Last weekend I had a chance to go to the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitter’s Fair. Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden had invited me to her booth do do a book signing for Shaping Shawls, so it was a great chance to go to KW. I’ve heard a lot of wonderful things about the fair, and I’m happy to say that it was a wonderful day.
I drove down to KW on the Friday and met up with Kim of indigodragonfly at Shall We Knit. I had never been to Shall We Knit before (or even Kitchener-Waterloo) but it was a fabulous yarn store. I had a chance to chat not only with Kim but also with the lovely ladies who work there, and several customers too. It turned out that a box of Shaping Shawls had arrived at the store and were in the process of being unpacked, and they asked if I happened to have any of the samples with me. Since I was headed to the Fair right after, I did have several of the samples handy, and did an impromptu trunk show of shawls in the book, as well as a brand new shawl that I was going to release at the fair.
This is Chandoba – my latest pattern. It’s knit in amazing CashSilk Fingering from Zen Yarn Garden. While the yarn is called fingering weight, I would really more think of it as a heavy laceweight at 400 yds per 50 g. The shawl is knit from the top down and uses basic intarsia. The resulting fabric is amazingly soft and the shawl feels wonderful around the neck.
I then headed over to the fair and helped Roxanne and Mr. Zen set up the booth. I got my very own section of the booth with books, patterns and of course shawls.
The shawl on the right is Margarita Leaves from Shaping Shawls. It’s knit in Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Silk, and Roxanne had dyed a fresh batch of the margarita colour used for my sample.
The next morning the fair opened and there was a steady stream of knitters all day. I did have a bit of a chance to walk around and visited Kim at the indigodragonfly booth to pick up a skein of Dancing Swedish Twins for my hockey-playing, knitting daughter.
I also had a chance to chat with Anne Hanson when she came to visit Roxanne at the booth.
It’s my fault the pictures are blurry (as I’m the one holding the camera) – I think we were just laughing too hard. But in any case, Anne is lovely and we had a chance to admire Roxanne’s new colour Frosted Kiwi, which we both really liked.
I also visited the Sheeps Ahoy booth – and here we can see Natalie Servant wearing her new shawl Vineyards Stole. I also saw Debbie Wilson of Sheeps Ahoy several times during the show (and before and after) but somehow I don’t have any pictures to prove it.
I met a number of lovely people – I always enjoy these shows, because people are friendly, everyone is excited about yarn, and knitting, and patterns and really generally just happy to be there.
So, many thanks for everyone who came out to see me. And of course a great big thank you to the fabulous Roxanne for having me. I had a blast.
