Yes, this time the festival was in my city of Oslo, Norway. The premises the organisers of Oslo Knitting Festival had chosen was perfect, the Oslo Public Library, not only is it central, with high ceilings, plenty of sofas and cold enough to wear woollen sweaters inside. A smart move those of us who attended the book launch on Friday night, agreed. Above you can see the market hall, with around 30 different yarn stores, magazines, and others had their stalls with books and dvd’s as backdrops. The festival website is in English hence it had attracted several French yarn shops and the English/American magazine Pom Pom Quarterly, in addition to Norwegian shops and hand-dyers.

Here is Tweedy Todd with a selection of their tempting yarns. Tweedy Todd is a small independent hand-dyed yarn company based outside of Oslo. They offer a variety of semi-solid, variegated, tonal, speckled and dip-dyed looking yarns. I was good and did not buy any yarn this time. As usual I took a lot of photos and a lot of them are way to blurred to be used.

I was delighted to finally meet the two lovely women from the yarn store Fortuna near Trondheim: Ellen Haugen Bergsrønning and Marit Haugen Bergsrønning. I know them both from Facebook and Marit has test knitted for me. They are the Norwegian retailer for the divine German yarn Wollmeise and also stock the popular Hedgehog Fibres. See our selfie. Yes, I am wearing my Oydis again.

Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk was there and I could finally see the yarn kits made with my designs for real. We had a long chat about my designs and their new yarn the finer Norwegian Pelt Wool Yarn called Sølje Pelsullgarn.

It is many years since I last met up with Lydia Gluck who I used to work together with at Loop in London. Lydia and American Meghan Fernandes  (also with a Loop background), set up their magazine Pom Pom Quarterly in 2012. Today it is one of the most trendy knitting magazines in the world. It is sold both in print and digitally. If you do not know the magazine maybe you know their podcast, called Pomcast. I was fortunate to meet Sophie Scott who together with Lydia make their Pomcast. Thank you, Lydia & Sophie!

Pom Pom has also started their Pom Pom Press published their first book by designer Fiona Alice and more are coming, Lydia revealed. They also offer in print the popular Interpretations booklets by Joji Locatelli and Veera Välimäki. Check out the table below.

The Squirrel’s Yarns was one of the French yarn shops present at the Festival, see below.

Yet another reason to visit the Festival was the book launch of Gyldendals Strikkedagbok /a knitting diary with presentations and patterns by Kristin Wiola Ødegård, Marte Helgetun, Paelas og Marianne Jansson Bjerkman. The host was Marthe from the Norwegian podcast Marthe&Marthe. The launch was held in the auditorium, as you might have guessed. I met several knitters I knew and enjoyed this frank talk about WIP (work in progress), stash and the planning of new projects.

After the launch, I went back to the market hall for a second look. The event was on for all of Saturday and Sunday with an offering of talks and workshops. I was teaching a weekend workshop for Østre Aker Husflidslag the same weekend hence had to make the most of my Friday visit.

Around 9.30 pm you could still spot a lot of knitters in the knitting cafe area. But I decided to take my knitting with me back home. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit! Well done, Oslo Knitting Festival!