This is the story of our 2 day visit to the CHSI Stitches trade show

CHSI stitches is the largest show in the UK for the creative craft industry. As this was our first time, we visited the show on Sunday and Monday 27-28 February 2022.

From our hotel it was only a 350 yards walk to the main building the NEC in Birmingham. Once through the gates we had to walk indoors to get to hall 12 including a walk over the “skywalk”. This took the best part of 15 minutes. Of course we grabbed a quick Starbucks on our way. Just a matter of waking up properly.

We had our visitor badges registered and printed and had to fold them and put into our badge holders before entering the show. After a quick scan by a friendly lady, we were good to go to see some yarn.

We first wondered around a bit looking at all the different stands. We really were a bit overwhelmed, never knew anything like this existed and we just needed a moment to take it all it! Remember this is our first time at a trade faire like this, so we just took some time to see what’s on offer.

We soon arrived at one of our main targets, KingCole yarns and we were greeted by a friendly lady who showed us what was new in their yarn range and if we were interested in opening a trade account. And of course we were interested that was a silly question! And it was all soon set up and the possibility of ordering was offered.  

From this manufacturer we were very interested in their cotton range but we were shown some more yarns that were very interesting for the near future.

With that first encounter behind us, we were feeling much more confident and happy about being here! So off we went to see our main supplier at the show, StyleCraft Yarns. We were greeted by Nick, one of the representatives for StyleCraft. We sat down with him and had a lovely chat about all the things we were up to and told him about all our subscribers keeping us very busy indeed over the last year, and the last few CALs.  

I am pleased to say that we now can buy directly via StyleCraft and straight away we ordered all the yarn for the  new CAL. 

These two visits wore us out a bit and we had a quick break with a coffee and a panini. After this we wanted to go and talk to James C Brett but we only had a wonder around their stand as they were very busy and we made the decision to come back the next day to talk to them.

So, we decided to have a look at other stands for the rest of the late afternoon and continued our way back to the hotel because we had received a few catalogues and I wanted to have a browse through them. Anja did some editing on the Lookbook for the CAL and soon enough it was time for dinner. 

We had a very busy and productive Monday. We checked out of the hotel, filled our car with suitcases (one specially for all Anja's crochet makes, shawls etc --- she just can't choose which to wear or bring) and headed over to the show. We got there quite early and we headed straight to the James C Brett stand to have a chat about their yarns.  

This was probably the most exciting time at the show as we spent a long time chatting to Chris (theyarnadvocate at instagram) about all things yarn and he really knew how to sell it and get us all exciting about the James C Brett yarns. He was really interested in our YouTube channel and he even trusted us with a new yarn that Wendy is producing and Anja has been sent samples to start designing something with it. So exciting!!! So a big order was placed and when we left their stand we were feeling so confident about the future and how we are so happy we did this and can now expand our range to bring more exciting yarns to you.

We walked back to the car and on the way we celebrated our visit to the show (and the accounts with the three large players in the field!!!) with a pizza at Pizza Express and then we drove 3 hours back to Exmouth both tired but satisfied with our first visit ever to a trade show. Well, I drove and Anja crocheted. If we could drive at the rate she crochets we would have been home within the hour! 

Thank you for reading, 

Dirk