If you have never been to a yarn show before, the very thought of it can be daunting. I have been to many over the years both as a vendor and a visitor and here is my guide to not just surviving, but thriving and having the time of your life at a yarn festival.
You might be wondering:
Where is your nearest wool show? there are lots of online lists such as this UK 2026 Yarn Show list by Being Knitterly. A simple internet search will let you know where your nearest yarn show is.
Or, my lovely friend Julie of Tilly Flop Designs pulls together a yearly calendar for yarn and textile shows for the UK, Europe, US and Canada. You can purchase the latest one (at time of publishing) from her Etsy shop by clicking here.
Here’s what I cover in this blog post:
- Advanced preparation for a yarn festival
- What to wear to a yarn show
- Eating at a wool festival
- How to find your favourite vendors at a yarn show
- Pre-order yarn to collect at the yarn festival
- Money, money, money
- Bad lighting and yarn colours at festivals
- Yarn show manners
- Surviving or avoiding wool show crowds
- Talks and workshops at yarn festivals
1 – Advanced Preparation for a Yarn Festival
The yarn show website should also be a wealth of information on important aspects such as access, catering, quiet spaces, timed entries, entry times for mask wearing visitors only…
You can also check social media to find out what others have to say about the yarn show you want to go to. Is the food good? Is the ground uneven? Is the space always cold? All of this information will help you to know what to expect beyond the information given on the show website and gear up for it accordingly.
A simple # search for the yarn festival in instagram will help you to glean this additional information.
2 – What to Wear to a Yarn Show
It’s all about thin layers. For instance, cattle mart type venues can be very cold in the morning, but soon heat up when all the bodies get in there. Indoor arena/ older buildings can heat up very quickly and become unbearable, so layers, layers, layers are the answer.
Also, this is the time to let your handmade items SHINE. You are never going to find a better group of folk that will appreciate you wearing something handmade. Shawls, hats, cowls and garments are great to layer up so that you can show it off and easily regulate your temperature.
Yarn shows can be on uneven ground (Yarndale is particularly bad), making flat, comfortable shoes a must. It’s also worth noting that parking can be quite far away from the actual venue and you may have to walk a mile or so.
Remember to take foldable, reusable bags with you. If you need to drop things off, many festivals have ‘bag creches’ and they help to raise money for local charities.
3 – Eating at a Wool Festival
Food at yarn festival can range from amazing to completely bland and over-priced. If you already know that soggy sandwiches are on offer, take your own or look for a nearby café/shop instead.
I just attended Unravel 2026 and bought a nice cafe latte and cake, but took my own sandwich to keep costs down and make sure I was eating a nice sandwich during the day. This feels like a good compromise. I am still supporting the venue and show financially, and eating what I want to eat.
If you know that the festival food is good (Wonderwool Wales is particularly good), get to the queue before 12pm, to make sure you don’t spend most of your festival queueing for food. For very busy festivals, you can spend 30 minutes + queueing for lunch and coffees.
It’s also well worth consulting the festival maps because often there are side coffee bars that are quieter. Basically, anything that is in a corner further away from the entrances will always be quieter. This advice also applies to seating areas which should be dotted throughout the yarn show.
4 – How to Find Your Favourite Vendors at a Yarn Show
Roughly one to two weeks beforehand, festival organisers put a map up on the website showing which exhibitors are where. It will show where the entrances, toilets, cafes, and all the vendors are.
Vendors are also pretty good at telling you where they are going to be in social media posts and newsletters.
If you want to be really prepared though, print the map in advance and mark it with the vendors that you definitely want to see. I regularly see customers come to the stand I am working on with a map and a pre-prepared list of yarns they want to squish and marry up to specific projects.
Not so good at at map reading? A good yarn show will have lost of members of staff/ volunteers who can also help you find what you are looking for.
A bonus tip for you is to see if the yarn dyers have swatches of their yarns. This can help you to decide whether the fibre blend is good on your skin and if the colours will work up as you expect them to.
5 – Pre-order Yarn to Collect at the Yarn Festival
If you know your favourite seller is there with goodies you are desperate to get your hands on, make a bee-line for them. It doesn’t matter if you are initially zig-zagging all over the show, you can go back and fill in the missed stalls later.
