Whew, I am exhausted! I have had a wonderful and inspiring day out today at Art In Action. If anyone is interested it is on til Sunday and I would really recommend it. There are a collection of marquees full of artists and crafts people, exhibiting, selling and demonstrating their work. It is wonderful to see so much interesting and inspiring stuff, and even better to see how it is made, and to have the opportunity to talk to the artists about their work. There wasn’t any knitting in the demonstration tents but there were several knitwear stalls (both hand and machine) in the market (the market tent contains people who are only selling, not demonstrating). I did see some lovely fine silk weaving by Alpa Mistry:

I saw a glass vase being blown by Kathryn Pearce:

I saw (and heard!) a Mexican band outside the Mexican art tent:

I saw some of the amazing wood turning by Stuart Mortimer:

I saw a glass goblet being made by E & M Glass:

And lots and lots more.

The food is pretty excellent too. I was hoping to try some more of their home made cake (I had some last year and it was very good), but unfortunately couldn’t squeeze it in after the cumberland sausage, the Belgian waffle with strawberries and cream, and the toffee ice cream 🙂

The only downside was that it was very busy. The weather was better than last year when it drizzled, and the year before when it was so wet they had to tow people out of the muddy car parking field. This year the weather was kind enough to hold off with the rain until this evening (it is making up for it now, we have even had lightning!). The number of people though is a personal gripe, I am just not that happy in crowds, I find it rather tiring. I hope that all the people will have made it a success for all the artists.

This is another thing I like about Art in Action, that each artists work is really valued. Proper prices are put on the things for sale, reflecting the amount of creativity and  hard work that goes into each piece. And the members of the public all understand this too. There is none of the devaluing that one often sees with craft pieces. It can be heart breaking to see someone’s beautiful piece priced up at less than the cost of the materials, in a mistaken belief that it needs to compete pricewise with mass produced machine made items. I feel this is a rant I could go on for some time about, but it is getting late and I could do with some sleep, so I will spare you now 🙂

I did manage to do a bit of spinning when I came home, and finished the current lingerie bag of fibre.

Somewhat depressingly I worked out that at my current speed I will probably take another 3 1/2 weeks to finish the white Dorset. Time to crack the whip a bit harder I think.