Unravel 2017

Last weekend I was lucky enough to spend a day at Unravel with two yarn-loving friends. If you don't know already, Unravel is a festival of yarn and fibre, curated and presented each year by the team at Farnham Maltings in Surrey. We had a really lovely day, but rather than giving a blow-by-blow account, I thought I would pick my top three Unravel highlights to share with you;


1. Yarn-loving friends - to spend a whole day with two yarn-loving friends was just such a treat. We chatted future projects, exchanged advice, compared notes on knitting needles and 'enabled' each others yarn purchases. There was a really lovely atmosphere at the festival as a whole and we were lucky to be attending on the Sunday - the quieter day of the three - which meant we could enjoy the day and make yarn-purchase deliberations at our own pace.

The three of us went to Yarnporium together in November where I seemed only able to buy yarns with a purple or raspberry tone, at Unravel, I had a distinctly blue-grey colour palette going on...

My yarn purchases, from left to right:
Rugged Aran by Stranded Dyeworks - Islington DK by Kettle Yarn Co - 3 skeins of Socks Yeah! from Coop Knits, Socka by Sparkle Duck - Elen Sock from Treskelion Yarn and Fibre


2. The yarn - I know this sounds slightly obvious given that I was at a yarn festival. I loved the mix of yarns presented, from the brands that I had expected to see and those that I hadn't come across before. I was quite focused, I went with a list of future projects and their yarn requirements and almost (!) stuck to my list, but I also came home with notes and photographs of lots of other yarns I had seen and squished - excited and inspired by future making possibilities...

3. Making inspiration - I was expecting to be delighted by the yarn at Unravel but I hadn't necessarily thought that I would come away with so much inspiration for future projects. The Pompom stand kept drawing me back with their beautiful samples; I am still very taken by this gorgeous cardigan from the latest Interpretations 4, the collaboration between Joji Locatelli and Veera Malimaki.

If you've seen the latest edition (Spring 2017) issue of Pompom you might recognise this crochet cardigan - it is beautiful and having tried on this sample, its fighting quite hard to get into my list of future makes!

Perhaps predictably, given that I appear to be going through a 'grey and blue' phase in terms of colour preferences, I got heaps of inspiration from the Kettle Yarn Co too and their recently published Dawn to Dusk 2 which contains the most beautiful knitwear designs.  

Our little boy made this drawing whilst I was at Unravel -  "Happy Yarn Festival" - I think it sums up our day perfectly. I'm looking forward to next year already!

 And just because we love robins in our house - I've got to share this photograph of one of the birds in the yarn aviary that welcomed visitors to the festival...