Not so succesfully supporting local crafters

The Cape Craft and Design Institute held a little Christmas market yesterday which I attended with high hopes of picking out fabulous crafty gifts. The whole event was a little disappointing, though. With hindsight I guess crafters who're good enough and savvy enough to market themselves independently don't need this kind of engineered opportunity, so possibly I was only seeing crafters who are just getting started or still need support of various kinds. But if that's the case, the support they're getting isn't good enough. Take these handprinted T-shirts, into which somebody had clearly put an awful lot of time and effort:

I really, really liked the prints, but when I tried them on the shirts themselves were all wrong. Badly cut and constructed, too low in the neck, cheap fabric -- and when I checked the labels I discovered "Made in Myanmar". So that would be a no, then. If the shirts had been better I'd happily have paid twice the ridiculously low -- and probably unsustainable -- price being asked.

My favourite thing on the market was these aprons made by Vukani Bafazi Silkscreen Printing in Crossroads:


The colours are fabulous, but the construction not always ideal and the drawings maybe just on the wrong side of the line between naive and crude. I did bring this beauty home though:

And yes, I am going to keep it for myself.