Knitting & Stitching Show

it's that time of the year again ---- first the k&s in dublin and shortly after this halloween! this year we've been luckier than last, i.e. no problem to get a taxi, a grey, but dry day in dublin - and only 20 min. delay on the train back home:)) that's pretty smooth for travelling from the west of ireland!

of course I can never go to the show without buying bits and pieces - though I was pretty good this year. I didn't buy a single book - none of the new spinning or weaving books I wanted were available (amazon, here I come!) so - here's what I got:

I bought a kit of procion dyes, also some separate pots, urea and soda ash. 4 oz of guanaco from texere, tiny silk neps from OT (I am going to card those into fibres as "tweed"). I found a lovely sea-blue linen yarn from texere to make one of those extremely stretchy shopping nets (the yarn supposedly makes two of them - so one is going to be a present eventually). this yarn would make a very nice weaving yarn, the colours were beautiful and the yarn has a nice feel.

I also bought some handdyed reels of silk from OT - the solid colours were half price as special offer = hard to resist:)) there are also three in multicolour (the quality was very nice to use in my miniature embroidery - I think I am going to make another project like this in time). two hanks of "once-offs" and a pack of gorgeous purple mixed beads are from OT, too.

I got a few shisha mirrors, some tiny bells in silver and gold (xmas is coming closer:)), some pliers for making my stitch markers (I've had the materials for this for a while, but couldn't find my pliers anymore:(()

there was one stall with "folk" supplies for cross stitch etc. patterns like bent creek, heart in hand etc. plus suitable materials. I bought a small piece of rustic aida, three small patterns (which include a few buttons or charms) and a small bag full of different brass charms (which led to major delays, because the people manning the stall had written a really tiny price list and had problems in figuring out the prices for the different charms - they didn't find it remotely funny when I asked why they didn't just sell them by weight!:))

there was a stall with "zauberball" sockwool from the german company "schoppel" - which I had seen online, but didn't use yet. after seeing a scarf done in two colours with this yarn here, I thought I'd give it a try. unusually for sock wool this is a single ply yarn - and I think I'll try to see how this can be dyed before I knit with it - I can probably dye my own in a similar style, which might be a sensible thing to do with at least part of the 3,5 kg cone of sock wool I recently ordered:)) the colours in blackberry and blues are really nice and I am looking forward to knitting with the yarn.

this is the linen yarn from texere, called C4 (it's a 10ply!).

and this the guanaco - looks like ordinary camel fibres:)) it's very soft, but also extremely short, so I might have to blend this with something a little bit longer before spinning it.

also, the group "Connacht Textile Crafters" participated in the show on the stall of the Irish Guild of WSD - our group project Miniatures is shown here:

unfortunately the spot on the board wasn't ideal for showing miniatures, where details are the most interesting - they were hanging behind the large table, so that people couldn't easily come closer to check out details or descriptions - which is a pity, because a lot of work went into making those projects. if I ever manage to get the blog of the group going (bad conscience, I haven't managed to do anything about it for ages, even though I set it all up some time back) - I'll upload larger pictures of all the projects to see in detail!

so, with halloween nearly over and the show behind me - it's time for christmas preparations again:)) but first things first - before I start anything in this area, I am off for kitchen duty:))

Happy Halloween to all!!