Reading, England

The best thing about living in Reading, for me, is that I live in between the town centre and the countryside. This means i can get into town in a half-hour’s bus drive, but I can also cycle into the countryside within about 15 minutes.

View Reading City Guide in a larger map

Shop

I usually buy my craft supplies from Hobbycraft, FabricLand, John Lewis and sometimes The Works. Hobbycraft has a brilliant all-round range for nearly all crafts (and it’s right next to a McDonald’s, so that adds bonus points!). They also have an especially good selection of ribbons. FabricLand is probably the place I visit most often because it’s cheap and cheerful, and the wide range of fabrics and dress patterns that they sell is great for practising how to make garments or for if you just want to browse for paper patterns. John Lewis’ haberdashery department is the place I like to go to as well because the layout is lovely and they have a very wide range of materials and accessories (sometimes if I’m buying bag fabric I go to the Upholstery and Curtain material section because it’s cheaper and more robust).

Be Inspired

The town centre is nice because there are a few parks near it – the most well-known one is Forbury Gardens which is near the Reading Abbey. It also has the Maiwand Lion which is a war memorial for the soldiers who died between 1878 and 1880 in Afghanistan.

The thing that most tourists get a photo with is the Forbury Lion – it would be a good one to put in your scrapbook! Also in Forbury Gardens there are ruins of reading Abbey which are hopefully going to be opened up to the public soon.

Eat & Drink

McDonald’s! I go there nearly as much as I go to FabricLand (which is nearly every time I go into town) :/ Cosmo is also an awesome place to go because they have an unlimited selection of food and dessert....and of course Greggs is the standard place to go for lunch for me.

Craft

I usually craft at home, I don’t think I’ve ever done any craft in town, but I would imagine that if you want to knit or crochet etc then sitting in Forbury Gardens on one of the benches would be nice because it’s a really lovely park to sit in (and it’s usually quiet too).

There is a place called Harris Arcade which is a group of shops inside a big, hidden corridor of shops, it’s near the train station. There are several creative businesses that run inside Harris Arcade – like a hat shop, a tattoo parlour and a business called Creative Crafts. This business is owned by a group of people who each have their own business in making crafts, and they sell their things in the shop all together.