Thursday 11 October 2012

Knitting and Stitching Show 2012

Hooray!!! It's that time again!!!

The Knitting and Stitching Show is currently on at Alexandra Palace in London (11th-14th October), then moving on to Dublin (1st-4th Nov) and Harrogate (22nd-25th Nov).

I got a severe ticking off after last time, and I have so so much stuff already waiting to be stitched, so I was determined not to load myself down with too much this year.  But I did still want to visit, and see some of the exhibition pieces.

The stands which stood out for me were of course the Mr X Stitch one, who curated a stand full of interesting big and little stitching with a wide range of materials.  I loved the stitched car door and the real door and he even personalised a book for me :)






The other exhibition stand which was incredible, as I expected was the Royal School of Needlework.  Sadly, no photography allowed on many of the stands, including this one, but the pieces were outstanding, beautiful, wonderfully and perfectly crafted.  Way to make me feel like my work is totally inadequate!!!  There really is no substitute for going to see the finished pieces in person.

Anyway, I was good.  I came away with only one bag of stash.  This contained:

One Table Magnifying Lamp - finally a mains powered lamp and magnifier.  Sadly, the floor standing ones all seem to have enormous bases, which won't fit under my sofa, so at least if I have a table one, I can work on some of my smaller pieces during the dark evenings.



 Some new xmas card designs from the Nutmeg Company - these went down so well when I made them for a previous xmas, so I thought I'd buy some more!




A couple of small Michael Powell designs.  I've liked these for a while, so I decided to get a couple of small pieces to work on.






Sparklies fabric!
The stand had an amazing large piece of orange hand dyed fabric with a black dragon stitched onto it.  I bought 5 pieces of various hand dyed fabrics, the pale green (sparkling rainforest) and lilac (Lilac Ice) with opalescent sparkles in the fabric.  I also got Slate, Fire and Black Dahlia.  These are all small pieces just to see what I can do with different fabrics.



And that's it!  I can't wait to rip all the packets open and get started.

12 comments:

cucki said...

Great stash ...and have fun time at show ..
Hugs xxx

Kaisievic said...

Lovely stash and what a shame that you were not allowed to take more pics to share with those of us who live elsewhere in the world and will probably never get to the show.

Joysze said...

Great stash!!! Looking forward to seeing stitches on those gorgeous fabbies. :D

geeky Heather said...

Oooo, lovely stash! I've never seen those Christmas card designs. Too cool.

Shebafudge said...

Lovely stash!! I love Saprklies fabric. Fire is the most amazing colour EVER! Off to have a look for the Nutmeg Company Christmas cards...you enabler you!

Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...

What a great day out. I used to love the Olympia Stitching Show. I really would love to go to some more but it's all on the back burner until the Small Boy grows a little larger!!

ricketyjo said...

Thanks Cucki, it was lots of fun! xxx

ricketyjo said...

Thanks very much... I can understand it of course, but some of the pieces were just so detailed and the stitching was so neat... I could have done with putting a photo somewhere to remind me of the standard that I'm trying to get to! And to show everyone else the wonderful work too!!!

ricketyjo said...

Thank you... I'm not too sure what I'll do with them yet, but I'm excited to get to them and make plans :)

ricketyjo said...

They are really lovely, although stitching on paper can be quite hard work, the needle seems to fall back out a lot, but I do like the effect and this company makes some really lovely things. Just hope I can finish them in time!

ricketyjo said...

Hehehe, thanks!! I only found the sparklies through some discussions on facebook and then I walked past them at the stitching show and got totally sucked in. When I was about to leave and still had a little cash in my wallet, that was what I went back for - more fabric!!! As for the nutmeg company - I'm not much into the little model houses, but the card designs are really lovely I think...hope you found something you liked! :)

ricketyjo said...

Hehehehe, that just means you have more time to save up and prepare for it!!! I was surprised how many people had those shopper trolley things that they were wheeling around - I'm assuming for big balls of wool, but imagine if they were full of stitching supplies!!! :)