New boots

It's getting rather cold out on the market now, I've still been out in my Converse but one thing that's coming across loud and clear from the traders that have worked a winter before is how important proper footwear is. I suspect I'll end up getting some Doc Martens as that's what a few of them wear and I used to wear them all the time in my teens so it'll be a throw back to my carefree days. For the moment I've some beautiful new boots, probably not thick soled enough, that I'll be road testing on Saturday.

I'm still having camera issues, hence the lack of posts on here or my other blog but I'll aim to have those sorted in the next few days and will post a photo of me on the stall in my new boots next week.

New yarns!!!!

Wooooooo.....all our Rosarios4 order has just arrived. So we'll have lots of new things for the next market day. We've got a selection of bamboos, baby cotton, beautifully soft 'adult' cotton, and organic cotton.

I've also ordered some corn fibre but that's for me to play with at the moment and if I love it we'll order more. I'm planning on making Carnac. I LOVE all of that collection and might make the bikini for Lexi who sells flowers on the market.

This is a rush post, if you can't tell, but I'll update about my trip to Knit Nation soon.

Market day today

Marcia's just arrived and we're packing up the car ready to head off to the market. I am dead on my feet after getting home pretty late from the Lovebox festival and doing WAY too much moshing! A very close friend of mine's son was performing with one of the big acts on the main stage no less so it was a must do but now I'm exhausted and my body aches which is not great for spending a day at the market.

Anyway, come and say hello if you're about.

We can be found at Archway Market at the top of Holloway Road just outside Budgens.

Over and out because Marcia's almost finished the packing up! oops!! heh heh.

In the end of the beginning

Well, the end is really just the beginning.

After much, unnecessary, ummming and aahhing on my part I joined forces with Marcia from my Saturday knitting group or rather she joined forces with me. I know from bitter experience that I'm not easy to work with, I very much know exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it, and I don't find it that easy to work with other people. But this stall is meant to be about having fun and I thought it will be more fun if I'm not doing it on my own. Who knows, we may in time be joined by others.

Anyway, my house is now a mess again because we have NO storage space for our normal day to day clutter let alone a whole load of new stall stuff.

Still it felt good to have made the decisions about the initial order and to receiving boxes of stunning wools and cottons. The first order I made was the Rico Essentials Cotton DK (which has gone down a storm) and for that I had a rep come to visit me. I couldn't help feeling nervous and giggling to myself before he arrived but it was all fine, down to business straight away and very interesting.

Our first market day, May 22nd, was one of the first gloriously sunny days we'd had this year in London, great for getting people out and about not so great for getting people in the mood for buying wool perhaps! As I prepared to load up my dad's car, on loan to me for not much longer now, my son fainted in a most dramatic manner - falling straight backwards - hitting the back of his head on a small chest and knocking himself unconscious. He's ok now but there was lots of blood and panic and when I finally did get off to the market worrying that his father would keep a proper eye on him and whisk him off to hospital at the slightest hint of trouble.

We had a brilliant day, it felt good to be outdoors, and we were visited by many friends and fellow knitters who sat at the side of our stall (we were lucky enough to get the corner pitch but haven't had it since) knitting and chatting and bought us cups of tea. We had lots of interest from passers by - well, there really isn't much available to the discernible knitter in these parts and all in all we had a fantastic first day.

I went home happy and exhausted and not quite ready to face an evening up at the Whittington Hospital with said son, which is how we spent our evening. Better to be safe than sorry they do say.

In the middle of the beginning

After talking through my ideas with my Saturday morning library group and my Thursday evening The Noble group, geed on by their enthusiasm for the project, I decided to borrow some money - not too much mind - and make some orders.

I read lots of reviews of yarns and noted the yarns that I had used and enjoyed and began approaching companies and distributors. Some companies I really wanted to work with completely ignored me but most of them took me seriously and didn’t judge a market stall on the Holloway Road to be too insignificant a concern for them, indeed one of the reps pointed out to me that one of his great regular customers started out her business as a stall and then an online shop and finally moved into ‘real life’ retail after some time. Getting samples of yarn in and shade cards was exciting but also frustrating because with my budget I couldn’t even get a fraction of what I wanted to. I decided that I would mostly order what I would like to buy, so, no novelty yarns and no acrylics! I decided to begin with as big a range of colours of cotton as I could afford, as I would be opening in summer, and a modest range of my other yarns.

Whilst most of the wools are hand wash only I did plump for a gorgeous new merino from Artesano which is machine washable.

In the beginning of the beginning

A while ago I started thinking, not very seriously, about opening a shop selling hand knitting wools, cottons, bamboos etc. I was regularly going to a knitting group at my local library run by the rather brilliant Sara Noble and feeling happy, calm and inspired. We got to chatting about wool and where we all bought ours from and how there really was nowhere locally selling interesting and good quality yarns. I started checking out all the places that did sell yarns locally and they were almost exclusively selling a small range of cheap acrylics and I started talking to knitting shop owners about their experiences of owning a yarn shop. After one particularly enlightening and enjoyable weekend in Scarborough visiting my friend Kim and nosing round the two yarn shops there, Multi-ply and Knitter's World, sitting drinking tea and chatting to the owners I made up my mind that I would open a shop in Crouch End. I had no experience but what the hell, that was the message that was coming across to me, just do it!

After checking out shop rents in Crouch End, £30,000+, I realised that perhaps I wasn’t ready to open a shop – more or less on a whim – and it would be a good idea to look into ways of selling yarns locally without all that financial risk. I started investigating local markets and decided upon Archway Market on Holloway Road. A lovely little market, still trying to establish itself, it seemed almost just right for my little venture. The only problem with the market is it is outdoors so I had to think of a solution to the problem that wool cannot get wet at all and then be sold.