Thursday, August 14, 2008

Festie fever






Having just returned from a very wet Northern Green Gathering, I thought I would devote this monthly post (hmmm, must try harder...) to a description of the fun and frolics the Bolton Knitting Noras have enjoyed while on a tour of some festivals of ye olde England.

In March Lisa devised a cunning plan to get local women knitting a knitted garden. The knitted garden was duly put together for International Women's Day and has been displayed in Bolton since then.

In around May she further decided that the garden should be promoted to a "knitted landscape" and we should go on tour with it to festivals in the summer, teaching people to knit and crochet as we go.

Hoorah for Lisa!

Our first festival was the Larmer Tree Festival in July, set in the gorgeous Victorian landscaped gardens of that title in Wiltshire. We set up our gazebo in the Water Garden on Thursday and were busy throughout the weekend teaching the world, his wife and his kids to knit and crochet.

As we were only in action until 5pm, we had plenty of time to enjoy the wonderful world and roots music on offer and also the shops and fantastic food (to say nothing of the nice cool lager).

Our second festival was the Northern Green Gathering which was a very different kettle of fish. It was very much a festival as it should be / used to be - recycling was the name of the game and the organisers did it properly, with compost loos, designated places to put your rubbish and a nice chap called Compost John touring the site inviting contributions of food waste. The Larmer Tree Festival, like many festivals I guess, said they were green but it was really just lip service - there wasn't even anywhere to recycle the plastic cups they used in the bar.

That said, I really enjoyed the Larmer Tree Festival more, mainly because the weather was pretty good but also there was always some interesting artiste or band to go and see. The entertainment at the Northern Green Gathering didn't really get going until early evening and until then you just hung about "chilling" - not easy to do in heavy rain and gale force wind!

Our knitting workshops went swimmingly well on Thursday and Friday but on Saturday we closed to the public due to everything getting wet in the gazebo. And on Sunday the gazebo blew down so that was the end of that.

Ironically, the weather improved on Sunday afternoon so I enjoyed roaming the site which I hadn't felt inclined to do before and I also indulged in a spot of hawthorn brandy from the charming witches.

The Knitting Noras are on the road again on 22 August, going to Solfest in Cumbria - sans me though as I am going to see my family in London.