A Crafty Day at a Winery...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being part of a fabulous event held at Te Awanga winery - Elephant Hill. It was an exclusive event put on for 500 cruise ship visitors from the Pacific Dawn who were part of a Rugby World Cup tour and featured a food and wine festival, handmade craft market, jazz music band, kapa haka, flax weaving, vintage car tours, classic push bike rides, and I think I saw a helicopter doing tours as well! Talk about your all-in-one event showcasing some of the best Hawkes Bay has to offer :)

Craft Event organisers extraordinaire - Jo Pearson and Jess Soutar-Barron of  'Fruit Bowl Craft Jam' once again worked their magic and put on an original and well-considered event featuring a variety of crafty mediums and talents. To name just a few ... Fresh Vintage, Little Birdie Clothing, Fat Spatula, Deb Bell, Shelly Von Sturm Jewellery, Aiceanta, Khetch Clothing and what could be better than experiencing such an event with your good friends? - , Joy of Kazzalblue, Katherine of Sleep and her Sisters and Ingrid of Silverworks - wonderful!



Unfortunately the day started with drizzle and wind so the planned outside marquee had to be abandoned and we were allocated space inside the winery. Again, all credit to Jo and Jess, lighting was arranged, colourful bunting strung and all we had to do was arrange our products on the supplied tables (complete with cloths).

Setting up

I have to tell you - a 90 x 90 space provided a challenge for me ... so I went up ... using my display cubes to height advantage :). I hope I didn't look to 'cluttered' but I was pleased with the overall look.

Oh - and - the big wine vats you can see in some of the pictures? Some had rings of ice around them (I'm guessing where the cooling rings are?) and they defrosted during the day .... drip-drip-drip .... water icicles on wine vats? - a 1st environment-wise at a market for me :)

So, a fun day, with lovely customers, great company, varied entertainment, and interesting conversations - Fab!

We did have a few concerns for some of the cruise ship passengers we saw ummm... 'weaving' down the road to their buses, and the gentleman with a harakeke putiputi in his RWC cap doing an impromptu haka ... but we'll assume they got back to the ship just fine!

Did someone leave a rugby ball behind?!