I know, I’m sorry.  I have left you all alone for far too long.  How are you?  Come in, pull up a chair and I’ll put the kettle on.

The status quo has been maintained on my hands, thank you for asking.  Currently we are at the following: it isn’t Arthritis, it isn’t Carpel Tunnel, it isn’t any of the blood things they have tested for.  It *might* be tenosynovosis in my wrists, but they are not sure, and that doesn’t tell me what is wrong with my fingers, and the next appointment is 15th November.  In the meantime I am wearing splints every night – which is helping somewhat with the wrist pain.  The lovely Dr who did my EMR tests for Carpel Tunnel suggested I see an osteopath as it might be something in my neck – which is interesting and I’m following that up separately.

I have a whole notebook page of blog posts to go on here, but my hands have been bad enough the last few weeks that either I haven’t been able to type, or I have been able to type or craft and I’ve picked the crafting for 15 minutes instead.  We seem to be coming out of the worst of it now, so maybe I’ll get some of those other blog posts written up and on here!

So what has prompted this currently characteristic whittering?  Yesterday I went to my first Knitting & Stitching show at the beautiful Alexandra Palace.  I’ll be honest, I had no real desire to go – a mild curiosity maybe, but several friends had said in previous years it was heavy on the ‘Stitching’ in the title with lots of cross stitch and embroidery and precious little yarn.  However, my mother-in-lieu (she’s not quite the Mother-in-Law yet) wanted to go, so I offered company.

It worked out to be almost as cheap to buy 4 tickets as 2, so I’m going again tomorrow with another friend, and frankly, I’m glad I’ve got a second day to go at – this show is HUGE.  The smallest hall contains 42 exhibitors, a ‘try your hand’ area and a fashion catwalk.  The ‘mid’ hall is about twice the size again, with exhibitors and stalls of display work – some of which I didn’t ‘get’, some of which is stunning and all of which shows more creativity and skill than I possess.  The ‘main’ hall is about twice the size of the medium hall and given over almost exclusively to exhibitors – and there are several workshop rooms as well, and 3 separate galleries of displayed finished work.

We arrived at 10.45 (doors opened at 10) and stayed till 5pm (doors close at 5.30pm) with 20 minutes for lunch and didn’t see everything.  It was a knackering day, but I’ll do my best to convey highlights and things I remember most.  There may well be another post tomorrow (with photos – lots of things said ‘no photos’ but I think I’ve sussed the bits Ican photograph).

The Galleries.  There were 3 separate presentations.  The first, as you walked through the door, was a carnival tent with unfinished projects decorating the sides (donated by members of the public).  Inside the tent were the stories of FO’s.  Emotive and moving it was a little sad to see some things that were a few stitches short of completion that had obviously taken hours to get that far.  But it was also gratifying to know I’m not alone, and to see just how many people must have started those hexagon fabric quilts in the the 80’s!

The second was a display of embroidery on the theme of ‘Gold in the Seam’ (I think) – again there were some amazing pieces with astonishing attention to detail, and some from very young crafts people (the youngest was 5!).

The third was a knitted village, again knitted and donated by people attending the show.  There was several churches, a fire engine, house and crew, lots of houses, pubs and even a scout troupe.  It was very witty and fun, and prizes had been awarded by Rowan Yarns for the top 3.  (Though, amusingly, I did overhear one lady complain that Rowan had won everything, and they shouldn’t have been allowed to enter)

The Exhibitors.  There was an amazing mix of exhibitors – and yarn crafts were well represented with everything from £1.25 a ball acrylic to £(deep breath) Quivat.  The quivat lived up to it’s reputation for being insanely soft.  I can’t even begin to describe how soft that stuff was, in an 8 year old ‘demonstration’ scarf that was foisted around my neck.  I think it feels how I imagined clouds to feel when I was 4.  However, at £110 (yes I typed that right) for just short of 400m (50g) it’s not happening in this life time.  Lots of stalls had pure breed yarns and butter soft natural fibres (thicker yarns – DK, Aran and Bulky) seem to be coming back – and cowl necks are everywhere for this season.  Black Sheep Yarns caused a melee by dumping 10 skien bags of all sorts on the floor of their unit – 10 hanks of Noro for about £65, and 10 hanks of Debbie Bliss Andes for £30 anyone?  Fyberspates had beautiful yarns (as always) and though I can’t afford to buy the yarn for one of the jumpers (I worked it out as £130 for the yarn) I am buying the yarn for a different one tomorrow. The Mother-in-Lieu (MIL) may have cracked at this point and bought two skiens of laceweight to make the adorable Hethe cardigan from the first Scrumptious Collection.  The Little Knitting Company had some fun snowmen kits that could be made into juggling balls – and almost every stall we passed had some form of advent calendar kit.

Quilting is not going away anytime soon, judging by the pure number of quilting stalls there were – beading, cross stitch and embroidery were also well represented.  There were a couple of odd ball stands – rain coat anyone? and a couple I could have lived without (why do those market-like stalls selling cheap cotton scarves show up everywhere?) but the day was heavily biased towards craft and I’ve got plenty I want to go and check out tomorrow.  This is turning into a really long post, so I’m going to stop and update after my second visit (including everything I buy)