Hope to post about the Common Ground Fair soon. One thing I'm pleased about was discovering locker hooking, an Australian rug hooking technique that makes really lovely Berber-like rugs from wool roving or fabric strips. I got a kit. I'm also taking a traditional rug hooking workshop in November. I've been in love with folk art, antique hooked rugs for years, but they're expensive, and I thought it'd be fun to learn to make them myself. And now I am. Yay!
We all have colds here and are dealing with the change to chilly, rainy weather after a gorgeous, clear September. Yesterday was the Church Street festival in town, a long-running, grassroots parade put on by the woman who runs the children's playhouse downtown. It's apparently always been a goofy, hippie, magical event--you show up at Mary's house in the morning, get a costume out of her barn, put it on and walk! We were told it was not-to-miss, so we went out for it, even though it was raining and we were sniffling. It's just another one of the many enchanted Belfast traditions. Here's a photo of us. Willa is dressed as Pippi Longstocking--she plans to dress as Eloise for Halloween--and is carrying a sign made by the artist Paul Oberst, my collaborator for the Belfast Poetry Festival coming up later this month. More on that soon, too, I hope--we had a trial run performance of my poem with Paul's work installed all around us and live sound accompaniment by local musician Dan Beckman of Uke of Spaces Corners at Roots & Tendrils gallery on Friday evening as part of the Art Walk. Um, yeah: art walks, bands, sculptors. Belfast is pretty darn cool.
