Yarn Love! International Trade Fair for Handcrafts and Hobbies

Happy Easter Weekend everyone! 

I hope you have wonderful days with your loved ones ahead of you (and some time for crochet!).

The last weekend was spent in Cologne at the International Trade Fair for Handcrafts and Hobbies. You might recall my blog post about it from last year. This year, I wasn't a visitor. Instead I worked for Stylecraft as a translator (German to English). 

I arrived on Friday morning and fortunately the wonderful ladies from Stylecraft spotted me straight away. The show opened at 9am but we could go in earlier. It was quite lovely to walk past the stalls without visitors there. The Stylecraft ladies took me into their team straight away and I had such a lovely time! Plus as a yarn addict it is very cool to see the new yarns and colors (not just from Stylecraft) ahead of their release. Ladies and Gents - I can tell you: Some wonderful yarn-y goodness is on its way to us! Can't wait!

Just as last year, there was soo much too see! Yarns, fabric, buttons... A crafters wonderland really. I kinda wish, I could have stayed there over night and play with all these things!! On the other hand... I wasn't too sad to put my feet up in the evenings either. ;-)

There were a lot of interested retailer at the Stylecraft stall and I really hope that some German retailers will stock the yarn as well soonish! I wish there was a store in Dortmund which stocked it, so I could just pop in whenever I need yarn instead of ordering online and waiting for the delivery! Oh well... till then I should use up my stash I guess (Hello, I am Anne and I am a yarn hoarder/yarn addict).

What really caught peoples eyes was the Frida's Flowers Blanket. Or rather blankets. There were 3 (!) Frida's Blankets on the stall. One in each recommend yarn. They each look wonderful but also very different depending on the yarn. The stitch definition is best with the cotton but the lightest version is the Special DK. I will crochet the blanket with cotton myself.

While waiting for retailers to come (they came in waves!), I managed to crochet two quick Elise Shawls with the Stylecraft Cabaret yarn. I am no big fan of glitter but the sparkle in this yarn is actually quite nice and great to work with! There was quite a bit of frogging involved though because it seems I made mistakes whenever I put the work down to do something else :P I finished the two shawls by Sunday evening though.  

I kinda hope that Stylecraft needs a translator again next year... :D I had great fun!

So now off to get some pattern translating going!

What is on your hook this weekend?

Take care

Anne

Spiel 2013 in Essen and Cologne

I was going to write about the two beanies I made last week but decided to write about the weekend instead because it was so much fun! 

On friday Pat from Australia arrived and stayed with us til today. I have known Pat for almost 10 years now and it's one of these friendships where you don't notice that you haven't seen each other for two years. :-) It was so great to speak Australian English again but I also noticed that my skills have become rather rusty. I certainly need to get more practice!

On friday we drove up to Essen which isn't very far away from Dortmund. It's a funny thing about this area of Germany: One doesn't notice that one drives from one city into the other. We passed serveral on the 30 minute ride though...

In Essen the Spiel 2013 was on. It's the biggest international game convention in the world and another friend of ours was there to present his game. The name of the game is Relic Runner and it's Matt's first game. Therefore it's really amazing that he managed to get it published by Days of Wonder. Days of Wonder is a brilliant, brilliant game publishing house. I assume most of you know Ticket to Ride?!

I confess that I am a fan girl... Such a great stall! :-) I bought the Ticket to Ride Netherlands and got some translucant trains. Yay!

Buttt... Even more important: We met Matt there. 

That's Matt in front to the wall which presents his game. The whole stall was covered in pictures from the game and tons of people were playing it. So amazing! You really should give the game a try! It's a strategic game (10 years up) with beautiful playing figures - looks like heaps of fun! I will certainly put it on my christmas wishlist! Have a look at the Days of Wonder Homepage ! They also have an interview with Matt on there!

On saturday Pat wanted to go to Cologne and I joined him. Of course there were some troubles with the German Bahn (as usual...). This time some crazy soccer fans were running around on the tracks and so we arrives in Cologne with a 45 minutes delay. 

That's the cathedral of Colone. We went inside of course. I have been there some times but I always enjoy the windows a lot:

There is a new one which I liked a lot. It's like a Tetris window....

We went on a bit of a walk through the town afterwards.

The sun was out and it was rather warm for the end of October. Lovely walking weather really!

I rode home with Alex (who had a conference there) while Pat stayed some longer. We drove though the most beautiful autuum scenes. Everything was red and yellow! Unfortunatly there was no place to stop the car otherwise I would have taken some pictures... I really enjoy autuum here. As I mentioned we only moved there in July and are new to the whole mountain thing. The area around Oldenburg was really flat (which was great for bike riding!) but you certainly see more of the autuum colours here due the the mountains! It is storming right now however, so we'll see how much of the leaves are left on the tree by tomorrow morning!