The Big Skill

Over on Hayfield Gardens last weekend there was a craft fair called The Big Skill. The weather was dismal, but the people huddling together in the shelter of the geodesic tents seemed to be enjoying themselves. The Mushroom man, who was making wooden mushrooms as we watched, was enthralling one little boy as he explained what he was doing:

In the biggest tent, there was a very enthusiastic lady, Rachel Palmer, from the Long Forest community hedgerow project. Hedgerows are very important for wildlife, sheltering all sorts of plant species, nesting birds, insects and so on. Many of them have been grubbed up since the Second World War to make larger fields for bigger tractors, or have been replaced by fences of various kinds. Maintaining a good hedge is a skilled profession, and one of the things the Long Forest project does is to pass on those skills to a new generation. Rachel Palmer also led the walk along the Hay Riverside walk last week, which would also benefit from the skills and guidance they have to offer. For anyone interested in learning more, or wanting guidance about their own hedges, the email is rachel.palmer@keepwalestidy.org - and there is also a blog that can be found through the Keep Wales Tidy website.
In the next tent over, Adele Nozedar was selling copies of her book The Hedgerow Handbook: Recipes, Remedies and Rituals. Over the Festival, she was leading foraging walks along hedgerows around Hay.
Further up the hill, people were getting creative with clay:

They were hoping to be cooking pizzas in this oven by the end of the day!
(I've seen this done before, at a re-enactment fair - and they were baking bread in their oven by the end of the weekend.)
The Tools For Self Reliance people were there as well, but it wasn't only outdoor crafts on show. There were lots of felted items, and wooden bowls, cake stands made from slate, a sculptor working on a piece in the middle of the tent, a peg loom, papercraft wreaths and knitting wool. At Ffolky Ffelt, I couldn't resist a needle felted handlebar moustache, which I intend to wear to the Steampunk Asylum this September! (It's a brooch!)
And as I was chatting by the clay oven, a red kite flew just over the tops of the tents!
On the following day, Alan Cooper the fiddle player went over to add a little music to the proceedings, which he said he enjoyed very much.

The Big Skill will be at the Brecon Fringe Festival on August 9th - 11th, and have a website at www.thebigskill.com