The chronicles of Erica, a textile and mixed media artist living in Sydney, Australia, as she meanders her way through a life filled with fabric, clay, paper, glass and dolls ..... and dragons
Another beautiful clear sunny winter weekend, and we were off to the Winterfest Medieval Fair at Parramatta Park, in Sydney's west.
I love these fairs, if I were just a smidgeon younger I'd have my flowing gowns with a sword swashbuckled to my belt, but being of more mature years I'm content to go along and watch.
The re-enactors take their hobby very seriously (well, don't we all)
Days of practice fights, the armor and costumes are very genuine and the swords very real.
Aren't these outfits great!
and great accommodation:
and fabulous birds:
and of course you need an 'orse:
and clever fights:
with the winner receiving a rousing cheer from the onlookers:
and we can't forget the villain in the stocks, being hit with wet sponges:
There were some people selling resin dragons but not as spectacular as this hanging:
Would I get away with presenting this for the dragon of the week?? ...hmmm probably not....
On a very sunny, clear, brilliant blue sky and cold winter Saturday we went to the annual Winter Magic solstice festival at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney.
The first of these festivals we attended was in 2006 and we've gone each year since but I felt maybe this year was not as good as others, the variety wasn't there in the parade even though you could tell those taking part had put a lot of effort into it.
This year also the crowd seemed thicker than ever, which I wouldn't have thought possible and we had trouble finding a good spot to take photos.
Maybe that's part of the problem, I want to see everything through the camera lens, *IF* we go next year I might just leave the camera at home.
The traffic also didn't help, roadworks have been going on for the last goodness knows how many years on the highway leading into Katoomba, and the railways decided to choose this Saturday to do trackwork on the main line. It took our family 3 hours travelling from the central coast to meet us up there.
Being the year of the dragon, the organisers used the dragon as their theme. Shops had dragon art work in their windows, a big Asian dragon sat on top of the Carrington Hotel and lots of dragons in the parade.
As we were starting to wind our way back down the hill I spotted one of the craft stalls I've been buying from for the past 6 years.
Rod and Eryn Barnett live in Victoria and travel to Sydney each year for the festival.
Rod sculpts fantasy characters which they then cast in ...something heavy... and Eryn colours them.
You can see their work at Wee Folk Garden Art
I have about six of their sculptures and this year I came home with Angus the hatchling.
Angus is resting after
having just broken out of his tough dragon egg shell.
Meanwhile back at the parade:
lots of bands and drums:
lots of dancers:
lots of large furry creatures mauling small children:
We met the family in town and went to the Mythic Creatures exhibition at the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. It was difficult to photograph because they'd used lots of 'mood' lighting, my flash washed out the objects and to take them without a flash I needed a tripod, so these aren't the best. I loved the exhibition, would have liked to have taken home the huge model of the dragon, but we settled for some tiny ones from the museum shop instead.
This last one you might not recognise, it's Chupacabra
Outside we had a look at the replica of Captain Cook's Endeavour
There are more photos from the museum on Flickr, click any of these to get to the set.
My drawing that night was dragon inspired.
Husband and son went fishing next day, so the next two were a bit fishy
Last weekend we headed up to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, for the annual winter solstice festival. Previous years have had good clear sunny winter days, but this year it was bleak, grey, foggy and the rain kept up all day in light splashes.
It was looking very bleak as we reached the outskirts of town:
but it didn't stop the crowds, Katoomba Street was packed:
The Fashion Police were writing tickets for anyone dressed in beige:
The Grand Parade was interesting as always, lots of characters and colours
and bellydancers who didn't look the slightest bit cold
and zombies (there was to be a Zombie Ball that night)
and very cool steampunk
and a very sweet Mad Hatter serving coffee
and this is Bandit in her dragon costume: I've met up with Bandit over the last three years of festivals, in her outfits, unfortunately her owner thinks this may be her last year as she has leukemia and is not responding to treatment, she is such a lovely patient dog.
There were several local issue groups, one protesting the closure of Katoomba Hospital - the maternity ward has already been closed then re-opened from public pressure then closed again, nearest hospital is Nepean, which is a 45 minute drive away (that's on a good day, with no accidents on the one road out of town which can tie up traffic for hours)
Another issue that we learnt about during the parade was the plan by a developer to install two koalas in a BASEMENT room at the Echo Point tourist centre for photographic and petting opportunities: I'm going to make another post just about this, it is appalling treatment of our native animals
After the parade, we wandered up and down the street stalls, then headed off home pleased to be leaving the cold wet mountains behind:
