New Zealand Fibre Festival – The Journey (day 5)

The Saturday – day 5 of our journey was the final full day of trading at the Fibre Festival

Our motel was within walking distance of the venue so we decided to walk as we had no loads to take with us. Our route took us through a pretty little garden area, Seymour Square which had an attractive fountain that was lit up at night. We were interested to see the stone tower in the garden fenced off with warnings about earthquake risk. The Christchurch earthquake is very much still in people’s minds down here and fills the newspaper with rebuilding information as well as the continuing demolition. This barrier was a very graphic reminder of the realities of earthquake risk in the South Island.

Today we were treated to a visit by the lovely Karen Severn who is president of a large club in NSW Australia. Karen is very experienced with wool combing and spent some time on our stand demonstrating this. Our own former national president and good friend, Pat Old also stopped by and showed her skill with the stylus. It is always great to have experts who are willing to help in this way and the many people who stopped to listen appeared to enjoy sharing in their knowledge.

Karen Selk from Canada was a keynote speaker over the festival and I popped out to listen to her speak about textiles in India and other nearby countries.. Her slide show photos were excellent and I felt very inspired to visit India again.It was very interesting and good to have the opportunity to participate in at least some of the activities on offer. Karen was sponsored to NZ by Ashford Handicrafts and we thank Richard and Elizabeth and the team at Ashford for bringing such a high profile person out to educate us all.

We had a little drama later in the evening where there was a punch up on the street outside our motel between two groups of … passionate 🙂 … local guys. The police turned up with several vehicles and helped them work out their differences.