knitting & stitching 2012

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Yesterday marked the start of this year's Knitting & Stitching Show taking place at London's Alexandra Palace. I went for the first time last year and had a thoroughly good (albeit tiring) time and this year was just as good, if not better!

Highlights included:

• John Allen's decorative carpets (yes, carpets, I've never been enthused about carpets before), they reminded me v.much of the old british railway posters only instead of paint and canvas they were all created by weaving!
• The work of recent graduate Rachel Parker who's use of stitching, digital images, geometric shapes, and beautiful colour ranges really caught my eye. Check out her stuff here rachel-parker.tumblr.com
• A drink and a chat with a lady who I've been working with for 14 months but had never met! She lives in Edinburgh so we only ever email each other - it was really great to finally meet her face-to-face.
• The amazing range of wool, embroidery AND fabric on offer - there were soooo many stalls, I was seriously spoilt for choice.

Ally Pally, it was a v.misty morning, normally the views of London are fantastic from here.

left: close up of the knitted village - it's a vegetable patch(!) with a few goats and piglets thrown in for good measure. right: you can't really see it but this is made from suffolk-puffs made from plastic bags - kinda clever no?

top left: one of the vintage wallpapers used in the Sonic Wallpaper exhibition
bottom left and right: John Allen's carpets (see, I told you they were pretty!)

top: a v.small part of a textile sculptures collection based on the imaginations of Lewis Carroll - it was all rather surreal and very intricate. These little guys (possibly the cards from alice in wonderland...) were my favourites. bottom: some of Rachel Parker's work - colourful stitching, patterns and repetition - all things I love.

Aaaand because I couldn't possibly have come away empty handed (there was actually a danger of me using all of this months money on wool/fabric/ribbons etc). Some fabulous new wool from a really lovely lady at the Woolyknit stand and 2 fat quarters from the new Denyse Schmidt collection (v.restrained, I could easily have bought more) from the cheery people at The Village Haberdashery who are, incidentally, having rather a large sale on their site at present....I'm just saying.