Hay Fayre

The Globe has been running an event which is part craft fair, part music, over the weekend. I started making a new medieval dress (I got the wool fabric in Hereford the other week, and I've been looking at it ever since), and when I got stuck, I decided to go out and look around.
The top field around the Globe was mostly food and drink tents, with a chap singing with a guitar in the beer tent, and the grill looking busy. The ground was a bit muddy underfoot, but not too bad, considering. There was a Maypole in the middle of the open ground (dancing round the Maypole had been at 11am) and the rest of the space was taken up with the craft tent.
Karen Wallace the author was there, selling her children's books. I've seen her picture books before, some of them illustrated by very good artists like Barbara Firth, but I hadn't realised that she's written books for older children as well.
There was also metalwork, leatherwork, woollen goods from Talgarth, a stone mason, furniture, and a couple of food stalls, all beautiful and high quality. Outside there was a lady with pretty floral cotton dresses as well. The stone mason was actually carving a flower into a block of stone as we watched - Lottie O'Leary from near Knighton, who has a website, with Will O'Leary, at www.stonecarving.co.uk
I wandered into the main hall just in time to see a dancing demonstration - clog dancing mixed with break dancing! It worked really well - and the clog dancing was making the floor rock! Both the dancers were doing workshops later in the afternoon, so I came back to watch Laura Connolly with the children (I wasn't quite brave enough to have a go myself). She also has a website, at www.lauraconnolly.co.uk, and the kids in her class were clearly having a great time. This time they were downstairs, on the stone flags, where they could jump up and down and make as much noise as they wanted!
It was a lovely, relaxed atmosphere all afternoon, and they're doing it again in the middle of September, and in October.
(and I did manage to finish making my dress).