Last Wednesday I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. I met up with Laura and we had a lovely day wandering the halls, oohing and ahhing over all the pretty things.
For starters, the Knitted Pergola just inside the doors. Very cool.
Much of the show is all about the shopping! A few stands had veritable mountains of yarn like this one.
We stopped by the Pompom mag stand. It’s a very pretty magazine about knitting – if I were properly into knitting I think I might have picked up a copy or two.
Top of my list of stands to visit was Alice Caroline who sell gorgeous Liberty prints. So.much.pretty. I may have left a few pounds behind in exchange for some of that pretty fabric. I was quite restrained at the show, I didn’t go crazy with purchases. :-)
This knitted jacket was absolutely amazing. I don’t know if you can tell, but it is inspired by the Hobbit and it had lots of cool details. Like, in the middle picture, do you see Gollum peeping out?
The knitted Smaug, on the right, was so cool, with so many details and gems knitted into it. Gorgeous. And Denise Salway, aka The Knitting Witch, the lady behind it, was so nice.
In this album on Flickr you can see some better photos of the jacket. And do check out the rest of her Flickr stream, there is a lot of detail and humour(!) in her work.
Another artist who blew us away is Caren Garfen. At first we were drawn in by the teeny tiny stitching – see the photo on the right. You can’t even tell in the photo that those are stitches, they are so fine.
But then we had a look at the installation and Caren told us a bit about it. Basically it is a kitchen where all the elements are screen printed and/or stitched with illustrations and words related to dieting and body image. It was a very interesting and thought provoking combination of “women’s work” and the issues many women have with their bodies and self worth.
You can read an interview with Caren here.
There was another artist who I can’t stop thinking about – although I didn’t take any pictures of her work. Mary Flynn.
The work she was showing is called Sea Banners. The bright colours of the banners drew us in at first. Mary told us about how the banners are made of all kinds of textiles she had collected on the beaches of the Isle of Wight. It was really fascinating to see how so much textile also rolls around in the sea. Never thought about that – plastic, sure, but not textiles.
Do pop over and check out the photos of the Sea Banners.
It can feel like shows like the Knitting & Show is all about the shopping, but there is also a lot of artists to explore. And that is my favourite thing about it. Sure, it’s great to look at fabric and thread in person before buying, but most of it you can buy online without too much trouble.
Seeing these artists that you may not otherwise come across, that is just so inspiring. Seeing all these different points of view and ways of expressing them.
Did you go to the K&S show? What was your favourite thing?