Team Bliss touch down at Pisa airport on the 1st of July after a surprisingly stress free Ryanair flight from London Stansted. Some of us were feeling slightly more rested than others after a 5am start.

Our first evening we met up with the lovely Louisa Harding and her new assistant Emma for a delicious Florentine feast. Rhiannon from Designer Yarns also joined us.

The next morning we woke bright and early to a glorious view of the Duomo from our hotel window. Then it was on to the show.

We spent the day at meetings with various yarn manufacturers. It was thrilling to see the new developments they presented us with.

One of my highlights at Pitti is having the opportunity to look around the knitwear trends section. The student competition Feel The Yarn was particularly inspiring this year with some amazing shapes and use of colour.

The Millefili stand is always alive with colour and has lots of fun freebies. There was a popcorn stand this year with a variety of flavoured toppings from sugar to parmesan!

The trend section was a corridor of innovative knitted swatches split up into fashion stories with the prefix Made In..

I always find that the shops in Florence often mirror the trends that are being shown in the show. We saw plenty of boucle yarns that really got us in touch with our softer sides! This fur effect is definitely something to look out for in Autumn Winter 2015.

In the window of the Prada store.

Teresa and Nell revelled in the bright colours around us.

It was nice to see that we are ahead of the game. This contrast raglan sleeve sweater we saw at the show is very similar to the sweater in my new booklet Milano Chic !

Every year we are invited to the Pinori dinner which is held in the most magical of settings on the banks of the Arno and where we watch the sun go down behind the Pontevecchio bridge. Pinori make my beautiful Milano tweed yarn.

As usual Pitti Filati was inspiring, exciting and made me long to get my hands on the yarns that I was interested in and swatch them, I will have to wait two weeks unfortunately until they will arrive from the Italian manufacturers! A time too to meet up with friends and colleagues, all of us with a passion for fibre.
Trends to look out for Autumn/Winter 2015, textured but not too fancy yarns, and lightweight chunky yarns.