It was noisy and crowded and quite good fun.

Yesterday I did my turn of duty at "the Show" as the annual agricultural and horticultural event of the year is known. There is a lot more to this event than farms and flowers of course. I was there as a representative of the knitting fraternity.
I went with another member of the guild who does amazing, weird and wonderful knitting and crochet with items she finds in the garden...care for a pair of sandals made from iris leaves anyone? She spent yesterday demonstrating hair-pin crochet with a homemade pin . The end result will be a bowl. It is different and different made more than one person take notice. Only two people had any idea what she was doing.
As we were aiming to show people something different I took along the latest shawl with the hedgehog forest of markers to help me keep my place. I did not get much done but that did not matter. There were talking points - the circular needle, the type of yarn, why I had "all those little bits of wool" in there, what shape it would be and so on.
I think we succeeded in most showing people something they had not seen before.
We had trouble finding our spot - the Convenor had failed to tell me it was inside the area where the quilts were displayed. When I looked in there to see if she was around there was a note on the table. "Gone to brunch. Please be quilt police. Back soon." Right.
I do not mind sitting surrounded by quilts...although knitting might be better. The quilts here are not the quilts that will appear at the Quilt and Craft Fair in November but they are still pleasant to look at. I will never understand the passion for cutting fabric merely to sew it together again, however beautiful the end result. It is not me. I do however appreciate the time and the talent involved in the best of the quilts.
The pavilion also housed, at various times in the day, the South Australian Police Band (world class reputation and invited to the Edinburgh Tattoo) and the Jenny Gillies Flowers parade - amazing handsewn costumes of colourful flowers and fruits. The latter are the over the top exaggerated art of the theatre. Their creator is a theatrical designer. The music was louder than I like and varied from Handel to Stevie Wonder. I prefer the former. It will be interesting to hear what my father makes of it today.
There were people of all shapes, sizes and ages. They were short. They were tall. They were casually dressed and not so casually dressed. Babies slept. Children consumed junk food. Some people stopped to observe items in the display cabinets, others moved past with barely a glance.
A group of young Muslim women spent a long time looking at the basketry. A woman with a notebook sketched something displayed in the embroidery section. A man went down on his hands and knees to look at the underside of a small table in the woodwork area.
I did not see the animals or the sideshows or the hall where they sell the "showbags" or the farm machinery. I really did not see anything apart from one small area but I also saw everything. Yes, people watching is fun.