Creativa, part 1

I had Wednesday off work this week; I still had a day left of holidays 2008, and if I don't use it by the end of March, it's gone. So we originally thought, Nick and me that is, thet we'll go to Düsseldorf and see some sights. However, Nick got ill and stayed in bed that day.

I had read about the craft fair Creativa on Ravelry, and it happened to start on the Wednesday. And when the weather decided to very sightseeing-unfriendly, I made up my mind and headed to the fair in Dortmund.

I'd say that was a good decision! I have been to a craft fair before in Ireland, but again I have to notice that there's a big difference between a fair in a country with 80 million inhabitants, and a country with 4 million inhabitants! The fair was huge! You see in the first picture a part of a hall. And in the second picture you can see it was nut just this one packed hall, but four of them (plus one for the cafe). I walked two hours just to get an overview of it all!

There were all kinds of crafts present, a little bit of knitting, lot of quilting, scrapbooking, pearls, jewelry, card making... you name it. But like said, also a bit of knitting. Actually there were a few balls of sock yarn on may not-purely-knitting -exhibitors, but nothing really interesting.

What I did find interesting was this one seller, who had fabric and yarn; apparently he buys the rests of bigger batches, and could have really really good prices because of that. He had Marks&Kattens Eco Ull for sale for 2,50 per ball! I mean Euros! That's, I would say, half price when compared to a LYS. I decided to get enought for the Owls sweater, that's 900 grams, or to be safe 1 kilo. So they said - one kilo, that you can get for 40 euros (2 eur per ball) I was thrilled! And then the saleslady said she'd leave the four extra balls that were in the bag in there as well. I got 1.200 grams of organic pure new wool for 40 euros. How cool is that!

I also bought one ball of Pure soysilk to test. I can't get the camera to take a decent photo of it, but it's really dark violet, not as blue as in the picture.

My last purchase was a hair comb; it looked like something my mane could use. And it was! I tried it at home and I must say it's the best piece I have - doesn't poke, fall off or let the hair loose. Great!

Those were the purchases, take a look here later to see the part 2 of Creativa and the cool things I saw there!