It's been about one week since vendors and visitors all gathered at the Brazos Center in Bryan, Texas for Brazos Valley Fiber Fest 2026. What an amazing time we had!!
As this was our first fiber festival as a vendor, I was excited (and a bit nervous) about making new friends and seeing how visitors would respond to our products. There turned out to be no reason for being nervous - everyone was lovely and the weekend was an absolute blast!
Learning to wire accessories by hand has accidentally become one of my favorite hobbies. It started out as something to do in my free time with random enamel charms and glass beads I'd been gifted, with the instruction to "do something with them, because you're more creative than me!". I've really been pleased seeing my progress with wiring and designing notions over time. However, making something as a hobby for yourself or close friends is very different than asking someone to spend their hard earned money on something you made. Especially when yarn can be very delicate and snag easily and I don't want a stitch marker I sold someone to emotionally ruin their crafting. My goal was to allow anyone who uses fiber as thin as laceweight mohair to get as much value out of our stitch markers as someone who uses aran or worsted yarn. As a result, much of my time and attention over the last several months of preparing for this market has gone towards making sure all wiring work is finished and smoothed to prevent burrs from catching. I also wanted the make sure the custom stitch markers I produced at my booth's Bead Bar were as high of quality as I expect from myself when making things in my craft space. Hopefully you agree that this was achieved!
The Trellis Row Counting Bracelet and the Freshly Foraged Fairy Ring brown mushroom set seemed to be the show stealers all weekend. The Fairy Ring set has always been a bestseller, so no surprise there - everyone loves this set! - but I was pleasantly surprised to see our newest collection really take off. As a concept it made a lot of sense to me and it was really gratifying to hear from others that they loved the idea too.
People did have some really good questions on how to use it, which is to be expected from anything new to a market. I personally keep mine on hand for measuring gauge swatches and for holding my crochet stitch markers on the go, since I'm always knitting in the car or while we sit on a family member's couch when we visit, but another friend of mine uses hers as more of an accessory for her to show off her prettiest stitch markers, and they come off only occasionally. Neither of us are "right" or "wrong", much like how people knit. You do what works for your hands and what you like to make. With this in mind, Wild Thistle Yarn Works will be putting out more video content and details to give you ideas on how this handy tool can really be put to work. My favorite thing about the Trellis, and what I hope we show you clearly, is that you can have this bracelet and use it however, whenever you want. We've designed to work for your individual knitting, crochet, and stylistic needs, not to put you in a box.
You can see pictures of our booth at BVFF2026 on Instagram. Feel free to tag us @wildthistleyarnworks - we'd love to see anything you bought from us there and to get your feedback. We'll also be reopening shipping from our website in the near future. As I'm abroad at the moment I won't be doing any custom work until late April at the earliest, but we do still have some inventory left from what we brought with us to Bryan.
Many thanks to the organizers for putting on such a fun market too - we can't wait for next year's event!
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