Treasure and The Festival of Light

Hello Wonderful People, how are you all? It has been a busy old time in the Patch house, hence the long gap between posts, but only one week of term left so the end is in sight. There have been a few high points recently though. One was receiving a very special package last week. Amongst all the pre-Christmas Amazon parcels I got one that was just for me. Want to see what was in it??

This was from the lovely Avis over at Oh Sew Tempting. I had won it in her giveaway! Avis is my patchwork guru. She does beautiful work and she explains it ever so clearly in her tutorials. Hop over to her blog and have a look if you haven’t been already. I love the hedgehog fabric in particular, also the dog fabric,  but they are all fantastic…. ooooooo getting itchy sewing fingers. Thank you very much for my treasures Avis, I will endeavour to put them to good use 😀

My other highlight this week was exactly that… light! Last Saturday, once small boys were safely tucked up and with trusty baby sitter, Mr P and myself went off into Huddersfield to meet Big Little Bro and his girlfriend at The Festival of Light. This is an annual event that brings street theatre, music and art to the town centre. There are a wide variety of street entertainers, live bands, art installations, a food and drink market, and an art market. Mr P and I have a bit of a history with street entertainment… we first got together at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (lots of street entertainment there) and have found street entertainment everywhere we have lived since. Despite having lived up here for more than two years now we hadn’t made it to this festival before so this was a real treat for us.

We had a bit of a trial getting there as our taxi was very late and we thought we were going to miss the headline act… “Walk to the Stars” – some high wire artists. We did arrive just in time but unfortunately they did not perform due to bad weather conditions. So we found Big Little Bro and went off to find other things to watch.

The first were some Spanish “hairdressers” called Osadia. Who would have thought watching hairdressing could be so much fun?? Don’t worry it wasn’t just normal hairdressing…. I guess you could call it extreme hairdressing…

That little girl was loving it, lots of big smiles on her face. When she was finished she was adorned with a miniature tea cup and saucer in her hair. I spoke to her and her mum afterwards to check she was going to go to school like that on Monday – she was 😀 The next person to be chosen from the crowd was a bald man!! He didn’t look quite as excited and pleased by it all as the little girl had but he was a good sport – I think it was the pink glitter that was putting him off!!

Next we walked over to see Horns of Fire – this is a square which had lots of metalwork installed with lots of candles lit on them. Very pretty.

While we were there we met a very special person wandering around…

This is Dundu. If you look closely you can see his many puppeteers behind him. He came along the path towards us then crouched and jumped, swinging himself around a lamp post and right over Mr P’s head. Sadly my camera wasn’t quite quick enough to catch it. Amazing puppetry… I love puppets.

After this we were feeling a bit peckish so we went to sample the delights of the food and drink market. I had some yummy chick pea and potato curry but samosas, beef stew, bratwurst, garlic butter waffles and waffles with chocolate and cream were also sampled. Whilst munching our goodies we watched a few street entertainers – The Giant Seagulls, The Dinnerladies and these ladies too…

Doris, Mary and Marge make up Granny Turismo and they ride souped up shopping trolleys and perform dance sequences on them. After that it was time for a few glasses of something cheerful.

All in all it was a very bizarre but highly entertaining evening. Not bad for a free festival and if you are ever nearby when it is on I would highly recommend it. Think we might go earlier next year and take some small boys with us.

Right, I’m off to pick up my crochet… not done any all week as I have been too worn out! I’m getting withdrawal symptoms!!! Enjoy whats left of your evening.