Yesterday I hopped on a bus, a train, a London Overground train, two tubes and another bus to get to Alexandra Palace for the Knitting & Stitching Show. It was totally worth it! It was my first time at Alexandra Palace… what a pretty building. And what a view! Although it was kinda grey and rainy and not really possible to get some good photos of the view using my mobile phone. But you could see all the London sky scrapers..
And look at those gorgeous pieces from the ‘The Art of Embroidery: Nicola Jarvis and May Morris’ exhibition. So amazing.
Anyway, I met up with Laura from Bugs & Fishes and we had lunch before heading into the madness of craft materials! This was the first time meeting Laura and she’s just as lovely in person as you’d expect if you read her blog. :-)
Oh yeah, If you see other post about the show you will undoubtedly see pictures of this taxi. So awesome and colourful!
Speaking of lovely ladies! We walked around the show with Momtaz (with the fab blue hair!) Later Laura and I popped in to say hello to the Craftivist Collective. Sarah wasn’t there, but Sami from Teasemade was helping out and it was so nice to see her again. We had a peek at Ruth Singer‘s stand – her work is gorgeous!
There is lots and lots to see.. so many crafty bits you’d never even imagine existed. As well as designers and artists who do really awesome work. Very, very inspiring! But also very tiring: all that walking! And stopping! And ooh’ing and ahh’ing!
I had a very small budget and mostly I was looking for a few specific things: tiny scissors, quilting rulers plus cloud fabrics and dragon fabric for a project I’m making for Tony.
I didn’t find everything I was looking for but I did splurge a bit on some neon coloured ric rac!! From House of Alistair.
And I’d decided beforehand that I wasn’t going to buy any books, but as you may have spotted in the background of this photo, I did buy one. Because you see, we had a look in the Tilleke Schwartz stand and it turned out that she was there!
We talked to her briefly and I think I must have seemed like a crazy fan girl when I blurted out “you inspired me to start doing embroidery!” Because she did. Her work is amazing and I was completely blown away by it when I first came across it years ago. That embroidery could be completely free.. no pattern, no rules of what to embroider etc.
To see her work in person was really, really great. AND to meet her! So you see, I basically *had* to buy her latest book, which she very kindly signed.
I’m not sure, but maybe this is what it’s like to be star struck? I was still thinking about it this morning! :-)
Brilliant, brilliant afternoon! And so great to finally meet Laura in person, yay!
A couple of quick snaps from my trip to Alexandra Palace: some cool mosaics on the Tube!
