On a Friday evening after work, I packed up a bag full of unspun batts, fibres and yarn and rode on the Hikari Superexpress Shinkansen to Tokyo.
No matter how many times I ride the Shinkansen, I never lose the excitement and thrill of riding a highspeed train. It helps that I like trains in the first place, but when a train can make a 4 hour bus journey into a 1.5 hour train journey, it's something to get excited about (just me?). But as time=money, so do you pay for this luxurious transportation; a single ticket will cost you more than a return bus. Which I why I usually choose the bus, but since the highway was under construction that Friday resulting in delays of at least an hour, I forked out for the Shink.
I spent a night enjoying the bright lights of the city and got to bed around 2am, only to wake up and get moving at around 7am. Time to sell everything I had brought, because there was no way I wanted to lugg it all the way home too.
The
Spinner's Market, organised by
Reiko, was to be held at the same place as the one in May - an open air rental space in Nippori. However, one thing was depressingly different from May; the weather. Tokyo was forecast for light rain all day, but after consulting all the sellers it was decided to go ahead with the aid of a car, a tent, poles, a bench and multiple plastic sheets.
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| Are you camping here? |
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| Car boot sale anyone? |
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| Princess Reiko spent the entire time in the heart of the tent, carefully laying out our items. |
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| Spinners on tour. |
The sellers:
imokuri - batts
Reikomono (レイコモノ) - handspun yarn, dyed tops, fleece, batts
emmaruri's BABY - workshop: spinning with disposable chopsticks
S39Z(sawako)(ENITEN) - handspun yarn, batts, handmade items
KTea (that's me) - speciality fibres (milk protein, soy, recycled plastic), batts, handspun yarn
hao - Japanese craft magazine
To our delight, some gracious customers were already queuing up before we had even got the last blue sheet up (Reiko had made a lot of effort in advertising beforehand) and I sold almost half of my batts within the first 15 minutes. The rain kept coming and we fought to keep water out of the centre of the tent with mixed success. Many passer-bys came to check out our wares but one can't help but think we could have been so much more successful, and drier, if we had chosen Sunday over Saturday.
But even so it was lots of fun and most of the sellers ended up with lighter baggage to take home. I on the other hand somehow managed to have heavier baggage than when I had started, but at least it was happy baggage.
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| All that was left of mine was 3 batts and 3 skeins of yarn. |
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| And this is what I ended up buying :D Imokuri batt (top left) S39Z batt (top right), Reiko batts (bottom), Reiko dyed tops and a pompom alpaca strap from Sawako. Emmaruri also gave me some Herdwick tops. |
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| The next day I went on a stamp rally trip around Nippori and found a lot of SPINNUTS magazines in a used book shop. |
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There is ongoing discussion as to if, when and where the next Spinner's Market will be held, but I'll let you know when there are definites!
