Hampshire Green Fair

May Fair entrance to crafts area, notice the spinning wheel? More on that later!

We had a great time at the fair last week (10th May) at The Sustainability Centre, East Meon on the South Downs - it had grown since last year with lots of fun things to have a go at. We popped into the centre first and had a look around the bookshop, passing Ben Law who was there signing his latest book. Great also to see the centre with its solar panels installed - they recently got a grant to get them installed.

On arrival there was sword making going on, with the wood being carved using a pole lathe, spinning and weaving which was fascinating to watch, and one of Imogen's favourite activities there which was pond dipping - in plastic troughs, but you get the idea. She was fascinated with this, using a spoon to catch things and put them into a pot to look at and identify them using the very handy laminated sheets left on the tables. I took a while before we moved onto anything else and we went back to this at least twice - in fact later she was telling other children what they had to do.


We had a go at clay modelling and made a clay snake, and Daddy had a go at carving chalk - nice pieces of chalk from around as the Downs consist of a lot of Chalk.

More looking at woodcrafts, wild foods and a walk around the site followed before sitting amongst the teepee's and yurts for lunch. It was great to see the outdoor clay oven finished, it looks fantastic and is obviously being used by campers/visitors.

There was also a display on keeping bees with a range of bees (dead ones) in boxes to see the differences between them. This was really good as we had recently got a book out of the library on bees (this is a great book for children interested in Bees - interactive with flaps and things to move etc - "The Beautiful Bee Book" by Sue Unstead) so Imogen really liked looking at these and asking lots of questions about bees.

Another display area which fascinated Alex a woodland craft guy who runs wildcraft courses who was displaying some of his baskets made from bark which were just beautiful - unfortunately not the best photo but worth a mention all the same.

Another favourite place was the cardboard cutout of the shepherd and his sheep - the pictures say it all.

Some more photo's from the day ...


One last thing, did you notice the Spinning Wheel in the very first picture? Well that made it's way home with me, so I have a new interest and craft to have a go at. I have fancied having a go at spinning for a while and the opportunity to buy this wheel was just too tempting. An early Birthday/Christmas present. Will be blogging more on that some time soon.