Oh boy, where do I start? The last few days have been crazy, my head is still whirling. Ok, we had a bit of a tortuous day on Friday – Tony had a last minute fashion crisis and decided that his current wardrobe didn’t have the right image for Wonderwool (*rolls eyes*), so dragged me round and round shops, in the pouring rain, when all I wanted to do was get to the showground and set up. We didn’t get there until after 4, and by 9.30, still hadn’t finished setting up the stand. It became apparent pretty fast that we weren’t going to get even half our yarn out, even though we were cramming the skeins onto the display rails. We hired a table and piled that up, and left the rest of the yarn in bags, bringing it out over the rest of the weekend. While we were setting up, Jeni came past, and we did a double take as we recognised each other (we’d never met before this). I imagined her to be a tiny petite little thing, and she turned out to be taller than me, which was a surprise! We promised to catch up later in the show, but didn’t really get a chance, so we’re going to meet up some other time instead and have a good natter.

We finished getting the stand ready on the Saturday morning, before the show opened, and were ready by about 9.30, which just gave me time for a loo dash before the doors opened at 10. Except, they started letting people in around 9.45, which was a bit confusing, so I arrived back at the stand and there were already customers there, some of the lovely Ravelry girls. I immediately lost my head and became completely flustered and unable to remember anyone’s names, ooh it was just like the Sunday night adrenaline rush, except this time people could see me flapping and floundering! Everyone was lovely though, Saira brought me the prettiest beaded bracelet she’d made for me, Claudia brought me a skein of Sophia 2ply that I’d been covetting in a sale a few weeks back, and there was much hugging and squealing as I finally got to see all my friends in the flesh.

I’d recruited a lovely young friend of mine to help out for a bit, so I was able to stand and chat with everyone, although I couldn’t spend as long talking as I would have liked, as there were new people coming up all the time. Tony was totally in his element, he loved meeting everyone and chatting, and answering questions. He was terrified someone would ask him something about knitting that he wouldn’t be able to answer though, so he wouldn’t let me leave the stand. On Saturday, by far the busiest day, I didn’t leave the stand from 9.30 until 6.30, not even for the toilet. What a slave driver. Luckily people kept bringing me food and drink to keep me going. I sat down about 3, and it was only then that I realised how incredibly tired I was. One of the day’s real treats was the sight of a lady wearing a Kaffe Fasset design full length coat that she had knitted out of eyelash yarn. Yep. I’ll leave Gabrielle to tell the story (and share the photos), she’ll do it more justice than I can. By the by, this girl is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. She had me and Tony in stitches. And her fella is a sweetie.

The yarn was flying out on Saturday, but we’d brought so much that the piles didn’t seem to be dented! By Saturday night we had it all out on display, and there was just so much of it that it was a little overwhelming. Sunday was a much quieter day, I even got to do a little sock knitting in the gaps between customers, and to meet some of the other exhibitors. I met Amanda from The Natural Dye Studio, which I was really pleased about, as I’ve always admired her and her work. Also two of our suppliers, John & Juliet from Fibre Harvest (these two are totally too cool for school), and Andy, who has sourced us some scrumptious new lace weight yarns. Oh, and Lisa from First4Yarns, who was lovely. And Alice from Socktopus.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing weekend, and I learned a lot. For one thing, our stand setup wasn’t ideal – we wanted to get as much yarn out as possible, and still leave room for people to browse, but it didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. We took way, way, way too much yarn with us, more than double what we needed to take. It was interesting to see what people went for though, because it was quite different to the yarns and colourways that are most popular on the Sunday sales. We have brought back loads of yarn, which I’ll be putting on the shop over the next couple of updates. I was worried that we would only have ‘leftovers’, that the nicest yarns and colourways would sell out at the show, and we’d be bringing back the ones that no one wanted, but I can quite honestly say that we have some fantastic yarn for you over the next couple of weeks, including cobweb weight, and some of my personal favourite colourways. When I’ve sorted through the bags, I’ll start to show you some previews.

So many people were coming up and buying and telling me that they’ve been trying to buy on the Sunday sale for weeks, and haven’t been able to. Well, there’s so much yarn here that I think everyone will be able to get their hands on some over the next two weeks! We’re also thinking about doing the IKnit show in September – there’s still so many customers I want to meet, and this would be a good opportunity. 

I want to say a big Thank You to everyone who came to the show, it was amazing to meet you all, and I know a lot of you travelled a long way (as far as Norway!) to get there. Thank you all so much, we had so much fun meeting you all. I have that post-holidays blues feeling today, sort of anti-climax. I’ve been making up for lost time on Ravelry instead, but I really should go and start unpacking. Kitten news tomorrow!

PS. Did you miss me?

ETA: I forgot to tell you that I met the team behind Knit on the Net too. We had a lovely natter, and found we had much in common! Oh, and Luciana from Foreign Strand too, who had the coolest knitting bag I have ever seen!