New Thing # 8

Week 8: 16th February 2009 – 22nd February 2009

Date:- February 21th 2009
New Thing:- go to a craft fair

The fair in question was Craft 4 Crafters at the International Centre in Telford. I saw it advertised in a stitching magazine months ago and invited all of Stitch and Bitch, but no one was interested so GKL, C and I went alone. Surprise 1 of the day - we managed to correctly follow the directions that Google maps gave us and not get lost. Surprise 2 - the other half of the building was hosting the Midlands MCM (Movies Comics Media) Expo and the place was swarming with delicious nerds and people in costume. The two shows has an adjoining food court and we considered sneaking in for a quick peek, but then realised you needed a hand stamp. A shame but the craft fair was more than enough to keep us occupied.

We started the day with a beading workshop. Here we are looking more genuinely happy than I've seen any of us in ages:-



Although we had difficulty hearing the instructor we learned quite a bit and came out with some beautiful new jewellery.



C and I also came out with yet another expensive new hobby, as if we didn't have enough already, and headed straight for the beading stall where (surprise # 3) didn't spend any money. Yet. We'd made a group decision to look around the whole thing before spending any money, and we managed to keep to it. Aside from buying GKL a gorgeous fur coat from a shop called Naked Penguin. It's her birthday present from me.

During our tour of the place we experienced some new crafts - admire my pressed flower bookmark and my embossing powder quill:-




And we mentally spent a million pounds each. Then, we each spent money! We hadn't planned to because we'd assumed all the prices would be hyped up, but (surprise # 4) most of it was on sale. I refuse to admit how much I spent, but here's a picture of my stash:



I had a fabulous day. We all did. We are most definitely going back next year.