I am so glad I read the newspaper this morning and that I even skimmed the pages with event listings and event ads, which I sometimes skip. Otherwise I would have missed the yearly sewing and crafts festival, and that would have been a pity.

I spent several hours just walking around and looking at things. I barely bought anything (2 metres of fancy woven ribbon and three pairs of socks) but I came home with a whole lot of inspiration and creative energy. Just like when I go to software conferences – even when I don’t learn much, I get an incredible amount of energy.

I was not very interested in the sewing side of the festival, other than as a curious observer. Sewing machine makers and resellers took up a lot of floor space. There was also an immense variety of fabric. Quilting is clearly a big thing – there were lots of vendors selling colourful fabrics in smallish pieces clearly meant for patchwork. Also lots of printed jersey fabrics, and I think the main target group there was mums sewing clothes for their young children.

Mums sew, but knitting, embroidery and other such textile crafts is clearly mostly done by ladies of an, ahem, mature age. I felt quite young there.

There were endless amounts of crafts materials of all kinds. So many lovely yarns in so many colours! But I can’t just buy something without a plan, without knowing what I will use it for. Maybe some other year I’ll go there with some actual projects in mind and have a reason to buy some.

I was more interested in all the finished projects, displayed to inspire you to buy yarn or even whole ready-made kits. I’m not interested in embroidering someone else’s design, but I can still be inspired. I’m especially happy to find ideas about what to actually do with embroidery. It’s not hard to come up with designs, the hard thing is to find something to do with them. I don’t want to make useless things that can only be hung on a wall.