Selling crochet at a Christmas craft fair (UK)

Pitch fees at six UK Christmas fairs in 2026

We opened the stallholder pages of six fairs running between 15 November and 20 December 2026. The cheapest was CCC Craftfairs at Woburn Village Hall: £30 with a 6ft table or £27 if you bring your own, though both of its November and December dates were already marked fully booked. The dearest was Brancepeth Castle near Durham, where indoor spaces for the three-day fair run from £210 to £370, or £230 to £400 with a table.

What the fee covers varies as much as the price. Peterborough Cathedral’s £150 indoor single pitch includes a 6ft table, while its £100 outside pitch is ground space only, with no power, cover, chair or table. Godalming’s street pitches are 3m × 3m with no cover and no electricity. Several fees carry extras: Peterborough adds a booking fee it doesn’t state, and Bat & Ball charges £5 a day for a trestle table.

What organisers and makers say sells

We found no UK survey of what crochet sells at Christmas fairs, so we haven’t written one. What organisers do say is what they want on their tables. Brancepeth Castle’s listing says it is looking for “unique/unusal crafts, especially those that are more traditional such as leather, textiles and basketry”, and not resin, wax melts, 3D prints or imported or assembled goods. Its own stallholder page notes more competition for jewellery, cards and photography, and asks for your own work only.

Others ask for variety. CCC Craftfairs aims for “a wide variety of crafts, with no one craft dominating”, and Redbourn says it may refuse a booking if there are already plenty of similar stalls. Before applying, it is worth asking an organiser how many other crochet or knitting stalls are booked.

For online demand, eRank, a third-party Etsy research tool, ranked “christmas” 2nd, “gift” 4th and “crochet” 5th among UK Etsy searches for September 2026, with “gift” up from 42nd the month before. That measures searches, not sales, and “crochet” includes people looking for patterns rather than finished items.

Stock: how many items from how many balls

Plan stock from the yarn each item uses, then round each yarn and colour up to whole balls. The per-item figures below come from our quick Christmas gifts and crochet hat guides, which compile designers’ stated quantities, and from Handy Little Me’s pattern pages, opened 1 November 2026, and Moogly’s, read from Wayback Machine copies dated January and February 2026. Ball lengths and prices are LoveCrafts’, checked the same day.

Small items are where one ball goes furthest, but watch the edges. Moogly’s Peppermint Candy ornament takes 8 yards, about 7.3 m, split 4 yards of red and 4 of white, so one 144 m ball of Special Chunky in each colour covers 39. Moogly’s Broadway ear warmer takes up to 35 yards, about 32 m, of super chunky; a 60 m ball of Paintbox Simply Super Chunky covers one, with 28 m left, so six need four balls only if you join in the leftovers. Dora Does’ Festive Crochet Friends use three colours and the pattern gives only the total, 30 to 40 m, so we planned six, which fit in one ball of each colour whatever the split. Handy Little Me’s candy cane dishcloth uses 30 to 35 g of each of two colours, so six cloths need five 50 g balls of each colour.

The time adds up faster than the yarn. In our sample plan of 62 items, the yarn costs £57.81 in whole balls, and the making takes about 52 hours at the designers’ stated times plus our placeholders where none is given. That is before weaving in ends across a batch, labels and packing.

• Yarn per gift for 27 Christmas patterns
• Total each colour across a batch, rounded to whole balls

Prices for six quick items

These prices use the price calculator’s formula: yarn plus hours at £12.71, divided by (1 − 1.69%) for SumUp’s pay-as-you-go card fee, rounded up to the next pound. £12.71 is the National Living Wage for those aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026; it is our chosen reference, not a rule for self-employed sales. Yarn is charged only for the metres or grams used.

Three times are the designers’ own. For the other three no designer time was available to us, so we used placeholders, labelled in the table; replace them with your own timings. The results show where the money is: the yarn in a gift card holder costs 18p, and the hour costs £12.71. If a £14 gift card holder won’t sell at your fair, the calculator’s “try a price” box shows what a lower price pays you per hour.

Spreading the pitch fee

The pitch fee is a cost of the day, not of one item. Divide it by the number of items you realistically expect to sell, and add that to each price, or enter it as an overhead percentage in the calculator. A £150 Peterborough single pitch adds £6.00 an item if you sell 25 things, or £3.00 if you sell 50. A one-day Bat & Ball pitch with a hired table, £35, adds £1.40 an item over 25 sales.

Add travel and parking to the same sum if they apply. A cheaper hall fair with fewer visitors can leave you better off than a famous venue, but no organiser page we opened gave visitor numbers, so ask before booking.

