The Guild’s demonstration Kinokuniya Craft Fair was a great success. This bookshop has an excellent craft section and attracts a young clientele. It has an excellent craft section and, for the Craft Fair, was offering a 20% discount on all craft books. As a result, we found ourselves demonstrating to a young, enthusiastic audience of both craft and book lovers.
Other groups demonstrating included the Knitters Guild and the Embroiderers Guild, as well as a number of crafts people selling their wares.
We were somewhat limited in space, having only one table, but managed to set up two inkle looms, to make room for my wheel next to the table and to knit and make braids.
There were a number of families with children in the store and Diana and the other ladies from the Braids Group guided the children in making their own friendship bracelets. This was very popular as it is interactive and the children were able to take home a piece of work that they had completed.
The spinning wheel attracted a great deal of attention, from children who had heard about them in stories, to a third year university student who wanted to know where Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger and a surprising number of men, who were no doubt interested in the mechanics of the wheel.
We had some interest from people who wanted to join our Fibre Friends email list to hear more about what the Guild is doing, including a final year Industrial Design student who is keen to learn spinning and weaving, but who cannot do so this year because of the workload at uni.
A young member of the Knitters Guild (who is also a member of our Guild) told me that she started a fibre arts group at Macquarie University (where she is a student) with twenty friends, and that, after demonstrating knitting and fibre arts at Orientation Week, the numbers have grown to 57. The interest in fibre arts seems to be there in the younger generation, it seems to be a matter of finding the best forum to reach out to them.
