The RDS Craft Fair is about trying to find something different - it's an antidote to the relentless blandness of high-street shopping, writes Rosita Boland.

On the day before the annual National Crafts and Design Fair opens at the RDS, the overwhelming sound in the exhibition hall is of vacuum cleaners. Some 450 stalls are in the process of being set up to display their goods, and there is a huge amount of detritus being generated. The crafts in the hall have been transported here from all around the country, and now the boxes, bags, newspapers, packing and bubble wrap they came in need to be tidied away before the arrival of the public the following day. So the vacuum cleaners are going full blast.

The Craft Fair is a welcome antidote to the relentless blandness of high-street shopping in Ireland. There is no pretentiousness about the RDS Exhibition Hall - it's an honest-to-God great big barn of a space, where you need to keep your coat on. No sweeping escalators or atriums or piped music, and no chain shops or mass production. Almost everything here is hand-made, with original designs, from mainly small producers, workshops and businesses all around Ireland. For the public, the Craft Fair is about trying to find something a bit different; things you don't see too often. It's also an opportunity to talk directly to the craftspeople, and ask them about how they go about making their craft.

On the balcony upstairs that runs around the perimeter of the hall, Beth and Martin Moran, from Clare Island, Co Mayo, are setting up their stall, Ballytoughey Loom. Beth makes everything. They supply a couple of shops and have their own space on Clare Island in the summer, but the big date in their calendar is the annual Craft Fair.

There are woollen hats, woven ties, scarves and children's dresses. By far the most eye-catching and covetous items in Beth's stall, though, are her hand-loomed throws. Some are pure silk, and some are mixes - half linen and alpaca, half merino and linen, half silk and alpaca.

They range from €220 to €270, in smoky blues with inventive subtle patterns to dark reds. Once I touch one of them, I have to touch them all, testing out the distinctive textures of the different fabric mixes. They're what the Craft Fair is all about - beautiful, original pieces of high quality that you won't find at every hole in the hedge.

It's pricey for exhibitors to come to the Craft Fair, though, especially if you factor in accommodation in Dublin and rent. Each stall-holder pays to rent a space, and the price depends on its location. Those downstairs on the main floor pay €1,400 for the five days, the balcony spaces are €1,000, and subsidised spaces for craft groups are €500.

"It's just about worth our while," Beth Moran says. They don't sell too many of their throws: most people go for the hats and scarves, which start at €15. "Some people do appreciate the work that has gone into what I make and others expect to get it for the same price you'd buy things for in Dunnes Home."

DOWN IN THE main concourse, Claire Austin from Belfast is setting up her ClaraB stall, the backwalls of which are draped with hot-pink fabric. Her parents, Marie and Lawrence, have come down with her to help set up. Austin, a textile maker, makes funky eye-catching bags which use bold colours and simple fabrics - denim, tweed, fleece. The striking colours - for example, black and white tweed teamed with pin-on felt rosettes of yellow - have a rather wonderful psychedelic effect. The bags range from €35 to €70 and there are also smaller, less elaborate ones for children.

As well as making the bags, she also makes the resin buttons that fasten them, and some resin-based jewellery. "I think it's the explosion of colour that draws people in," Austin says.

As well as all the craftwork, there is an ancillary food-based fair in the hall. One of the stall-holders here is the Cloon Goat Farm, who are based in Tyrone and have 600 goats. Ann and James Milligan are selling four different types of goats' cheese and - in December - four different types of goats' milk ice-cream, for €2 a scoop.

Last year, they sold out of their stock of raspberry, vanilla, mint-choc and honeycomb ice-cream before the last day, thus proving that the December shoppers don't let the fact it's winter get between them and a scoop of goat-based ice-cream.

Lorraine Lonergan, from Ballyjamesduff in Co Cavan, is at the fair under the umbrella of the Cavan-Monaghan enterprise rural development.

At her stall, Simply Slate, she is selling her slate-based jewellery. In the same way that wood turners use felled trees for their bowls and sculptures, Lonergan uses old slates from cottages in Cavan, and currently has a store from an old convent. Most are more than a century old. She cuts and slices the tiles into small pieces and uses them as a base for jewellery: torc-like necklaces, pendants and earrings. Her pieces range from €30 up to her show piece, a huge medieval-looking necklace at €250.

"I decorate them with Swarovski crystals and silver detail," she explains. "Nobody else that I know of is making jewellery from old slates. You could say it's historic."

While some stalls sell primarily high-priced pieces of work, others keep things small scale, such as Simply Special, selling only soap. The bars are all priced at €4, and although some of them come boxed in sets of four for €20, you'd wonder if stalls selling low-priced items like these can sell enough to make it worth their while to be here. Dubliner Pamela Hughes, who now has an outlet in Malahide Castle, starts making her Simply Special soaps for the fair in September. All the soaps are made from natural glycerine. Her top seller is Skellig Lavender, but it's the Celtic Summer that I pick up first - a clean, sharp scent of grapefruit, lime and lemongrass. Hughes is reluctant to divulge how many bars of soap she has brought to sell. "My competitors are here," she whispers. "I don't want them to know."

THERE ARE hundreds of stalls here, and from doing a circuit of the hall and balcony several times, there are a few clear areas of craft and design which have many more stall-holders than others. Knitwear, pottery and jewellery are well-represented. There are scores of all of these. There are also photographs, paintings, children's clothes, mirrors, ceramics, candles, toys, leather bags, Christmas decorations, wood-turning goods and lots of food stalls.

One particularly eye-catching and unusual stall is Jack Kearney's Lamps. These lamp bases are glass, made in approximate shapes of various Irish lighthouses, and entirely filled with shells. The result is remarkably striking and evocative.

There are also, inevitably, some stalls selling dire things but there are far less of these than there used to be in the past. There is, however, still the ever-enduring complement of fussy pottery in lurid colours, shapeless knitwear and dreadful art. But if they're paying hundreds of euro to rent their stalls, well - someone must be buying this stuff.

The National Crafts and Design Fair runs at the RDS until Sun. Opening hours, 10am-10pm today and 10am to 7pm Sat and Sun. Entrance is €10