I have even emailed vendors in advance before now and asked them to keep stock aside for me. If you do this, expect to make an upfront payment for the stock you are reserving. <<< Side note, I expected a specific dyer to have what I had assumed to be their most popular colourway at Unravel Festival last week and they didn’t! She said I should have emailed and she would have dyed the yarn and brought it to the festival for me. She is kindly sending me on the yarn and I paid or it at the festival.
6 – Money, Money, Money
All vendors take payment by card these days. However, you may need some extra patience because there are lots of vendors all using the internet/ signal at the same time and it can take a week while for the payment to process, especially in more rural areas.
It can be worth taking a little bit of cash with you in case all card machines fail (this has happened before). But, you cannot rely on there being a local cash point. You also cannot rely on local cash points having any cash left in them. I have seen an entire town in Northern Ireland being wrung dry of cash because the banks didn’t top up the machine and weren’t expecting the mighty spending power of the crafters that had descended on the town for the yarn festival.
If you are likely to let the yarn fumes get the better of you and get overly excited, it can be worth setting a budget and sticking to it.
7 – Bad Lighting & Yarn Colours at Festivals
The lighting at certain yarn shows can be really poor – think cellar rooms with strip lights or old Victorian buildings with high up windows.
This stand had natural light coming in from lots of windows.
This one was in a basement with strip lighting.
These types of venues can make the yarn colours appear completely different than they are in natural day light. If you aren’t careful, this can mean buying completely the wrong shade for a project.
In this situation I ask the vendor if I can take the skein to natural light to double check it. I offer to leave my handbag, phone or shopping as ransom for me bringing the yarn back. I have never had a vendor refuse me and it usually ends up with them making a sale.
8 – Yarn Show Manners
A few things to remember when you are at a festival:
- Ask before taking photos of stands and products. Vendors particularly love the polite people that ask.
- Be vigilant on behalf of the vendors and keep an eye on your own belongings too. Some visitors steal and yes, it is a disgrace!
- Please don’t say things like “I could make that for half the price”. Vendors take weeks to prepare for shows and none of the ones I know are rich and living in mansions with their feet up.
- Haggling isn’t really on in my opinion. If you don’t try to do it with the big supermarket chains when you do your weekly shop, then why do it to a small-scale vendor that is trying desperately to put food on their table?
- It can be very helpful to unwind variegated skeins of yarn to see all of the colours that might be hiding inside the twists. You can read more on why this is important in my ‘Predicting How Variegated Yarn Will Work Up’ blog post. I always ask the vendor if I can do this and I always pass the skein back to them to re skein. Different dyers apply different amounts of twist to their skeins and they don’t want a tangled mess being handed back to them.
9 – Surviving or Avoiding Wool Show Crowds
Not a fan of big crowds? As a general rule, a weekend festival will be busiest on the Saturday. If it’s a Friday/Saturday festival, the Friday is usually quieter. Afternoons are quieter than mornings, so choose your day and time to visit wisely.
It can be a false economy to be one of the first ones through the door because it can take much longer to get around the show and see the stalls because of the crowds. The final two hours of a yarn show are generally very quite and a breeze to get around. Enter the festival with positivity, let the crowds wash by you and come out with an empty purse but yarn, notions and experience rich. There is nothing quite like the buzz and shared experience of a good yarn show!
If I am going to a yarn show on my own, I will sometimes play soothing music through headphones. It helps me to navigate the crowds, stay patient and enjoy the whole experience. <<< Top tip, this is also how I survive supermarket shopping.
Since covid times, more yarn shows offer a quiet space where you can escape the crowds and take a breath. Check the map and festival information to see if this is available and where the quieter seating nooks might be.
10 – Talks & Workshops at Yarn Festivals
Yarn shows often have a programme of events running alongside the vendor sales areas.
You can see some wonderful talks (often for free) at a yarn festival. The one photographed below was a talk that Susan Crawford gave on some of the stories behind her Shetland Vintage book. Talks are also an opportunity to sit down for a little while and get away from the crowds.
Workshops can also be offered at yarn shows. As a general rule of thumb, these are paid for and have to be booked in advance. They are a great way of building new skills and learning from some of the best tutors in the yarn craft sector.
Ticketed talks and workshops usually go up for sale on the same day as the festival tickets.
Hopefully, my festival pearls of wisdom will help you to prepare for attending yarn festivals.
Fay x
