Author: Sue Tyler

Pop-up shop pops back up again

OO lucky hand­made shop­pers, the much loved and short lived Tinakori Road pop-up shop has popped up again, but this time in a dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion.

With a  mix of design­ers in for a day and anoth­er mix in for a week and some design­ers in for the whole time, it’s one of those places that’s worth a weekly vis­it.

You can find the Pop-Up Design Store at 24 Col­lege street from now till Octo­ber 17th.

Knack Market is fun

Knack Craft mar­ket is Wel­ling­ton’s boutique style mar­ket. It’s become so pop­u­lar that it’s moved from its ori­gin­al home at beram­phore school,  to the much big­ger South Wel­ling­ton Inter­me­di­ate School Hall, which you can find in Rintoul Street, (next to Wake­field Hos­pit­al), New­town.

Knack is where many of Wel­ling­ton’s up-and-com­ing crafters take their first steps in selling to the pub­lic. If you like new dis­cov­er­ies,  Knack is definately your kind of mar­ket, but please rem­ber to be gentle on the crafters. Hours of love, thought and pas­sion go into each item you’ll find at Knack (and any hand­made mar­ket) so things like bar­ter­ing or ask­ing for spe­cial deals is a little bit uncool.

At Knack you’ll also find tasty warm treats like hot soup, stuffed baked pota­toes, sam­o­sas and Thai cuisine all per­fectly made to keep you warm for winter or occu­pied while your small people hang out at the kids’ craft­ing table.

Knack is crammed for of lovely winter things for kids and adults, so if knit­ting or sew­ing is not your thing, stock up on warm winter wool­ies and clothes and some styl­ish acessor­ies to match. Also if you see some­thing you like but need it in anoth­er size, col­our.… you can ask the crafter in per­son if they do cus­tom orders. Most do and that’s the advant­age of hand­made. People make clothes, jew­ellery and acessor­ies that work, and if you need extra tweek­ing it’s totally pos­sible.

A fair weekend ahead

If you haven’t recovered from Craft2.0 last week­end, make sure you do by Sat­urday becuase it’s Fab­ric-a-brac time again.

The event is being held at St Anne’s Hall in New­town on Sat­urday 19 June from 9am – 12noon. It’s all put togeth­er by the amaz­ing Josie who who describes Fab­ric-a-brac as  “bring­ing togeth­er fab­ric-lov­ers, who have too much fab­ric, with oth­ers look­ing for a unique bar­gain”.

Fab­ric-a-brac is a dream won­der­land of awe­some for crafters, sew­ers, and makers. It’s full of fab­ric, but­tons, notions, sup­plies and any­thing your crafty heart can dream of.

There are some excit­ing new stall­hold­ers at Fab­ric-a-brac, includ­ing:

• Stitch­bird fab­rics, who right now is run­ning a mar­velous auc­tion to raise funds for Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice over on her blog.
• Abso­lute Sew­ing are com­ing to the res­cue of all crafters with blunt scis­sors, which is most of us. They are offer­ing scis­sor sharpen­ing, and since Fab­ric-a-brac is not NZ Cus­toms, you can bring your scis­sors alsong to the fair for sharpen­ing.

If that does­n’t bring joy to your life, next week­end is Knack Craft Fair. They’ve got a new ven­ue as well, Wel­ling­ton South Inter­me­di­ate Hall. But more on all things Knack next week.

When is a shop not a shop?

When it’s a Pop-Up Shop, of course.

Right now in Thorndon, Wel­ling­ton’s first Hand­made Pop-Up Shop has arrived. It opened on the 13th of April and closes again on the 1st of May. Each day the shop fea­tures a dif­fer­ent artist or crafter show­cas­ing all their lovely cre­ations.

Pop-Up Shops are trad­iton­ally places where retail­ers off­load sale or dis­coun­ted stock, but this shop is pretty much the oppos­ite. It’s about a home for beau­ti­fuly designed and hand­made things, with a real focus on the per­son behind the product.

You can find the Pop-Up Shop at 302 Tinakori Road, Thorndon.

The jumble sale is back!

Do you have plans for East­er Week­end the week­end after East­er? Well scrap them because some­thing and someone rather amaz­ing is com­ing to town. It’s not Santa or the East­er bunny, but even bet­ter – it’s Maria, of Eclect­ic fame in Nel­son.

She’s arriv­ing with the biggest haul of vin­tage and retro treas­ure like last year. But she’s also bring­ing FURNITURE!
TEXTILES, FABRIC, LACES, LINENS AND BRICBRAC. Plus hats, sunglasses, scarves, jack­ets, dresses, shoes and all man­ner of cloth­ing! And there’ll be some guys’ stuff too.

It’s the kind of thing we nev­er get to see in Wel­ling­ton on jumble sale scale and price! $5-$20 with a few spe­cial items.

There is heaps of fab­ric and lots of jew­ellery and but­tons etc for remak­ing. 10,000 items!!!!!

You will kick your­self if you can­’t make it and there will be some­thing for every­one, plus stuff is put out over the whole week­end so if you can­’t make first thing Sat­urday morn­ing, don’t be put off.

Come any­time over the week­end, go twice even and be amazed!

It will be the place to be. So if you are sad Craft2.0 isn’t on this week­end, well here’s one great place to be spend­ing your money.

Handmade is the best Made

Autumn is upon us, and sea­sons chan­ging means only one thing in the Wel­ling­ton Craft World. It’s Knack time.

Knack time being this sat­urday from 9.30am till 2.30pm at Ber­ham­pore School.

Knack is a glor­i­ous sea­son­al mar­ket which also doubles as a school fun­draiser. So you get to buy hand­made from the artist which is grand and then know that you are also help­ing out a school. It’s like double doing good, with shop­ping .

Knack­’s full of lovely hand­made things, and is often where some of Wel­ling­ton’s newests crafters make their selling debut, so it’s a great mar­ket for those of you want­ing to be ahead of the trends.

There’s loads of park­ing at the school or catch the bus and amble up the hill.

Get your Craft On

Craft2.0 kicks off 2010 with a fourth birth­day bash this Sat­urday (March 6th) from 11am to 3pm at The­New­Dowse in Lower Hutt.

Over 4 years Craft2.0 has become syn­onym­ous with high qual­ity, diverse products proudly claim­ing ‘New Zea­l­and Made’ or even bet­ter, ‘Wel­ling­ton made’. March sees the biggest fair yet with 70 crafters, many selling for the first time. You may dis­cov­er that your neigh­bour moon­lights as an artist, a col­league is a closet knit­ter and the kid next door’s Dad is rather resource­ful in the design depart­ment.

Many of the crafters use recycled/vintage mater­i­als, like cast-off alu­mini­um tabs, e‑waste, old board games, cut­lery and oth­er quirky objects that often end up at the rub­bish dump – it’s all about being resource­ful.

Plus there is a free mak­ing table for a kids, and if you are a Friend of Craft2.0 you get a free gift on arrival and the abil­ity to start shop­ping at 10.15 before the crowds arrive at 11.

and if you’ve a hanker­ing for all things hand­made, don’t for­get The Inaug­ur­al 2010 JAM OFF tomor­row at 11.30 at mojo old bank.