Pastures Pink

This weekend was a big local event called "In Pastures Pink" which was another charity event! What is it with this week and charity events?!
Anyway, I was working at this event in the children's tent because there were actually 2 children's tents and 1 was for the Forest School part of Chelwood Gate Nursery! So I set up 4 different stations and children could come in here and make stuff.
The centerpiece was a ring of 8 pestle and mortar stations with 4 types of natural materials to make paint out of: charcoal, chalk, sandstone, and stinging nettles -- 2 stations of each type. So you could grind up some raw material into a powder, then sieve it into a pot and add some water. Then make a paintbrush by bashing the end of a small stick and then flaring out the fibers into a brush. And so the 2nd station was an artwork station with loads of different colored and shaped paper and space to create.
Here is a really crappy photo that I took once all the kids started to leave. The remains of the tidy pestle-and-mortar ring are in the middle.
The 3rd station was making beads and/or pencils out of Elder tree cutoffs. I had made some bits of charcoal when we were camping the other weekend (was that really just last weekend?!) so I offered those up for pencil lead use. Since Elder has a soft inside, it is easy to poke through and make hollow - perfect for threading a rope through or stuffing some bits of charcoal into!
The 4th station was making stinging nettle cordage/ rope. That involves basically bashing a stinging nettle plant that has had all of its leaves removed until the inside part of the stem is pulp, then peeling off the outer layer of the stem to become the rope. The final step involves twisting and twisting and twisting the outer layer until it twists back on itself, and voila - done!
The 5th station was making spinners out of hazel coins which had 2 holes predrilled in them (courtesy of Rhodri!). So that involved just coloring the slice of hazelwood and then threading some string through the 2 holes, tying them together, and then trying to make them do fast spinny things.
Phew! I'm exhausted just writing about all of that!
It was a long afternoon which took a lot of preparation and setup, then herds of kids needing supervision while I was by myself looking after these 5 stations. Rhodri came in a few times to help me out and our neighbor through the hedge also helped out a bit, which was very nice. Somehow 5 hours passed and I was really burned out and decided to join the festivities.
We stayed until about 11:00pm although the festival went until midnight. Tryfan took all his clothes off and fell asleep in the car (which was parked right by the children's tent rather than in the parking lot with all the other cars), and Rhiannon was a little dancing banshee all night. It was fun but even after recovering on Sunday, we are all still a bit grizzly from the event.