Stitch n'Bitch Rotterdam was cool!

Well, I had such a fantastic time, and now have two new wholesale accounts, the feedback on my yarns was really good, so I was happy. Everyone organising the show, and participating was so wonderful, they were such a lovely bunch of people. And the knitters are serious knitters! Some of the colour work I saw was unbelievable, there was one in particular which blew me away, I even bought some yarn from them so I could have a go, nothing has ever inspired me to do fair-aisle before, but I was itching to start, I just need to find a chart. The wool is rough as hell though, so I will make a cushion I think its a good place to start. The company name is KAUNI the website doesn't demonstrate the yarns very well, and I need to try and find some pictures of the jumpers people have made with the self striping yarns to show you. If any one has links or pics from Holland, please let me know, I'd love to link to them.

Here are the cones:

The main reason I was so excited was because Elly and I worked on some patterns using solid back grounds with self striping yarn, which were fab, and we are still working on more, and it was kind of a similar idea, apart from the back ground and the pattern is both self striping in these.

Anyway, Mr Bluefaced Leicester came with me, because he was meant to have a stand as well, and wanted to see some customers there too, so it was nice to have a wooly partner in crime to help me. We certainly had a few adventures, one in particular made me laugh, we were wandering looking for somewhere to have dinner on Saturday night, and there were a load of armed police running up and down the road, not exactly sure what they were looking for, but we dived into a Thai restaurant, the whole restaurant turned around, and looked horrified, and someone even asked us if they were looking for us!! We just laughed, then they started taking the P**s out of us for being typically English and  being under dressed for the cold weather, thats the first time I have been subjected to a British stereotype, I was completely embarrassed! (my job in psychology was investigating stereotypes and attitudes and racism, so I'm slightly fascinated with peoples perceptions of other nationality's).

I couldn't seem to figure out what the sort of national dish was, although I realized that ham and smoked cheese figures heavily in the cuisine, thanks so much for the food suggestions, unfortunately I didn't get much chance to investigate the traditional aspect further, although we went to the bazarr, which was a fabulous place, thanks for that recommendation.

All in all it was a great trip, but I am glad to be back ready to focus on being full time and having some balance back in my life. I haven;t had a guilt free weekend off for over a year, so after next weekend which is the stitch and bitch event in London, I am having a proper weekend off of work, I am going to eat, knit, go shopping and just chill the hell out.

I am also now going on a health kick because my body is starting to struggle, my skin is crap, so I am going to eat lots of soups, vitamins, water, herb teas, early nights, and start going running, and start yoga, its something I have been meaning to do it for years, so now is the time to start looking after myself. Yippee!!!!!

Oh and I have some new yummy scrummy yarns, I will update the shop slowly this week but first thing I will do, is put the new gorgeous wooden spindles on the website this afternoon.

Right, Happy knitting guys.

xxx