Weekendtrip to Helsinki and the handicrafts fair

Last weekend I visited a friend who lives in Helsinki. The weather was pretty good on Saturday and we spent the day shopping at thrift-stores. I found a nice jacket at 50% at one of the UFF shops we visited, it looks brand new yet I only paid 12,50e for it! After the shopping we went to Virgin Oil and haf the Menu Americano, the service was fairly quick and the food was pretty good. We asked for medium rare steaks and got what I would call rare, but it was still good (I was wavering on whether I wanted the steak rare or medium rare anyway). Dessert was really good, but took an awfully long time to get to the table. After dinner we were going to see Gravity in 3D, but came to the conclusion that 15e was just too much money to spend on seeing a movie no matter how good it might be. We ended up renting Don Jon instead, which was a very interesting movie. I just wish it had been a little bit longer.

On Sunday we went to Helsingin Kädentaitomessut (Helsinki Handicrafts fair). Oh, there was so much to see! There were people selling handmade items and all sorts of crafting supplies. We were of course mostly interested in the booths which had something to do with yarn but we did peruse the scrap booking stuff and jewelry making stuff too.

I bought some yarn (Hjertegarn Blend Bamboo) for my mom to knit a hitchhiker scarf out of and a copy of the Winter 2013 edition of pompom quarterly for myself from the Titityy booth. I was sorely tempted to buy some yellow silk and wool blend lace, but since I don't have a lot of time to knit I decided not to buy anything that would just end up sitting in my stash for months on end. I also bought two shawl pins from the Pitsi& palmikko booth. One for me and the other for my mom. My friend also bought a shawlpin but I think it was a different design. I wish I had bought some of the Puffala yarn they had at that booth... I bought a book with no pages inside of it and some gold coloured buttons and some blue closures from a booth that was selling thrifted items. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the book cover, but it was just so pretty I had to have it! I suppose I could try to glue in some pages and use it as a notebook.

The main reason I bought the copy of pompom was because it had a rather nice pattern for a crocheted cardigan in it called Anzen. It has a interesting yoke and it looks like a great piece for a crochet noob to start with. I've long since come to the conclusion that granny squares are not my thing (I just can't get them to look right), but I think this is simple enough that I won't screw it up too badly.