It was a festival

Photos from Rosário Albuquerque and Epifânia Oliveira;

And this is how it was in Serralves, at the Festa de Outono, last sunday.
I think that it was the first time that any of us, both in the textile and basket weaving activities, had to deal with so many people at once.

The basket weaving activity, oriented by Rosa and Manuel, was an absolute success, no doubt resulting of their exceptional ability to receive everyone, in spite of the hard work it was.
Each person had to start and finish their own basket and it was wonderful to see so many people leaving with beautiful baskets made by themselves. Something that made the difference was the fact that the activity was executed using the exact same tools and materials that a basket weaver uses in his profession: the wicker, the wooden molds, the scissors, everything. Our goal was to provide a first contact with the craft as a profession, but in a relaxed context, and I think we did it.

In the textile activities, we had lots of people being immediately attracted to Tita andRosário’s spinning wheels and then to Guida’s looms.
Rosário made a joke saying that we established a record of spinning wheels concentration in Portugal - I counted seven wheels. I’m pretty sure we also established a record on the amount of people that learned to spin and weave in 9 hours.
Amongst many people that experimented for a while and then carried on, we had several cases of children and adults that really dedicated themselves to learn a little harder.
We a had a 11 year old boy that spent the morning learning to spindle spinning, moved on to the wheel, and came back at the end of he day to ask for a spindle to take home. We had a 9 year old girl that already knew to knit and sew and wanted to learn to spin so that she could knit a pair of socks from her own yarn. We had people that showed up to perfect their technique and spent a good time trying all the equipment. We had an austriac lady that spins and weaves for decades and got a tear in her eye for finding such an event unexpectedly. We had a lot of people that came just to see and ended up learning.

Personally, and in spite of everything I already know, I was surprised to see the physical change in people when they finally slowed down and concentrated in the work at hand, may that be weaving, spinning or making a basket. And, although it was our goal, I was still surprised to see how much interest it generated. It was good.