After nine months of planning our first village festival was born last Saturday. We could not have asked for a better day. After dawn, a hot air balloon hovered over my garden and drifted to the festival field.
I was trying to throw on mascara, eat breakfast and take photos at the same time. Failing at all tasks.
We had been erecting tents, flags and bunting the night before and it took around twenty of us four hours to transform the village sports field on Saturday morning. I had spent nights stencilling banners and backdrops with lettering from our In Your Own Words range of stencils.
I was grateful when volunteers stopped by to help. Especially with the very long 'entertainments' banner on the marquee above.
We made a stencil of the festival logo for our uniforms and to decorate signage.
The idea of the festival was to unite the village. We do not have a pub in centre of Stocksfield and we don't even have a centre. The sports fields and the local school became our village green for the day.
We had craft stalls and farm produce...
...face painters...
....and Margaret Frayne, who sang songs on request. She told me that one can buy a 'diva' kit which has velcro to keep your hand held to your head.
I should have had one when I was on announcing duty. I knew it would be hard to shut me up with a microphone in hand.
I did not sing though. The Stencil Library had a little booth to advertise our classes and house tours. Sabina Rose stepped in to run it for me. Her son Dan was performing at the festival with The Fantastic Car.
They were brilliant. Notice the stencilled banner? We used stencilled flameproofed sheeting as a backdrop for our entertainers. All our entertainers were wonderful. One of my highlights was hearing Georgia Overton sing.
Georgia is the granddaughter of Di Overton of the fab DesignersBlock. No doubt Di will post something that you can hear.
We had story tellers...
...rock 'n' rollers...
...and raffles.
Our young poetry prize winner, Rosie Cochrane, was VIP for the day. Along with Lady Allendale, she opened the show and drew the prizes.
It was a great pleasure to make her bouquet. I briefly trained as a florist, but have not made a bouquet since my own wedding. Rosie's Mum, Rachel Cochrane, is an author, play-write and new blogger. I have recently acted in one her radio dramas called 'Oranges and Lemons'. It will soon be available as a download on her new site.
Rachel Morris (this blog's co author, on the left)and Sabina stopped by to keep me plied with locally made ice cream. It was a long, long day for the festival organisers. We did not clear the site until Sunday, because there were more festival partying to be had at the village hall. I'm not much of a dancer so I offered to be photographer for the night.
If you want to see more of our village festival, visit Stocksfield's own web site or the Hexham Courant. No, I don't know who the people are either, but it did not stop me enjoying the pictures.
Thank you to Dave Porter for some of his photographs.
Helen