I went to the first ever Bochum Handmade fair

Yesterday I met a friend of mine in Bochum to check out the Handmade fair / exhibition which was not held for the first time in Bochum, a neighboring city to my current home town. These Handmade fairs seem to be some kind of francise, at least they take place in several German cities yearly.

So, but this was the first ever in this area, and we decided to check it out. Around 10:30 we arrived to the Jahrhunderthalle (Centrury Hall) and were immediately confronted by a queue to the tickets desk. That's why we decided to take a small walk in the surrounding park instead, and upon returning to the Hall about 15 minutes later the queue was already substantially shorter, so we joined the waiting crew and in about 5 minutes we were in.

I didn't really have any expectations about the fair, but what I saw in the hall was indeed very nice. There were loads of stands, most of them with patchworking, quilting and and sewing stuff, though. There were many sellers with finished garments made out of felt or sewn, very creative things indeed. There were also pearls and jewellry, pottery and all kinds of crafty stands.

Luckily there were also some stands with yarn, however not so many, I would say maximum five with only yarn and knitting related things, and perhaps five more with a bit of yarn on the side.

The yarns were nice enough, most of them were things I already knew like Zauberbälle and different kinds of sock yarn, but there were also a few independent dyers I hadn't heard about before, too. One stand also sold the Zealana Possum yarn, which really looks interested knitted up, but because they kill the possums to get to the yarn I didn't get any of that. In fact, I didn't buy anything at the fair (well, a sandwich, but I mean yarn here).

After we looked at everything and my friend got a skein of very interesting looking silk-merino mix from Schoppel, made with a rasta-technique, we went upstairs to look at the quilt exhibition. Now I don't quilt and hopefully never will, but I like looking at that stuff. And the coolest thing was they had actually made quilts about the Ruhr area and Bochum. What a wonderful idea, and they looked really good too. I chose two of my favourites to share with you here in this post - one with a historical, industrial skyline from the region and one with some of the landmarks in Bochum.

After the show we went to my friends, had some soup and knitted a bit on the balcony. What bliss! Well, then a neighbor started cleaning the yard in a very loud way and we kind of gave up on the balkony and I headed home.

All in all it was a really nice day and I could think of going to this fair again, not for serious yarn shopping but for a nice day out.