Stora Symässan

I went to Malmö yesterday all by myself, to the Stora Symässan craft fair. Fabrics and yarns and beads and some crap too. I mean, cleaning equipment and terry cloth turbans at a craft fair? It's not a very large fair but it's the only one nearby. I had a great day strolling around looking at stuff without kids even though there weren't that many yarn vendors there, and some of them just had acrylic horror yarn. I managed to buy some yarn anyway. Not very much because there wasn't much fun or unusual yarn around really. I do regret that I didn't get the Araucania Ranco I saw for the Girasole that I want to make, but that's no big deal. I did get a ball of Zauberball because I can't resist Zauberball and the price was good, an Opal cotton blend sock yarn to try for warmer weather socks, an Opal Hundterwasser beacuse I liked the colours, and a handpainted Opal yarn for the Brandywine shawl. I also got a skein of Visjögarn to complement the ones I already have.

I also got buttons for a baby sweater I really ought to finish today as the baby is due any day now, two Tunisian crochet patterns, beads for my Evenstar shawl, and some odds and ends. And two quilt templates for some reason...

I thought it would be easy to find beads because I read that there were going to be many bead vendors at the fair, but they had mostly larger beads for jewellry making. Only one had the size 8/0 seed beads I was looking for. But she had them in little baggies for 5 SEK each! So I got six baggies each of two colours for 60 SEK :-)

The thing I was really looking forward to was the workshops I had booked. Three heels and three thumbs with Ann-Mari Nilsson, the author of Sticka mössor, vantar, sockor! (Knit hats, mittens, socks!) which I like very much. Both workshops were great fun and the samples were so cute!



The samples were made with half the adult number of stitches. Ann-Mari has an interesting way of doing afterthought heels. She knits the sock from the top and knits in waste yarn on half the round. Then she knits the heel. So the waste yarn is for the foot, not the heel that's the more usual approach. She said that she has always done it like this to be able to try the sock on for foot length.