Yarndale

Arg this week has been mental! I love love loved Yarndale. It was the start of a few days on our own for J and me and I just wasn't in the blogging mood. I usually blog when everyone else is at school and work, not when I have a few precious days without the Smalls but with J. 

 

We got home with just enough time (36 hours) to prepare for our monster annual social event - our apple picking party. So I was cooking up a storm, St Helena style this year, and generally tidying up so we were ready to welcome 50 or so willing pickers from 4 months to 72 years. Now it is all over and we are having a chill out at home day. (In between a little light clearing up.) My Dad is here and right now we are enjoying/enduring cbeebies en masse. 

 

 

Anyway back a week to Yarndale... We had arrived in Skipton the day before, and the crack was that Yarndale was mobbed and parking was tricksy. We duly arrived early the next morning and joined the queue. Yup, by 9.45 there was an excited but orderly queue. There was plenty to entertain us - the yarn bombing was a joy.

 

Once inside the bunting was fabuloso in the extreme. I looked and looked but couldn't spot mine. There was miles in the entrance hall and more in every free spot around the mart.

If you can make it out of yarn then it was at Yarndale - an Andalucian feast anyone?

With prawns? Actually I can't abide prawns, they are not even in the category of food in my head so I don't know why I took this pic but it does show you how amazingly detailed it all was.

My bunting did get there. There was 1.25 km of the stuff and St Helena was definitely on the list of participating places.

There were 161 stalls vying for our attention and we tried to look at them all. Naturally a few caught the eye more than the others.

J was very taken with the idea of sheering a rabbit. I think he was having visions of New Zealand champion sheep shearers trying to wrestle a small bundle of fluff.

This was in the knit and natter lounge - some of the goodies that Lucy regularly shows us on her Attic 24 blog. She was there but looked totally overwhelmed so I didn't go and say hello. I figured she didn't need any more complete strangers having the same weird conversation with her.

I liked these massive knitted heads. They were brilliantly pointless.

It wasn't just knitting and crochet either - these are all hooked rugs I think.

And and and - a new yarn produced from just down the road from us in Northumberland. When we get back for good I shall definitely be checking them out.

Yarndale had teamed up with Oxfam and had appealed for yarny donations which could be made into products for the shop. They have a group of talented peeps who just need the materials to make all sorts of goodies. This is the second day stash just after lunch.

There were loads of stalls with wonderful arrays of colour. All very touchy feely. This one was typical of many  - sooo much choice!

I jumped up on the railings to try and capture the scale of the thing for you - yarny joyfulness as far as the eye could see!

Once we had wandered round everything twice, and spent all our pennies (Santa spent some too), we went back through all that lovely bunting and out into the most beautiful sunshine to follow the yarn walk towards town.

(See St H in the middle of the south Atlantic?)

Not strictly part of the yarn walk but this camper caught my eye - soo pretty...

We walked down to the canal for an ice cream then back up to the car, noticing even more things on the way back. We missed the tulip before.

A great day out, and looking forward to Santa visiting at Christmas...

xx