Hello and welcome to the first more ‘normal’ podcast for a while. The excitement, preparation, hard work and adrenaline fix that is Yarndale is over for another year.

A (brief) Yarndale 2019 review

I’ve devoted the whole of today to preparing and filming a new podcast – Episode 83. After all the Yarndale Previews, I did wonder about people getting sick of hearing the ‘Y’ word so although this episode does have a bit of a review of the show and some photos, I’ve kept it quite brief. Look out for the hamper draw though – by the time the video goes up I will have emailed the winner!

Before publishing these notes I’ll also take another look on YouTube to see if there are any podcasts that show more of the show from a visitor’s perspective and I’ll link to them below. Some are just about Yarndale while others have a section on Yarndale and lots of other lovely content:

And see this blog post from Nicola Knits – who I was very pleased to meet at Yarndale. Nicola lives in Canada and was over here visiting family as well as going to Yarndale and she is one of the lovely admins of the Crafternoon Treats Ravelry group. (Search Crafternoon Treats on the groups tab in Ravelry).

The highs and lows of Yarndale 2019

The highs

• Meeting loads of lovely people who watch the podcast who came to chat and buy things!
• Getting lots of compliments about the yarn I’ve been dyeing
• Working and spending the whole weekend with my son Paul who was a complete star. I couldn’t have done it without him.
• Working as a team with Handmade by Helen who made some gorgeous project bags to sell and who helped tirelessly on the stall on both days and who helped to set up and take down.
• Having very generous friends – Helen AKA Florahoneypot who made many of the crochet samples I displayed and Nicola AKA creative.explorer who made me a gorgeous stall holders apron complete with embroidery.
• Selling quite a bit of yarn!

The lows

• The weather! It was so WET. We had torrential rain on the Friday when we were taking all the yarn and display in, so lots of drenchings. They it was better on the Saturday but cold and very wet on the ground. The worse was to come though, with torrential rain all night Saturday and all day Sunday. It only let up when we were packing up, thank goodness.
• Exhibiting in an Auction mart with leaky walls and roof. We had one leak at the front of our stand, but some exhibitors had their stock wet through.
• Taking a flask of coffee ready for Sunday, knocking it over after one cup and smashing its innards. It and the coffee had to go in the bin. How I cried!!!
• Lower visitor numbers compared to previous years; just over 7000 rather than 10,000.
• The **beeping** cycle racing, which closed lots of roads all over North Yorkshire on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But I felt sorry for the cyclists in that rain!

Life after Yarndale!

I am happy to report that now its all over, I am relishing getting back to normality. My kitchen is now yarn-free, apart from what I am using in projects, the house is getting a thorough tidy and clean and is starting to gleam and feel like a sanctuary again and I am getting back to some Crochet and knitting. My turn to play with my own yarn!

Projects I’ve been working on include:

• A skinny crochet scarf in my Wensleydale DK
• A worsted boxy sweater begins… pattern by Joji Locatelli
• Drooling over the new Crochet Project book with patterns by the very talented Joanne Scrace
• Making use of my new sock blockers – bought on Ebay UK and excellent value from the seller smirnoff_brd
• Planning some new crochet socks – it is Socktober after all

At the end I also talk about my Etsy shop news – I’ll be adding listings to the shop with all of the yarn that I have left over the next few days and weeks. I’ve also added this set of Halloween stitch markers See you soon Kathryn xxxx

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