East Anglia Yarn Festival 2026

This weekend was the 5 year anniversary of East Anglia Yarn Festival, so I had a day filled with yarn networking and fibre squishing. Despite having two full bags by the end of the day, my haul was quite small and filled with useful things, but I made lots of new connections with lovely people. My fibre purchases this year were two cone ends from Free Range Fibre – one a beautiful brown alpaca, the other a grey Shetland, which will be useful for weaving projects, but could also double as edging on sewing projects, and a 50g yak & silk roving from Yarntings as it was just the right colour to go with some of my very early art yarns, so will hopefully encourage me to think up a project for them (and since yaks aren’t native to England it could be a while before I can process a whole fleece start to finish!).

Yarntings also had some wool and silk embroidery threads in beautiful colours which I plan to use in future sewing projects. By the same token, I also purchased some beautiful leafy ceramic buttons from Buttoned Up and a matching pin dish that will hopefully stop my sewing pins going missing mid-project. I’ve been looking for some sock blockers for a while, but wasn’t keen on versions I’d seen with cartoony flowers, so was pleased to find some plain ones from Tom Dyson. I’ve been gradually working my way through some of the knitting patterns I bought in previous years (more on one of those soon), so decided I would treat myself to the Petulia scarf brioche pattern from Kath Andrews; I’ve never knitted brioche before, but after Kath’s demo felt I should definitely tackle it, and add another string to my knitting bow.

My final purchases consisted of a little pumpkin candle (because it’s never too early to prepare for autumn!) and a gift for a friend (not pictured) from Morningstar Makes, and after admiring her ceramic yarn bowls for such a long time, and seeing this beautiful second (it has a glaze drip blocking the thread guide) in a matching colour to my mug from last year, I decided to give it a good home (and I can put the imperfection to use so it can hold two threads at once without them crossing over!).

Because a yarn fair wasn’t busy enough, a friend and I also booked in a stained glass workshop in the evening with visiting artist Colin at the wonderful Blue Flame Glass Studio. It meant leaving EAYF a little earlier than I normally would, but was fantastic fun. I’m hoping to visit some other fibre fairs this year, but my diary is very unpredictable, so I will see how things pan out. In the meantime, I’m beavering away at more woolly projects which will be coming shortly!

Happy Crafting!