Sunday, July 17, 2011

The village fete

On Saturday it was the village fete. The vicar always comes to bless the well-dressing which is made by the children in the village school, and then the fete queen is crowned, and she opens the village fete.

So there we all were on Saturday, waiting for the ceremony to begin, with the fete queen and her two attendants waiting in state on a small dais, under a prettily decorated canopy, when the heavens opened, and everyone without an umbrella rushed under the canopy to join them…

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and mde it very crowded for the coronation.

But then the sun came out again and I got a photo of the well-dressing, the design of which I was thrilled with (you know how I love the Monsal Trail)…

for blog

I didn’t explain this before, but to make a well-dressing (in Derbyshire) you make a wooden frame and fill it with clay which has been mixed with water and salt. A design is sketched on paper - traditionally of a religious theme, though often not so nowadays - and this is traced onto the clay. The picture is then filled in with natural materials stuck into the clay, predominantly flower petals and mosses, but also beans, seeds and small cones. Anything that is natural is acceptable, and nothing that has been manufactured.

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