That Moment When You Find Your Crafty Blogger Tribe

This last weekend I had The Most Amazing Experience.

Myself, along with a group of absolutely fabulous yarny bloggers was invited to Yarn Paradise; AKA Scheepjes HQ in Tynaarlo.

I was lucky enough to be able to grab a ride with Gorgeous Atty and her mum as they whizzed past on their way from Amsterdam, and upon arrival it was all squeals and hugs and a bit of OTT carry on as we all caught up again or met for the first time in person.

First order of business was a tour of the warehouse.  Now, I’m lucky enough to have done this before, so I knew what a treat the others were in for.  They were all rolling their eyes at my anticipation of the buttons, but when they arrived in the first of the button aisles for themselves, finally they understood!

Suddenly it was lunch time, so we all reluctantly dragged ourselves outside into the glorious sunshine.  But Oh Wow we were in for a treat!

Scheepjes Director of Design, Anita, put on the best spread you could imagine. Gluten free brownies that once you’ve eaten, you’ll never eat normal brownies again. Not to mention the Lemon Drizzle Cake.  I won’t lie, I did have one of each!

In the afternoon, Esther from Happy in Red hosted a terrifically insightful workshop into some of the nuts and bolts of blogging and we all chatted about how we could improve our blogs before we were able to finally talk about the elephant in the room that was all the new yarns!

Look at them!!

We could touch and smoosh and rub our faces on the yarn to our heart’s content.  You could feel the room crackling with the energy from the inspiration and ideas zooming around and bouncing off each other.  I came away with no less than three concrete design ideas, so there will be a lot of pretty impressive designs emerging with the new Linen Soft, Catona, Softfun Denim and new Stone Washed colours!

We finally managed to drag ourselves out of HQ where we all went out for dinner at a cute little restaurant in Assen and by the end of the evening I was just exhausted, and my face hurt from laughing so much.  By the end of the weekend my face was pretty much frozen in this position:

On day two, just when you think that all the highlights have passed, Dedri from Look What I Made cracked out her Sophie and I thought I might faint from the excitement.  Seeing her in the flesh, wow.  She has changed the crochet universe. (See what I did there?)

We spent the day enjoying a high tea while crocheting and chatting, and filming Carmen’s Jean Luc the fox devouring one of her Blue Tits in super slow-mo.  Let’s just say, you probably had to be there…

All in all, I had the most wonderful time, and can’t wait to spend more time in real life with the wonderful group of bloggers that came along.  Thanks so much to Anita and Job at Scheepjes for being the best hosts you could imagine, and be sure to visit all the amazing bloggers.  You won’t regret it.

Kirsten at Haak Maar Raak
Annelies at Vicarno
Jellina at Jellina’s Creations
Carmen at Crafty Queens
Maria at 50 Shades of 4Ply
Atty at Atty’s
Dedri at Look What I Made
Esther at Happy in Red
Heike at Made With Loops
Sarah at Crafts From the Cwtch

And an honourable mention for Tammy and Wink, who couldn’t make it.  You were missed girls!!