A couple of weeks ago I had a stall at a 2 day art and craft fair at Loughborough Town Hall called SOCK! It was the second year for this event and my second time attending too. It was a really successful weekend – quite tiring doing 2 full days in a row, but well worth it.
Here are a few pics of my stall on the day.
The event also placed a ‘comment wall’ in the reception area – as you can see it’s full! That’s my nephew writing a biased comment for me! What a great idea though, and hopefully it will have given the Town Hall some useful feedback about the event.
On the second day there were two free workshops for kids aged between 4 and 16 to participate in sock creature and felt making. Again there was a special comment wall for these activities.
The fair attracted some brilliant artists and covered a very diverse range of skills: textiles, ceramics, glass, luxury knitwear, interior furnishings, steel sculpture, armoury, silver jewellery, stone carving, illustrators, painters… Loughborough Town Hall have posted an address to register interest for the event in 2011 and are also on Facebook.
Anyway, after such a busy weekend I thought it only fair to buy myself a present or two from a couple of fellow stall holders!
The flower brooch has been made by Judith Williamson. She recycles unwanted sweet tins to make unique and innovative tinplate jewellery, decorative canvasses, wall panels and accessories. It’s very reasonably priced too. I liked the brooches so much I bought one for my sister as well!
The clip purse is by a printed textile artist called Teresa Green. She had an amazing range of interior and fashion accessories, using mainly cotton Irish linen applied with screen printed stylish linear imagery.
I also met a couple of visiting Folksy.com colleagues – Neil from Wood Jewellery and Andrea from Polka. It was great to be able to put faces to names and have a ‘real’ conversation in place of cyberchat for a change!
My nephew was particulary excited because his very own sock creature (designed by him and made by me!) appeared on the event banner and literature. He brought it to the show to sit on the stall but ended up putting it back in his bag as too many people wanted to buy it!
And this is a pic of his Sock creature appropriately posing at the end of SOCK! on ‘The Sock” sculpture in the market place by Shona Kinloch.
The sock garden 
I SAY, I SAY, I SAY