Wollfestival Cologne 2015

Life has been a whirlwind of wonderful experiences lately. My parents came to visit me in Munich for almost a week before we headed to Wollfestival Cologne together. When I came back from Wollfestival my wonderful friend Sam of Fluffyland came to visit me but that deserves its own post.
Right now I'm sitting in between boxes as I'm packing up my sweet little apartment in Munich to move back to my hometown Göttingen. So in between craft show prep and vacationing I didn't get a chance to share my photos with you.

Wollfestival Cologne is an annual knitting meeting / market where people from all over Germany (and the Netherlands.... and I even had French customers!) meet to knit and enhance their stash a little. I had a sweet little booth where I sold project bags, notion pouches, and other cute tidbits and knitters enjoy such as sheep coasters.

It was my first craft show this year so I had lots of time to think about how I wanted to set it up. I invested in some furniture (e.g. the coat stand and the Ivar shelves from IKEA) because just one table clearly would not have been enough to display all my products.

I feel like craft shows are always about trial and error - there is no single rule how to set up a booth to sell successfully. Each craft fair is very different depending on the location, customers, weather, etc.

After a wonderful first day at Wollfestival my awesome mom - who helped me throughout the craft fair and contributed wonderful bags to my product line - and I treated ourselves to some ice cream. Yum!

On day two we rearranged a little bit because we were running low on some products whereas others didn't get much attention because they were hidden behind other products.

On the second day I arranged some products by color - which was a lot of fun to do but did not make a difference in sales. The only thing that did make a difference was the cute plush alpaca Sam made for me; I sat it on a shelf and everything that I put next to it sold immediately. It definitely emanates positive energies :)

And since it would be impossible for me to go to a craft show without buying anything, here is what I brought home: 6 beautiful rovings of spinning fibers. They are mostly merino or merino/silk blends. I can't wait for the weather to cool down so I can finally spin again!

wiwo wednesday vol. 22

Dang I can't believe summer is halfway over - already! Time is just passing too quickly.
There's a personal update at the end of the post. If you're just interested in crafts - great! Enjoy the short projects update and see you next time. If you're wondering what I've been up to scroll down and I'll tell you :)

A new sweater is on my needles! It's the 'gable' sweater by Hannah Fettig and it's a joy to knit. I'm knitting it out of Wollmeise Lace yarn. Knitting a sweater out of lace weight is a tiny bit crazy but I'm enjoying it. It's a great travel knit because it's lightweight and takes up very little space.

And there's another sweater on the needles. This one is pretty tiny though. It's gonna be either a Christmas ornament or a key fob. Because the world obviously needs tiny sweater, duh!

And last but not least (knitting-wise) is a pair of vanilla socks out of Wollmeise Twin. I'm using up all the leftovers from my exploration station shawl (no worries, I'll share it soon! I just have to find someone in Munich who knows how to operate a DSLR) so this is a 'scrap project', although 90 grams of fingering weight might not qualify as scraps...

On my wheel there is a gorgeous hand-painted combed top by raven ridge. I bought the top in Missoula, MT last summer and it was hand dyed in Montana. Yarn and fiber are the best souvenirs, right? It's 85% polwarth and 15% tussah. It feels very fluffy and luxurious, I can't wait to knit it into something beautiful. I'm halfway through spinning the top and I'm still debating whether to make a two ply yarn for a hat or a single for a shawl...

I'm vending at two big craft fairs this year - the Wollfestival Cologne (August 15-16) and Wollfest Regensburg (September 5-6) so looots of project bags, knitting needle cases, etc. are in the making.
I can't wait to share pictures of my craft fair booth with you - it's gonna be amazing if I may say so :)

That's all that I'm currently working on. I'm reading the first book of the outlander series - it is really addictive! I watched the first season in just two weeks and bought the first book just before I finished watching the last episode.

What are you working on?

So on a more personal level, here's why I've been rather quiet around the internet:
I'm working full time. Well, I should rather say I'm internshipping full time. But working sounds more mature. I'm doing an HRM internship at the global assignments department at BMW Munich. It is amazing, to put it in one sentence. I can't believe I only have one more week (and two weeks of paid vacation) left. At the end of the month I'll be moving back to my hometown to write my Bachelor's thesis and then I'll be done with my undergraduate studies in February. Please don't ask what I'll be doing after graduating because I can't answer that question - yet.

Also, craft fair preparations have kept me quite busy. I've been designing, sewing and packing products and building a proper craft fair booth. A big THANK YOU to my parents who always support me no matter what crazy ideas I come up with. If you're in Germany and looking to buy a new project bag or two (or three... nobody's judging here), I'd love to meet you at Cologne or Regensburg! If you can't make that's a shame, but you can still shop my stuff online. The online shop will be restocked properly in September.