"What are you

making?" "How do you do that?" "Is that crochet?" "That person's knitting." "Hey, look at this?" "My grandma did that." "My nana made me one of those."
Oh yes, yesterday was spent at our Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society Show. The Senior Cat was determined to go.
As I am a Steward I get free entry on one day for myself and for someone else - and of course the someone else has to be the Senior Cat.
He loves people watching. He took his walker, the one with the seat, so he could prowl around and sit when tired.
A friend came with us. She and I were on duty in the craft demonstration area. We left the Senior Cat outside that hall and he went straight off to look at animals and working displays.
Friend and I went into the hall and set ourselves up in an area which displays quilts. People were already wandering in and out. Yes, we can tell them something about the quilts and how they were made. I have never made a quilt but I have read a good deal about them and I have used quilt block patterns in knitting. The friend I was with is an experienced quilt maker. She designs her own these days.
We had the usual flow of comments and interest in what we doing and we also had some poignant moments.
We had a father come in with his two adopted children. We knew they had to be adopted because he was Anglo-Saxon and they were Chinese-Vietnamese. The little boy was in a wheelchair. The girl was interested in the quilts. She said she could sew and had made a small quilt and wanted to make another. The little boy was in awe of the model of Milan Cathedral. His father and I told him he would be able to make something like that one day if he wanted to do it. I showed him a pen the Senior Cat had made and his father said, "You will soon be able to do something like that." They work together in the shed at home. In the orphanage in Vietnam he might just be sitting.
There were four young men who wandered in at one point. They looked shyly around. We smiled at them wondering what they were doing there. It was fairly obvious they were not quilters. They looked and then they sat down at the demonstration table and, in careful English, they asked some questions. "My grandmother made," one of them told us.
We talked a bit more. Three of them came from Afghanistan and one came from Somalia. They were here to learn English. They had been given tickets to enter the Showgrounds and they were feeling overwhelmed by the sights and sounds surrounding them. The demonstration area was quieter - and we had smiled at them.
And we had some light relief too. The Senior Steward came back from her meeting and could not find her phone anywhere. Lost! Two people tried ringing the number to see if we could hear it. No.
She went off saying she was going to Lost Property to see if it had been handed in puzzled as to what she could have done with it. And then she was back. My friend had tried ringing the number again and, as the Senior Steward passed a display cabinet she heard it ringing. She had opened a display cabinet to replace a ticket on an item, put her phone down in the cabinet and locked it inside. We all laughed at her "first prize phone".
The Senior Cat returned to eat his packed lunch with us and then prowled off again. He was back just before four o'clock. He was exhausted - but already has plans for going next year.