Craft Hunting in Berlin

Hi all,

A few short weeks ago I took the boy to Berlin for his birthday. It was a bit of a big one ('30') and I had spent a long time trying to figure out what might be his perfect holiday location with the following things I know and love about my boy: weird food, good beer, meat, Lego, action, zombies, comfy beds... you get the picture. Anywho, Berlin catered pretty well for all of these, and after a few flights to get there (sadly no longer flying direct from Newcastle!) we arrived and had an awesome 3 nights and 4 days there!

Berlin is a fantastic city, and the week before Christmas it was cold but beautiful, lit up with lots of Christmassy lights and hot gluhwein! Not an alterior motive, just taking advantage of our time in Berlin, we did a little bit of crafty shopping. I say 'we', he very generously allowed me to go have a little wander around the local area looking for a wool shop I'd seen mentioned in a magazine. 

So, finally getting to the point of today's blog post, to help out anyone else who is looking for some crafting fun times on a trip to Berlin. This is by no means everything, just what we managed to find! We were staying at the fantastical Michelberger Hotel, on the East side of Berlin, near the East Side Gallery - very much recommended for all who enjoy a good ol' hipster hotel!

These were my three favourite little places we found:

1.  Fabric shop on Simon Dach Strasse, nearest Metro Warschauer St. 

This was an awesome little shop - only very small but crammed with lovely patterned fabric of the kind I never see in craft shops near me, but am convinced would be incredibly popular! Lots of sweet animals and various different crazy images. There were also some lovely English speaking staff who had a long chat with me about how difficult it is to find good fabric containing images of dancing pink sparkly rabbits... Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. The shop was fairly small so no inside photos, but scroll down to see some of the lovely fabric I got, especially love the polar bears!

Shop front

2. Wollen, nearest metro Warschauer St.

This is the place I had read about and had gone to find when found the fabric shop, and many other fun things in between. It was pretty awesome, with a lovely range of wool in vibrant colours, which is what I always struggle to find. Very cool little shop, they also seem to run knitting classes, although being there such a short time and with a birthday boy, not really the order of the day. Bought some beautiful extra fine merino wool to make in to a very special gift for a very special friend. Not to be revealed for another 5 and a bit months...

Loved the tree!

Difficult to see here but there was a wool wrapped cord on the light, very  hip.

3. Bead shop Tukadu, nearest Metro was Hackescher Markt.

We found this place while following a trip advisor walking tour of graffiti and public art starting in Hackesher Markt via the trip advisor app - it worked very well and we saw some things I'd never seen before, and took us to the best gallery we have been to in ages!

Anyway, the bead shop was all kinds of awesome, again the kind of place I would love to live round the corner from. Everything arranged by colour, lots of different kinds of beads, sizes and styles so we were more than a bit overwhelmed. I ended up buying some blue and gold beads, inspired by how they were layed out in the shop and looking fantastic. The only thing that was a bit lacking was chains to make your jewellery with, and the woman running the place wasn't that helpful, but I still had lots of fun!

My little haul, the only thing that I bought that hasn't yet been 'actioned', anad is sitting beside me  now!

There you go, I've been fairly restrained with pictures, as we had many, many, many photos of the rest of the holiday, and so here are a sneaky two crafty related pictures before I say goodbye!

Goodbye!

Ali

xx