Craft Fair

Among the fiddly porcelain, shelves of teapots, and precariously balanced jewelery there was not a great deal of room for a video camera and a tripod, but last weekend Benjamin and I ploughed in regardless. We were very much in the way.

Benjamin was filming one of his interviewees for a project at Hereford Craft Fair. The interviewee was a potter named Jewels, who makes tiny sea-inspired pottery sets after just doing an evening class at the local college. Late learning is in the family – her 75-year-old mother is studying for a PhD in older people's attitudes to death. She sounds fascinating – I'd love to meet her.

As I hate being in the way above all things, I drifted around with the crowd, taking photographs and chatting to some of the stall holders. It was surprisingly busy. It's amazing and brilliant that the most popular designs were the simplest and the most old fashioned, and that people were still snapping them up despite the modern age of austerity, and the availability of cheap china from the east, and Ikea.

I got talking to a potter who looked more like a 1960s bank manager than an artist. He had in fact spent the 1960s studying pottery, which he left for large scale manufacturing. He only came back to potting a few years ago, and had just sold an entire £1,500 dinner set on commission: 'The woman who bought it didn't even blink at the price', he told me.

This weekend, in the middle of another fruitless Bristol shopping trip, I cheered myself up with this fantastically long wool scarf from Zara. I love how thick the wool is, and how many times I can wrap it around. If you add a topknot (my hair's default setting at the moment) it is a really satisfying one too.

Scarf: Zara
Cardigan: H&M
Skirt: Zara
Boots & Bag: Vintage