a weekend at EYF
And what a weekend it was! Having a stall at Edinburgh Yarn Fest is one of the most intense ways a yarnie can spend a weekend, but thankfully it’s also one of the most fun.
It’s taken me a while to write this post, largely because I simply needed time to process everything before I sat down to write about it. Plus I got back home late on Sunday evening and went straight back to the Day Job on Monday morning, so there wasn’t much time to do anything other than work and sleep.
The weekend began with a rather large group of knitters catching the train up on the Thursday morning, and I do feel for the other commuters (sorry!) I think we were all slightly delirious with that combination of excitement and exhaustion after all months of preparation.
We rented a cute Colony House which actually managed to fit us all (that is, Helen, Amelia, Anna, and Jane). I didn’t even get a photo – clearly I was too busy focusing on EYF itself.
I shared a stall with Helen of The Wool Kitchen, and Amelia of Woollenwords was a star at helping us out. I heard our stall described as “a riot of colour”, and it certainly was! There was never a dull moment.
It was something of a challenge to plan the layout of the stall using only minimal props, as everything needed to be shipped up from London. Only two vintage suitcases for me this time!
I loved how international EYF was: I met people from all over the UK and Ireland, people from the USA, people who had made a day trip from Germany (yep!), and the Copenhagen and Oslo yarn stashers were out in force (you can see pictures of their haul on Instagram and Ravelry). I love the idea of my skeins of yarn travelling around the world even while I’m back in London.
By the end of day two we all started getting a bit silly; the crowds were thinning out and stallholders had a chance to wander about and chat to other stallholders. Karie Westermann and her partner Dave came round to say goodbye but ended up staying for a while and taking part in some very fun photos. Karie has a great pic of the four of us over on her blog post.
Being a stallholder doesn’t allow much time to go shopping elsewhere, but I did make a couple of very special purchases. I’ll show you those when I’ve finished unpacking.
After being inside the Corn Exchange for three days, it was nice to see the sun on Edinburgh just as I was leaving.
Thank you so much to Jo and Mica for organising such a brilliant event, and for letting me be a part of it. Thank you to everyone who came along and said hi and squished some yarn. I loved making new friendships, and catching up with old online friends too. There’s something very special that happens when knitters get together.
See you next year!