Sunday, September 13, 2009

Knitters' Fair Fun

For 18 years On the first Saturday after Labour Day, the Kitchener / Waterloo Knitting Guild hosts the largest knitting show in Canada. This was the 18th year of the much anticipated event. The Waterloo County Knitters' Fair brings together knitters from all over the province of Ontario and beyond.
This year Serenity Knits set up their booth along with the other 77 Vendors at Bingman's Conference Centre in Kitchener / Waterloo to showcase their beautiful yarns.
We brought three trucks loaded with yarn, patterns, samples, shelving and displays for the show. The night before the event, Beth and Gabriella can be seen hard at work assembling and stocking while my husband Steve volunteered to stay back in Newmarket at the store. We appreciate Steve's willingness to handle the store while we're away, but we always guessed he likes it so much because it provides a great new audience for his numerous jokes!

The morning gives us a chance to work on some last minute details - like Beth dressing the mannequins (above) and Matt (Karen's son who graciously ran our cash register all day) lovingly finding homes for our sheep collection (below).


Some of our features included a lace collection from the designer line of "Queen Anne's Lace" including Zephyr and Country Silk which are the yarns used in her patterns
Gabriella designed sleeves for Vogue's Botanical Medallion vest. We had Nashua's Creative Focus Cotton paired with the pattern for a beautiful effect.
Louet's Euroflax linen is one of our year round favourites. The fall colours are rich and the knitted fabric drapes like a fine linen suit - without the wrinkles.

We had Rowan's Colourscape yarn made of 100% lambswool in all the new colours released this fall.
Here we are set up for the show to start and waiting for the nearly 2000 knitters to head through the door and be immersed in the knitting frenzy.
There was unfortunately no time for pictures of all the great knitters who visited us. Our only regret of the day was that we didn't have the chance to shop at all the other vendors to add to our own knitting stash.
Posted by Karen