Knitting and Stitching Show Dublin 2009

I am a long-standing naysayer of Twisted Thread’s Knitting and Stitching Show: the entrance fee is ridiculously overpriced (€13 for a concession ticket! in order to go and spend money at a fair!), it is populated solely by razor-elbowed oul ones and the selection is uniformly crappy, appealing only to the razor-elbowed audience.  (When telling my mother about this, she called me ageist: I fully admit it, but I have plenty of experience of the blue rinse brigade and let me tell you this for nothing, it’s not the young that don’t have manners.)  I can’t not go, though, because if and when I do, that is the year it’s guaranteed to be good.

My patience paid off this year — it was actually worth the trip out on the 4A!  The stalls were very similar to previous years for the most part, including the frankly maddening inclusion of stalls given over to the sale of sweets, fancy scarves and what can only be described as special mops (no crafter worth her salt goes to an event styling itself “The Knitting and Stitching Show” for a special mop; stop wasting valuable space which could be given over to notions, event organisers!).  But there were a significant few that really made my show, which demonstrate that even a behemoth like the K&S Show is not impervious to the modern world: Doughtys impressed with their tremendous selection of Amy Butler fabrics at €10 a metre; Village Fabrics had a fantastic range of quilting fabrics, including some gorgeous William Morris designs I’d never seen before; Cara Craft Supplies‘ stall was completely milled for the duration I was in the RDS, which I ascribe to the brilliant selection in various papercraft odds and ends (that’s a technical term) that were available for half nothing; and probably my stall of the show was from Galway’s Lola Rose, where I spent the lion’s share of my pin money on some only gorgeous Heather Bailey fabrics that I haven’t found anywhere else in person.  In addition, there were some great wool stalls from the likes of This is Knit, but seeing as I already have a stash reproaching me, I steered away from them, tempting though they were.  I won’t post any photos of my purchases now: most of them are supplies for Christmas crafting and in any case I’m itching to do something with them sooner rather than later, so they’ll be up here in no time.