The Cavalcade

A few more pics from my travels before it all becomes ancient history.  On Saturday 2 March the annual Otago Goldfields Cavalcade converged on Tapanui from eight different trails. They end up at a different Otago location each year.  Some came with heavy waggons, some light waggons, some riding and some walking.  We saw the Grand Parade and here are a few of my favourite photos.

Other entertainment included -- believe it or not -- dancing tractors. Four large (men) and 4 small (ladies), painted red and polished for the occasion performed a square dance to the instructions of a caller -- all correct down to the last do-si-do.  The photos don't do it justice of course; you would need a movie for that (forgot I could take a movie on my camera.) How they did it without locking wheels in the tight circles I don't know.

The ladies take a bow. It really was impressive.  The drivers' costumes could do with a bit of improvement but the execution was superb.  TV1 was filming so I hope it turns up sometime on the screen.

More about my travels

After the PWN Seminar I drove south, making a few visits around the old stamping ground on the way, and ended up with Mary and Bill at Mosswood, Tapanui.  I don't know how or where the time went there; it was complete relaxation after the hustle and bustle of the previous days and weeks. I parked my car under the spreading tree by the corner of the garden the turkeys like to scratch in and blobbed out. I realised when I was checking my photos that I didn't take one of Mary, or of Charlie (bird), or of the turkeys with their 16 half grown chicks.  I must have been tired!  I did catch up on some people though and here they are.

Bill was taking me to see Bridget milk the cows but had a flat tyre to deal with first.

You can tell Bridget loves her job!  I forgot to ask how many cows she milks twice a day but the flash new rotary shed takes 54 at a time.

Not quite 2 months old but Madison goes to work in the cowshed where she has her own nursery!

Nic is 'the Boss . . . Neville is 'the Boy'

That will do for now.

Some catching up to do

There has been a bit of water under the bridge since my last post . . . and a lot of miles travelled.  Weaving-wise I finished a number of linen table runners and took those with me on my next road trip and did almost all of the hemstitching while I was away. 

Part of the trip was to the PWN annual seminar, held this year at a youth camp site at Raincliff, not far from Geraldine.  Here I am at show and tell time with one of my linen runners.  One of the seminar sessions was about photographing our work. I didn't spend nearly enough time or attention on it but did manage to get a clear close-up of my linen.

One of the highlights of the weekend was a visit to the home of Maggie Sewell of Adobe Alpacas. It was neat to meet some of her animals . . . all individually named.

But even better to be allowed into her yarn store!

Almost everyone queued up to buy and we all left clutching bags of beautiful loot.

The best part of these seminars is meeting up with friends and colleagues who all talk the same language . . . plus having our meals provided. In this case the quality and quantity were delicious and generous.

Wil looks as though he is giving thanks on behalf of all of us.