CRAZY ZAUERBALL

This year saw my second trip to Berlin where I re-visited Fadinensel from my first trip last year and found another new beaut of a shop called Frau Tulpe (Post coming soon). On my first visit to Fadinensel I bought the yarn guide and this time I bought a ball of fantastic Crazy Zauerball which is made in Germany. I'm still not entirely sure I like the way that this kind of yarn knits up but just look at those strands, oooh! I can hear you asking what am I going to use this for if not knitting then. Well, when I saw this it reminded me of the lovely bakers twine which I've seen a lot of recently and thought I'd use this yarn in a similar way. Wrapping parcels, presents, generally tying things up nicely! I haven't had a chance to do any of these things yet, but when I do I'll take a quick snap to show you how I've used it. In the meantime if you want to get your hands on the above Zauerball No.1507 a quick google should find you a few online sellers and here it is for you on the Skacel Collection website.

BERLIN HABERDASHERY STORES

I'm sure a while back I may have mentioned my little trip to Berlin. Whenever I go away somewhere I'm always excited to have half a day or so to myself searching for shops that sell fabric and wool. Berlin was a bit disappointing in that respect and I only really managed to find 2 shops (Maybe I didn't try hard enough!). On my next visit I think I'll be spending a little more time online searching for shops as there do seem to be more places scattered around.

The first shop I found was Fadeninsel and it sold mostly wool. I only managed to snap an image of some of the wool inside but after doing some research I have found the shop has a lovely sign on the front and so have borrowed an image from here for you to see. Fadeninsel can be found at Oranienstrasse 23, they have a website here, it doesn't show anything really but has the contact information. I did make a purchase here for my Mum's birthday, I'm not sure she'll ever use it though, it's a yarn divider for when you're using more than one colour on a knitting project and you pop it onto your finger! I'll get her to take some pics soon.

The second shop (which I found online!) was a fabric store in Charlottenburg. It's called Kumasch and although small, it did host a wide variety of fabrics. I didn't buy any in the end as I thought most of the stuff they had there I could probably buy back at home and a tad cheaper too.

We were a bit more successful on finding lots of other interesting things in Berlin though, some of which I haven't blogged about yet. Others I have and they include Polish poster design, an independent artist run space with some fab pieces of graphics inside. The colourful beer, mmmmhhh! A double decker bus cafe, the worlds largest open air gallery, lots of inspiring graffiti, and much more to come! So as you can see we were hardly disappointed really!