Thank you Unwind Brighton!

I have been trying to find a way to describe the wonder that was Unwind Brighton all week and find that words just can’t describe the amazing time I had!  I met such incredible people and a good number of online lovelies from as far away as Tennessee! A darling new friend also brought me chocolates from Brussels!! (pardon the blurry shot, my hands were a bit shakey as I was so excited to crack them open. Thanks again Cissi!) 😉

A HUGENORMOUS thank you to everyone who came by and said hello and took time out to play with me for a bit. It was such a pleasure! I can’t tell you how much it meant to me.

The booth was incredibly busy and I hardly had time to take any shots, but luckily my partner, Jason, took a few in the beginning:

It was such a huge and humbling pleasure to see how excited people were getting about my babies and I had to shake myself time and time again to keep hopping and stop watching everyone squish! You were all so kind!

The fair was a HUGE success and even got mentioned in the Independent… Dani and the team really outdid themselves with their very first event!

There were such an unbelievable number of people I’d always wanted to meet there – Rachel, Cissi, Joji, Helen, Aimee, Bristol, Kari, Ysolda, Kate, Felicia, Cathrin, Victoria, Dieuwke, Asti….and so many others I’ve probably missed here! It was truly difficult not to be a fan-girl, and I tried my very, very hardest not to be annoyingly starstruck – all Canadian-style, eh? (Vancouverites, at any rate, pride themselves on not showing they are starstruck. We DO live in ‘Hollywood North’, after all! hah) It was tough, let me tell you!

And it was SUCH a pleasure to catch up with old friends as well. I loved that people were describing it as ‘Ravelry in real life’, as that is what it felt like – all these people I know from Rav in the flesh! FAB….and they were/are all even more lovely and amazing in real life, too!

I even got to host the winning design competition shawl that was in the programme-  Curious Handmade’s beautiful Pebble Beach Shawlette at the booth. For those of you interested the KAL has officially kicked off! And for those of you that weren’t able to make it last weekend, the pattern is now available online. Knit in only one skein of WESTMINSTER, it is shown here in colourway ‘Gold Rush’:

image © Curious Handmade

I was lucky enough to wear it for a brief moment and have to say it is glorious! It fits beautifully over the shoulders and the ends ruffle down the front like in the photo above. Truly a lovely knit! I am getting more of the blend in this week and will have more colourways in shop next week and at Fibre East at the end of the month.

I was a little bleary by the time Pom Pom Quarterly’s Shindig kicked off on the Saturday evening, but they had arranged a brilliant knitting pub quiz that had us all scratching our heads and laughing. Nice work once again, ladies!

Here is a photo of the ever-gorgeous Lydia and Meghan reading out the answers to the quiz:

image from Instagram (please let me know if this was yours as I can no longer find the original in the stream!!)

I feel that no matter what I say it will be completely inadequate to describe the wonder and joy had by all, so will just end this with a thank you to all who made this weekend so wonderful…you know who you are. ;*

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Blown away with a seaside breeze…

Back from Brighton and have to say I had an utterly fantastic time at the hugely successful and amazing Unwind! My only regret from the weekend is not being able to take any of the amazing workshops which everyone raved about!

A huge thank you to everyone – especially Dani, Renee and the rest of the utterly amazing UB team – for their patience, organisational skills, kindness and endless help. I can’t say enough times how appreciated it was.

Another HUGE thank you to every single one of you that came by the booth and introduced yourselves! What a crazy humbling thing to meet so many of you that I have only ‘talked’ with online – BUT IN THE FLESH. Wow. Still getting chills from this. 😉

I hope to post some photos from the show and gush more later this week once I’ve recovered and rested a bit.

I will leave you with this for today…I’ve been really excited to see so many finished projects in the flesh this weekend and also the pictures cropping up in Ravelry, so have been trying to keep track of them in my little Pinterest board! It is good fun to see what people are making with the yarns if you want to check them out:

 

Have you voted?

I was pleasantly surprised early this week when I saw the shortlist for Dani’s Unwind Brighton design competition and realised that not one, but TWO of the fantastic entries use Kettle Yarn Co. yarns! Wheee! How amazing.

In the shortlist for the competition are Rachel Brown’s adorable, squishy-looking Brighton Dome socks:

These beauties are knit in TWIST fingering, a beautiful bouncy yarn in  100% British superwash BFL. This yarn is a great all around blend as it is super soft and perfect for warm shawls, tops, gloves, etc., but also perfect for socks as the Bluefaced Leicester fibre is long-staple so hardwearing with lots of natural tensile strength and abrasion resistance.

Rachel blogged on her design earlier in the week so you can see more details on the design process there along with closeups of the yarn. Now I just need to get someone to knit these for me! ;-D

I have solid colourways of this yarn in this weeks update, and am planning on getting more of this polka dot colourway dyed up for Unwind so watch for it in the shop!

I just noticed that currently first in the running is Helen Stewart’s Pebble Beach Shawlette, knit in my hand painted WESTMINSTER, the softest, slinkiest baby camel/silk!

Helen blogs as Curious Handmade and you can listen to her talk about how much she loved my yarn on her recent podcast!

Using only a single skein of this luxury yarn the shawl drapes like liquid gold over the throat! I am currently carrying this blend in light fingering which gives you even MORE bang for your buck at at  533 m • 583 yds per 100g skeins for a slightly lighter but larger shawl!

I’ve used 2 golds in the Gold Rush colourway so that the colour shimmers across the shawl even when not moving!

You can vote for your favourite now. The winning design will be published with the show programme so you can get it for free!

(do it, do it, do it!)