scary.

This might be because I am spinning straight from shawn fibre, rather that carded fibre. But I’m a bit scared that plying it is just going to make it fall apart.

That said, I guess that’s not the end of the world, since I could just card it, and have another go.

But still. Scary.

ETA: Ok maybe not so scary. Plying was fine. Totally fine.

Now let me share a hideous photograph that I took with my phone camera in the grey light of a generally wet afternoon:

And while we’re at it, a much much better photo of the fibre in question before spinning:

Much better.

My grandmother had her 90th birthday earlier in the month, and so as a family we all went to stay at Holestone Moor Barns in Derbyshire, for a weekend of sunshine, good food, and celebrations. The weather was fantastic, and the location was really lovely. (Amazing views!)

Of course, with my sister and my mum in tow, there was no way this trip wasn’t going to end up fibre or fabric related in *some* way, and sure enough, Kim was suggesting we googled for fabric shops in Derbyshire only minutes before we were due to leave.

Mind you, i’m glad she did, since we managed to find Patchwork Direct, which is a brilliant, brilliant place, which i urge you all to go to -preferably in person, since there website isn’t anywhere near as good as the actual shop. However if you can’t get to Derbyshire, I’m betting they do the main patchworking festivals, like the one at the NEC in august.

ALSO they have tons of great yarn that is not on the website, so knitters need to get themselves there too. (Seriously, it’s just a 15-20minute detour off the M1. Which, being the M1, you’ll probably be glad of.)

ANYWAY… both my mum and Kim spent a huge amount of money (though that’s relative, i guess. it seemed like a huge amount to me. ;) Actually you can see what Kim bought here.

I was more restrained - Sort of - which was lucky since Holestone Moor Barns is home to three alpacas, which had been sheared for the first time a couple of days earlier.

Which meant…

(This is the first shearing Domino has ever had. Which means it’s never going to be softer than it is right now.)

I have 200g of each colour, and a strong desire to finally get that spinning wheel i’ve been talking about for too damn long - hopefully while I still have enough free time to actually learn how to use it.