Knitting Across the Pond

Last month I had the amazing opportunity of exhibiting at the Spring Knitting and Stitching Show in London.  Having decided to do it on relatively short notice, I had only four days after getting home from Stitches West before I was on a plane heading to the UK.  Whew!

The Spring event is held at the Olympia exhibition hall, located on the west side of central London.  I had the tiniest of stalls, but that was all I needed, since I wasn't exactly bringing truckloads of product with me.

Brian designed a special scaled-down banner for me, and made these dandy little velcro hangers (the walls provided are velcro compatible - jolly!) for me to hang things from.  The table and shelves were rented.  Probably won't do that again - they were very expensive, and the black paint on the shelves rubbed off on my labels, ack.  

Knitters in the UK are every bit as enthusiastic about yarn as they are in the US and I had a blast talking with them.  I met some fantastic people!  

Imogen, owner of Fig Tree Yarns on Jersey (Channel Islands) had actually purchased a skein of my yarn at Yarn & Coffee in Santa Fe, and now is carrying my yarn in her lovely shop.   I also made contact with editors from  Simply Knitting and Simply Crochet magazines, both of whom took some Cat Mountain Fiber Arts yarn for their design team to create projects for features this coming fall.  Whee!  

I even had a little time to play tourist: visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, went to the Borough Market, walked in Hyde Park, and ran across this landmark outside of the Earl's Court Tube Station

I learned a ton about what to do and not do should I decide to exhibit again, and was overall very pleased with how the show went.  There is another one at Alexandra Palace in London in October RIGHT after the Taos Wool Festival.  As in, I'd need to leave the next day.  Not sure how that might work out, but we'll see.