Festival of Folk Arts part 2.

Seeing the pictures from Thursday my boy decided that he wants to see the festival after all...
I said of course, and in fact it was so good that I already seen everything bought most what I wanted, so I could concentrate on letting Chris have fun... and boy, he did.
He loved the pottery:

Tried on this felted hat (and made stupid faces):

We found an other great outfit (mama's son, he is...):

Tried the bird whistle:

The traditional Hungarian instrument, called "citera":

He even wanted to try the traditional way of making lace... and guess what not only he sat in one place concentrating on it for more than 20 minutes, he actually got the hang of it...(which is more than what I could say for myself.):

We both were enchanted by the tiny, carved musical boxes:

Played with clay...made a little pig shaped money saver thingy...(the one where you have a slot to get the money in... to get it out, one has to break the whole thing):

Of, course, since he IS mama's boy, he HAD to try the spinning wheel...

And see how the other one works:

And lastly, but most importantly... he was weaving... this group is from the city I grew up (Szolnok), and there was a man at the loom... and he was happy to show it to Christopher

And again:

And again...

It took me more than an hour to drag him from there, and then I could only do it with the promise of going back:

Even I talked to the man (who is working with orphan kids, or kids who cannot live with their parents -ah, there is where his patient coming from)...I had to show him spinning with a top whorl spindle, and we talked great length about dyeing wool, especially KOOL AID dyeing, since I thought that would be absolutely harmless for the kids...

BTW can you see the utter concentration?

To top it all, Christopher wants to go back tomorrow... and he gave us participants passes, so we might just do that...

And who knows... Christopher might just start to like crafts... Now that would make me a really happy mama :-)

So it was once again a great day (hmm, it seems I keep saying that for ddays where my boy and crafts are involved... does that shows a trend there? LOL), my boy had a blast. I am absolutely thankful.

St. Stephan's day

If you remember from last year. August 20th is the biggest national celebration of Hungary. It is the birthday of the first king of the county, and later many other things were tied with the day, like the constitution, or the first bread from the new wheat. It is partly sad, because it signs the end of the summer, but all the festivities, manly the big fireworks (that were the best ever this year) and the big Festival of Folk Arts almost makes it worthwile.
It is my yearly pilgrimage... I dream about it for months before, and for months afterwards...
This year I managed to get there at the very first day. At the gate there was a huge line to stand in for the tickets, but the wait was eased by a cute guy playing the harp...

Inside there was the usual miscallenous craft stuff... like pottery:

Also in colors:

Corn husk dolls... just look at those details:

Ceramic figurines... not your usual ones:

I guess this is one place where cuties are all around... this one was making corn hust figures:

Someone was selling carved walking sticks:

Of course there were candles (Jenny, thiy pic is for you ;-) :

And though we our country is in a dire need of widening the wool and yarn selection available, but one thing we have in aboundance... Beads... lots of them:

More cuties... this one playing some strange instrument... but the music coming out...was gorgeous.

The usual array of interesting outfits:

I just had to take a picture of this orange set:

Once again I determined that one craft I don't care for is the traditional way of making lace:

No matter how enchanted I am with some of the results:

Supposedly the theme for this year was cane-weaving, but I've seen little of that.
But there was plenty of weaving:

Even by a man:

And some of the most gorgeous weaved stoles (orange again... I wonder if you can see a trend there LOL):

It seems that if knitting has not felting finally reached the country. I found wonderful gloves:

Hats:

In detail:

More hats:

Felted this and that:

And my favourite dragon (it was there last year too... It is not for sale):

But one thing that was really lovely that this year I didn't only saw spinning
wheels:

But there was someone spinning with a spindle:

There were wools around (though most of them intended for felting):

And mostly in rather strong primarly colors:

Even some yarn:

And there was a spinning wheel that wasn't only adecoration, but actually working:

The lady even showed me how to use it:

And she even let me try it :-) :

This was my very first time at a spinning wheel. Thank you Piroska, I will never forget it.

There was an air-parade, the air race, and the best fire works to day, but this is what I remember the most.

This got a bit long, but if you looked at through and didn't got bored... thank you.

Making yarn

For years and years the idea didn't occurred to me... I was (and still AM) annoyed at the lack of yarn-selection, but making my own ... then I fighted the idea because I realized getting supplies for spinning would be equally hard. But then as you might remember one spring day I cave in.
You can see the results of my very first tries in that post. I would have give up, but I do have a stubborn streak... I have a hard time accepting I cannot do something... so I kept trying, and here is my first skein of plied yarn, all about 25 meters of it... thick and thin and all the bad of a starter's yarn.

But by now, I wasn't about to give it up and I kept on spinning the single.

And plied up. One hundred meters. The thickness still varies, but I could see improvement. Can you?

The next step, was to dye this... Guess what color I though it would be fitting to use???

Orange of course... The bottle is to weigh it down a bit to release all the kinks that occurs as the result of spinning. I use a KOOL AID like drink powder mixing colors of orange, mandarin and some Mango Ice tea to have a bit of rusty shade...

Re-skeined... With all its faults I love it...

Now someone tell me what to knit with it!

It is about 65 grams, 100 meters .

I was thinking of a beret, maybe this one, but that calls for more yarn than I have... a cowl maybe or this thing... what do you think? Any suggestion?

And just to hope that I managed to spreading the fiber bug...Look who wanted to try spinning with my spindle...