Festival weekend, end of summer....

My daughter Max and I spent the past weekend at Cobargo Folk Festival on the south coast of NSW. It is a great little festival in a magical setting and we had a lovely time.  My brother in law had saved us a good camp site and Max and I set the tent up quickly and soon had the billy boiling - she is a very adept camper so it was all very easy.

Me 'n Max showing some festival spirit

The new skirt :-)

After setting up camp we went for a stroll and I bought myself a gorgeous skirt from the first stall we stopped at! Considering that I had made a resolution to not buy any new clothes this year (saving for an overseas trip) this wasn't a great move, but once the skirt was in my bag there wasn't any point in flogging myself about it so I just put it on and got on with feeling glamorous.

We enjoyed lots of fantastic performances over the three days. There are many talented musicians on the south coast (check out a youtube vid of Daniel Champagne, amazing!) and there were many from other parts - most wonderfully Nancy Kerr and James Fagan from the UK. Black Joak Morris were in great form and added a very festive feel with their street performance. The weather was lovely, a real end of summer treat.

Black Joak Morris joyously doing their stuff!

Beautiful Cobargo

Cobargo is a small town about five hours south of Sydney. It is set amid green, treed hills and has a sandy river flowing through it. The festival is held on the local oval which has the river flowing along one boundary. Saturday was quite hot and Max and Gillian and I went down there and found ourselves a shallow,  shaded spot to have a swim and cool off.
There was a good coffee stall at the festival - long live multiculturalism! How did Aussies cope before cappucino?

 I did a little sketching while watching some of the performers. The immediacy and time demands of this sort of work is very good for the 'eye' I think and I was quite pleased with the sketches though I need lots of practise at this type of painting.

I managed to get a little playing on my melodeon in with my friend Gillian, who is a good musician. I have only been playing for a little while and found it difficult to keep on track while playing with another person, it is something I need a lot of practise at doing. The days simply need to be longer so that I can fit more into them!!

Back home I finally finished the nest egg picture and have put it away so that I can get on with something else. This picture really hogged the easel for a couple of months, though that was partly because we have had family staying over the summer and working in the studio has been difficult as I am extremely easily distracted - especially by adorable family members.

Autumn seems to announce it's arrival on March 1st here in Canberra. Cool mornings and warm evenings, ripe tomatoes on the vines and the last of the roses and trumpet vine flowers looking shaggily about, all signal the arrival of a new season. Bring it on!