Harrogate Knit and Stitch

Well this is it, the show. After 2 closed motorways and getting lost twice I ended up in Weatherby from where I managed to get to Harrogate. Just took me the 5 hours (!) Anyway you probably want to know more about the show.

Its all still sinking in really. It was an amazing experince and its hard to express it. I was very nervous when I arrived. Slowly and carefully I set my work out and slowly and carefully it seemed to form itself into a body of work. I had taken lots of items to set the scene, like a printers tray and an old photograph.

I was aiming for a vintagey look and I think I got it.
The round piece on the back wall is my tablecloth to celebrate family life.

To see my work out, work I keep quite privately apart form this blog, to put my work out and be ready to hear what people thought of it. As a friend had said to me the previous week " You can sense the rising level of panic!" and it was very true. Even leaving on Wednesday I was sure I would get a phone call to tell me that it was a mistake and they had meant a different Joanna Teague.

Anyway I met loads of great people, got lots of good feedback on my work, made more money than I ever have from my work and managed not to spend too much of it in the rest of the show. I owe huge thanks if you visited, chatted, bought, sent me good wishes or just commented here. It was a huge help to have so much support and is probably the lesson I take form this whole experience.

I am not sure I will do it again and have put away my "textile artist superhero cape" and have put back on my "mummy making things at home" cape. It feels much more comfortable but its nice to know I have been able to use my other one!

All the stands looked great. It all looked so good and so different.


Tania with fun, intricate machine embroidered illustrations ( and whose friends looked just like the pictures she makes, her work is brilliant or she only chooses friends like her pictures!)

Rowan with quirky cool jewellery.

Kandy with amazing scarves

and Louise with the most beautiful hand screen printed gifts, who was my closest neighbour and kindly put up with me moaning endlessly about missing the kids.

Anyone who made it to the show will also know that snow featured heavily in the proceedings especially on the Sunday. if you got caught in that traffic jam/blizzard at the end of Sunday then I hope you didn't get too cold and got home safely. We left the International Centre at 5 and got home after midnight! ( so just the 7 hour journey home(!)

... and just in case you wandered past and couldn't work it out, this was me,

doing my highly trained second hand lace dealer impression.

Just above my head is the lace bunting I bought which probably attracted more attention than anything else. I didn't know much about lace beforehand but lots of people told me the different techniques, other people told me it looked like fairy washing! I will do a proper post about it later in the week.


I do love a good pun and was very tempted to title this post

There (sn)ow place like Harrogate!