Shamefully I’ve been neglecting my blog in the past year. Blame it on house renovation, an ambitious gardening project, and my daughter’s GCSE exams. Excuses, excuses, I know

Anyway what better way to kick-start it than to talk about something I love, and which gives me a lot of pleasure: knitting.

At the weekend I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show at Kensington Olympia with friends Janet Gover and Jane Coulthard. Usually I visit Alexandra Palace for this event, but being a West London girl, Olympia is a great deal easier to get to.

This show is a cornucopia for those who knit and sew (although the wool stands were few and far between), but it’s also a showcase for some extraordinary work from various textile artists.

Here’s what I saw and experienced:

These knitted vegetables look good enough to eat!

Tim Peake’s spacewalk. A quilted wall hanging based on a still from BBC News as seen on an iPad.

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This zebra is made entirely from sewing machine stitches, and it only took the artist 5 hours. Only…?!

I’d love to have this quilted picture of a Hawaiian volcano on my wall.

Remember the 1980s jacquard knitwear picturing idyllic country life? But look more closely, and it might not be so idyllic after all…

Hands of a leper. This touching wall hanging makes something beautiful out of an ugly and scary disease.

Apart from loving my day out, getting inspired for my next knitting project(s) – with my credit card glowing red hot! – I was a little disappointed. As I mentioned above, there were fewer knitting-related stands this year, and these were quite spread out and therefore hard to find.

A woman on one of the concessions told us that although it was never a 50-50 balance between knitting and stitching stands, it was at least 30% knitting, and now it’s less than 20%.

So, is knitting becoming less popular, I wonder, or do the knitting concessions choose to exhibit at other shows? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

My “stash” (which was quite modest this year).