It's beanie time!

When I moved to Alice Springs last year, I had heard about this thing called the 'Beanie Festival' and I was curious. How could there be a festival just for beanies? We went along, and all was revealed. There were the 'high art' exhibition beanies, and the mountains and mountains of eclectic 'for sale' beanies, and workshops all around on things like felting and knitting and stitching and weaving and crocheting, and lots of wool and colour and baubles and feathers and - you get the picture. A massive, colourful, craft-fest!

So, this weekend just gone was Beanie Festival weekend and for my second time around, I was better prepared as to what to expect. I saw the early signs of people arriving in town wearing multi-coloured knitted creations. Beanies from previous years were brought out of hiding for the opening night and the temperature dipped to the obligatory winter chill.

I picked up a fez-style beanie with a felted spidery thing on top, and the others were chosen for a friend overseas who missed it this year.

This year there was an attempt to create the Longest Beanie in the World - a Guinness World Record attempt at 400 metres of beanie.

It all started in 1997 with a beanie party, then the festival was organised to sell beanies crocheted by Aboriginal ladies in remote communities. According to their website, the festival’s aims have always been to develop Aboriginal women’s textiles, promote womens' culture and the beanie as a regional art form, as well as promote handmade textile arts. A win-win. {Find out more here}

Yep - the festival of the beanie is definitely a thing, in all its knitted, rainbow-coloured glory. Just one of the many lovable, quirky things about Alice Springs!

And I just love the little message on the swing tag that says 'May you walk proud with a head full of love'. Awwww!

{And there's a beautiful gallery of images online here.}