Alexandra Palace

I have had a very busy weekend which included my long awaited trip to Alexandra Palace for the Knitting and Stitching Show. I went with one very specific aim in mind, to get some buttons for Brights 1 and I did not come home disappointed! I set out at about 8:30 to meet my sister at her house and then wandered to the train station for 9 ish. We really did not want to set out that early but there is something going on with the trains further along the line so our usual 40 minute journey into London took about an hour and a quarter. When we finally arrived at the venue we had a good slow wander round, taking everything in, thinking about what we might like to get and remembering where we anted to return to once we'd been all the way round. This was not the case when we reached the Button Company stall. We just dived right in and loved every minute of it. The lady behind the counter clearly had a similar attitude to me, she obviously loves buttons and sees them as objects to just have and to look at as well as sewing them on your clothes. They had a good selection and my button tin is now nearing full. it wasn't til I go home that I actually chose which ones were going onto Brights 1 but I chose some really lovely white heart shaped ones which look really cute.



My second objective at the show was sock yarn. I only have a couple of balls in my stash and they are spoken for so I thought I'd pick something really special
.

This is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Silver Streak and I love it. i made a scarf for my grandma last year using some Glitter Alpaca in the same colourway and I really liked that so hopefully these will turn out lovely. I like the monochrome effect but there are some nice subtle greens and blues in there which will make the end effect a little less stark. Can't wait to get going with that. I'll have to get get Chris to help me wind it first, luckily he seems to quite enjoy that.

My third objective was to get Jess to buy some yarn. She can knit a bit but she has been resisting any urges because she is worried that she might be turning into me! Jessie is 11 years younger than me but even my dad has his moments when he has to pause a second while he works out which one of us he is talking to. One of my favourite tricks is to go round and visit them and then borrow a jumper off Jess and confuse him even more. The result of this is that we do get compared quite a lot so I can see why she wants to assert her own personality and doesn't want to take after me so much but hopefully the call of the yarn will be too much for her. before we went on Saturday Jess decided she would like to make some armwarmers and we had been most of the way round the show and we still hadn't seen anything she liked. Eventually we spotted something just right and I was really pleased that she had picked something from Aragon yarns. They are a Kentish company, so are fairly local to us and it seemed really nice that she picked it. I'm going to help her devise a really simple armwarmer pattern and really look forward to posting the results when she's got them done.

We both got a few other bits and bobs before heading for the train station, once we were there we couldn't resist a quick trip into Lush where they had just put out all of their Christmas stuff. We both came out loaded with great smelling bath bombs and bubbles and shower gel, lamenting that there would be no time for a nice wallow in the bath when we got home. I got back to my house around 5 and I needed to be at the restaurant for a hen night by 7:30 so I didn't have time for much more than a cursory glance at my purchases before heading out, but I think a good day was had by all.