the scarf festival...

You may remember me alluding to the scarf festival in an earlier post, if you don't that's ok, you probably didn't miss much. But we are seemingly in the thick of festival season here.  On Sunday I convinced the little family to go along to the Scarf Festival with me (not that Toby took any convincing, he'll go anywhere mummy goes, my little acolyte :))  Lily was very excited and dressed in her black rainbow dress for the occasion, sweet little child that she is.  

I should preface here that the Scarf Festival isn't really a festival as such; there's workshops and a scarf exhibition, but no real other festivally stuff... I perhaps should have explained better to Lily what it was before arriving though.

Anyway, we arrived at the Wool Museum for the Scarf Exhibition, Lily rushed into the display and oohed and ahhed and then called me over, "Mum, I've found the one I want to wear."  

Not fun, is explaining to a four year old in the middle of an art exhibition that part of the Scarf Festival is not selecting one of the scarves to wear for the occasion. That no, the scarves are for looking at not for wearing.  Fair enough was her response, "oh, a Scarf Festival's not much fun! This is not what I wanted it to be like" :(

Somehow we managed to jolly her through the rest of the time there and she did enjoy it.  There were some awesome works on display.  And we loved the Transformation corner; a corner in the exhibition where you could sit and relax on a couple of couches and have a go at knitting, weaving, braiding and a few other yarnie crafts.  The irony of finding a few balls of acrylic and god forbid, feathers yarn, in the yarn basket in the Wool Museum was not lost on us!!!   

Lily's favourite part of the whole museum was the replica of the mill worker's cottage. She took it over as if it was her own house, sweeping the floor and pottering around in the kitchen and greeted anyone who came into it, offering them a cup of tea and introducing herself... I'm really not sure when she became such a forward little girl.  

The following day Lily decided to have her own Scarf Festival, as she thought it should be done.  Firstly, the guests (Andy and I) were welcomed and handed a little brochure with pictures of the festival's activities (dancing, singing and music ~ for those festival organisers who aren't sure what a festival entails)  and a map on it.

We were then shown the scarf exhibition and asked to select a scarf to wear (with a little bit of guidance from the festival director)

And then we all joined in the singing, dancing and music until lunchtime! So much fun!