Like so many others I was at Yarndale on Saturday and it was amazing. Busy, oh so very busy and I'm sure it exceeded the organisers expectations by far. A friend drove and we left early but then were tempted by the thought we were only 10 minutes away from Immanuel Fabrics as we passed Burnley on the motorway....so of course we nipped in...
and a dozen metres of fabric jumped in my bag!
We arrived at Yarndale at 10am and after being directed to the extra car park we were soon inside the Skipton Auction Mart - the pens that would usually hold cattle were overflowing with yarnny delights and ladies keen to look at said yarnny delights.
Skein Queen was the first ( and certainly not the last! ) stand to catch my eye with it's cornucopia of colour
I just wanted to take so many skeins of soft jewel coloured yarn home with me, just because they were lovely not with any knitting plan in mind.
We had our picnic lunch in the seats surrounding the workshop area and bumped into some wonderful bloggers Cuckoo Unravelled and Pink Milk. Then met a blogger who I have 'known' online since my earliest blogging days 6 or 7 years ago, the talented Lucy Locket who had an armload of covetable alpaca yarn in the most delicious colours. She was, of course, just as friendly in real life as she is on her blog. I also saw Little Tin Bird had a chat with Bunny Mummy and visited Marmalade Rose whose stand was amazing, showcasing her skill, perfect felted pictures brimming with life.
At the centre of the event was Lucy from Attic 24 whose popular blog has reached out around the world through her enthusiasm for crochet. Showing the power of social media for good ,the event connected creative people from all over the country, bringing people together through a shared love of crochet and knitting, many of whom had not attended a similar event before. Yarndale was a celebration of small, independent businesses and Lucy's generous sharing of her crochet patterns on her blog was repaid by an outpouring of crochet support - 6000 granny bunting triangles sent to Skipton from 30 different countries
We all like to feel we belong and belonging to a community of creative bloggers feels pretty good to me.
Even though I was flagging we wandered down through the park in the sunshine, looking at the yarn bombing to have a look at Skipton.
So much effort had been put into decorating the walk into town, as we were photographing the crochet a local lady told us how delighted she was with it, how it was great for Skipton and even though she didn't know Lucy she thought she had done a lot of good for the town. She also recommended a cafe for a drink and some cake so we headed there for a rest and a refuel - Wild Oats Cafe was just what we needed and a slab of carrot cake gave me the energy to get back to the car.
For me Yarndale was a brilliant mix of meeting lovely like-minded people and an opportunity to buy luscious wool from independent makers, all thanks to the power of the internet.