No Idle Hands

London knitting and stitching show

By chloe • Events, Knitting, Review, Sewing, Spinning • 14 Oct 2014

This past Sunday I attended the London knitting and stitching show at Alexandra Palace in East London. I won the tickets through the lovely Kristen’s blog Knitonary. Thanks Kristen!! My friend C and I enjoyed our day very much.

The venue Alexandra Palace is beautiful with its Palm court entrance. The first thing that catches your eyes is the colourful knitted and crocheted pergola for charity.

The sheer size of the event makes it a bit daunting to navigate. 400 exhibitors covering most popular textile crafts you can think of. Knitting and spinning wise it does not have as much variety of indie vendors as say Unwind Brighton, so it’s certainly more fun if you also sew or quilt. Here’s the lovely Lauren from the British Sewing Bee 🙂

There were rotating free demos of various crafts every hour. We took the opportunity to try a few new things such as tatting, braiding and machine knitting. I also had a go at long arm quilting and loom weaving!

All these tasters make me look forward to the years ahead and all the mischiefs to get into 😉 We are all so blessed to have crafting as part of our life! We are never bored or lonely. That’s something special isn’t it.

Above: Latvian vendor Hobbywool with their traditional ‘knit like a Latvian’ mitten and socks kits. The colours and patterns will make any knitter drool. We went on the last day of the show and their most popular designs already sold out.

Above: rainbow array of colours and feather weight lace shawls at Jamiesons of Shetland

Above: faux texidermy knits by sincerely Louise. Now who can resist a knitted stag head over the nursery mantle…

Above: the amazing Heather spinning on a red wheel at her booth little owl crafts. , stocked with beautiful batts and rovings. She showed us the creative use of leftover fibers in core spinning. I’m itching to have a try at home!