Taking card payments

SumUp’s UK pay-as-you-go plan charges 1.69% per in-person card payment with no monthly fee, and its Solo Lite reader is £25 before VAT. Zettle charges 1.75%, with a first reader at £29 before VAT. Square’s free plan charges 1.75% for UK cards, and its reader is £19 before VAT. On a £10 sale those fees are 17p to 18p.

Readers need a phone signal or Wi-Fi to work. It is worth checking the signal at the venue before relying on one. Brancepeth Castle includes Wi-Fi for stallholders; Godalming provides no electricity, so charge your reader and phone before you go.

Insurance and toy safety

Three of the six fairs’ pages ask for public liability insurance. CCC Craftfairs and Redbourn want a copy of your certificate with the application, and Redbourn also asks for a completed risk assessment. Brancepeth requires public liability cover that includes “Work Away”. None of the six gives an amount; Lichfield’s Christmas Fayre page, which we didn’t use for fees, states a minimum of £5 million, but the same page lists its fees as to be confirmed and mixes 2026 and 2027 dates. Peterborough and Godalming refer to terms in PDFs we did not open; Bat & Ball’s page doesn’t mention insurance.

If you sell amigurumi or anything a child might play with, read the GOV.UK guidance on the Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011 for Great Britain, last updated 24 March 2025. It covers toys “designed or intended (whether or not exclusively) for use in play by children under 14 years old”, sold in the course of a commercial activity. Manufacturers must carry out a safety assessment, keep technical documentation for 10 years, apply the UKCA or CE marking and show a name and contact address.

• GOV.UK: Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011, Great Britain

Our sources and method

Fair details are from organisers’ own stallholder pages, plus Brancepeth’s listing on Stall & Craft Collective, all opened on 1 November 2026; dates and fees can change, and several fairs were full or closed to applications. Card fees are from SumUp’s, Zettle’s and Square’s UK pricing pages, the same day. eRank’s ranking is from its September 2026 UK keyword report.

Yarn per item is from our earlier guides and the pattern pages named; prices are LoveCrafts single balls, checked 1 November 2026. Prices, stock totals and hours are our arithmetic, at a rate we chose. We haven’t made, timed or sold these items ourselves.

• Pricing for Etsy and online, tax and pattern terms
• When to order yarn for Christmas from UK shops

Common questions

Sources and scope

• ccc-craftfairs.co.uk/booking-form/
• ccc-craftfairs.co.uk/
• ccc-craftfairs.co.uk/stallholder-info/
• www.haywards-batandball.co.uk/christmasfair2026
• godalming-tc.gov.uk/christmas-festival-stallholders-2026/
• redbournchristmasmarket.com/stallholders/
• peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/event/christmas-craft-gift-market-stallholder-application/
• brancepethcastle.uk/information-for-stallholders
• www.stallandcraftcollective.co.uk/brancepeth-castle-christmas-craft-fair-2026-52393-event
• lichfieldchamber.org.uk/lichfield-christmas-fayre/
• help.erank.com/blog/trend-report/the-uks-top-etsy-keywords-latest-updates
• www.sumup.com/en-gb/pricing/
• www.sumup.com/en-gb/card-readers/
• www.zettle.com/gb/pricing
• squareup.com/gb/en/pricing
• www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
• www.gov.uk/government/publications/toys-safety-regulations-2011/toys-safety-regulations-2011-great-britain
• doradoes.co.uk/portfolio/festive-crochet-friends-christmas-decoration-pattern/
• doradoes.co.uk/portfolio/my-brothers-beanie/
• www.handylittleme.com/crochet-gift-card-holder-pattern/
• www.handylittleme.com/candy-cane-crochet-dishcloth/
• web.archive.org/web/20260106233244/https://www.mooglyblog.com/broadway-earwarmer/
• web.archive.org/web/20260201223954/https://www.mooglyblog.com/crochet-peppermint-candy-ornament/
• www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/products/paintbox-yarns-simply-super-chunky

Organiser, card reader and pattern pages were opened on 1 November 2026, except Moogly’s pattern pages, read from Wayback Machine copies dated 6 January and 1 February 2026. Festive Crochet Friends’ and My Brother’s Beanie’s quantities, first compiled in our quick Christmas gifts guide, were re-checked on Dora Does’ pages on 1 November 2026. Yarn prices are LoveCrafts single balls checked 1 November 2026. Check each fair’s current terms before booking. Label facts come from the linked references; worked purchase examples and arithmetic are our own illustrations. Original pattern and product names retain their source spelling.