Mud Mud Glorious Mud!

Well whatever the hippos think I must admit that I've had enough of mud for this year! Our stock is mud encrusted, we've just cleaned our walls off for the second time this year & I'm not entirely sure that my apparently enviable tan wont wash off if I have the opportunity for more showers!

 Our stall at Penn Festival

Having spent the second weekend in July at the lovely but ulitmately very muddy Penn Festival with our friends Nic & Frank of Sixteen I thought we might have done our mud for the season but after a weekend where a trip to the toilet
felt as Frank described it 'like taking a treck through the Amazon jungle' honestly I'd hoped for some better weather...

Now Emily spent this week again with Nic of Sixteen doing a handmade & vintage fair in Milton Keynes shopping centre as part of the MK Fringe festival. Now you'd have thought that Emily had the better end of that deal wouldn't you...

But...Nic's car died on the way to day 3 of the MK fair & our Dad & Brother came to the rescue driving over to get them to the fair & home again & apparently Thursday brought all the rude people out to complain about our products...But on Sunday she went to our regular Duckpond Market in Ruislip, where she caught up with our lovely Duckpond friends & generally had a Lovely time.

And I spent the week at Larmer Tree Festival, up to my eyeballs in mud!

 

Silke in the flood outside my stall

 But...

I got to glory in a double rainbow after a what felt like a hundred years of rain
& to appreciate the dam that our neighbours built to keep the tide of mud from engulfing our stalls & which over the course of the weekend was added to

 until in the end it was a glorious creation & quite the talking point of the festival
it was even filmed! although we didn't find out what for.

I also found that in adversity traders absolutely stick together, there were three stalls that were particularly affected by the flood plains of Larmer tree & yet we had help from other stalls to gather woodchip to stem the tide & there was a real
feeling of solidarity among stallholders that we haven't really encountered at festivals before.

 The Flood, in my stall!

It just goes to show, when the chips are down, mud is thicker than water...couldn't resist, actually when it really counted this week at Larmer tree, there was a fellow trader to laugh, cry & comiserate with!
My thanks must also go to Silke of Dakini Leathercrafts who kindly drove, kept me company & fed me all week & performed her hero feat when my stall flooded & dragged back 3 wheelybin loads of woodchip to keep the tides at bay!

As I'm writing this we're all packed to head of to Cambridgshire for Secret Garden Party Fetival tomorrow & keeping everything crossed that we wont have the same mud issues again.

So I'm going to ask...as Saturday is my birthday & all I would really like is for the weather to be good...please could you all make a wish with me & see if we can all change the weather together & bring on the sun...whatever happens we're determined to enjoy the experience!