New Zealand Fibre Festival – The Journey (day 6)

Day six. The final half day of the show and our last day in the South Island. Again, there was a lot of interest in the loom and while I know in this little saga I have been sharing, I have been talking about the loom while revealing pretty much nothing, here is a little teaser which you can dissect and see if you can work out some of the things we have done!

Mary Hall of Hallblacks has an amazing story. She has told me much of it in detail (and I am going to coopt her into writing more out than I have space for here) but the overview is she has been contracted over the last two and a half years by a company called ‘Three foot seven’ to spin yarns that are to be used in costuming and set dressing for a little movie coming out this Christmas called “The Hobbit”. You may have heard of it… 🙂 From what she relayed, much of the spinning was completed using an Aura in combination with a Country Spinner (huge bobbins). She demonstrated the technique for a short while in the morning which was very cool as I am a big movie geek.

Being so busy on the stand, we barely got time to visit any of the displays in other areas of show. There were however some displays of fibre art in the foyer. I am fascinated by work with New Zealand Harakeke (flax) and I absolutely love felt work. Here are a couple of samples of each that artists had exhibited. Jill Gunn is the felt artist and Heather Baskiville-Robinson works with the Harakeke.

Today was to be just a morning trading session so we were able to pack up early ready to return to Picton to catch our late afternoon sailing. The Blenheim club had done a marvelous job of arranging an excellent venue, world class speakers and workshops, as well as making sure the festival was well publicized and entertaining for all. It is lovely to catch up with friends both old and new and to be in the company of so many creative people. Next year the festival will be in Wellington and promises to be a great event.

Meanwhile we arrived at the ferry terminal to find that our sailing was delayed, we suspect due to rough seas in Cook Strait. When we finally boarded the ferry considerably later than we expected, we found many very tired people. I walked around the decks around 9.30pm and it looked a bit like a prelude to a horror movie with bodies lying all over the floors. Fortunately in this case it was not the zombie apocalypse but rather people sleeping anywhere they could find a space.

It was nearly midnight before we arrived at Graham and Rosalie’s (Owen’s sister) for a welcome cup of tea and warm bed. The following night would see us back with our families which I was looking forward to very much.