Friday, November 13, 2015

Ballarat Show

Melbourne Cup day wasn't a public holiday in Ballarat, because Ballarat Show Day is instead. So to celebrate the holiday appropriately today, we went to the show.

There were animals:


A champion cow:
 A bull getting a haircut:

There were sideshows and rides, including this:
Zorbing on a pool. The kids looked like they were having fun.

I always enjoy the cooking and craft sections. Traditional anzacs and scones:

Knitting. How would you feel if you had knitted a whole Noah's Ark of animals, and were beaten by one (rather amazing) horse?

I loved this crocheted horse:
I wondered if it was a pattern, or the maker's own design. Google helped me find this page which has a link to a Russian site with instructions, but I couldn't load the Russian page unfortunately. Not that I need to take up crocheting again, but that horse is adorable...

Of course I had to see the quilts:
where a few people I know had won prizes.

There were displays of farm machinery, old steam engines, and a model railway, but this one grabbed my attention:
The "Sew What" travelling sewing-machine museum! This machine was a treadle chainstitcher. They had lots of old machines, toy machines, and a few machines I'd never seen before.

After all that, we needed some refreshments. The CWA (Country Women's Association) to the rescue:
Devonshire tea in the refreshment rooms. Yum! Whoever made these deserved to win the scone prize.

I hope you've enjoyed these glimpses of the show!



7 comments:

MLM247 said...

It looks absolutely marvellous. Hope you had a few wins.

Cherry said...

This is my kind of Holiday! Looks like there was much to see & fun to be had. The scones like delicious. Did you have any quilts entered?

Vireya said...

I didn't have anything entered in the show. Maybe next year?

Vireya said...

No, but I'll have to consider it for next year!

Jeanette said...

A proper show. The poultry certainly know what to do, they appear to be seasoned performers. Was there wood chopping?
Not surprised the horse one, a hippo in the same style won at the Bendigo wool show last year. Here it is on Ravelry http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/happypotamus-the-happy-hippo-crochet-pattern

Kate said...

I used to enter in our local show, and had some success, but I am not sure how the judges compared wildly diverging handcrafts. e.g. a silver spoon and a leather saddle!

Joy V said...

Nothing like CWA scones....I love the local agricultural shows. Actually I had win a number of years ago at Geelong with a couple of my embroideries.