Innocent Village Fête

So, this weekend was the Innocent Village Fête in Regent's Park. We couldn't make it on Saturday (some of us have jobs to do and shops to run!) but yesterday we went up to town and had a great day out. I don't know about where you were but it was such a hot day I did have a bit of a struggle to really enjoy the festival itself, so we spent much of lounging on the grass and drinking cider (nothing new there then). We also had a go on the chairoplane (above) and, of course, made it to the knitting tent. The latter was a personal disappointment, not least because it was more of a shop than a place to just sit down, chill out and knit, although there was plenty of free teaching going on, something we wholeheartedly agree with - we may hold full-on classes in the shop but we certainly don't mind passing on the secrets of casting on and off for free in the IKL Wednesday knitting group. It was great to see the little knitted hats on the Innocent bottles though, and this year's campaign should be bigger and better than last year's now that Rowan have got in on the act. The whole fête this year was bigger than ever before and with that comes the corporate angle - but we like Innocent, and they did seem to try their best not to 'sell out' too much. It was a bit weird, though, to see, amongst all the organic food stalls, the stands from eco-friendly, ethical companies and the Innocent drinks themselves, proudly packed full of nothing but natural stuff, the huge Red Stripe tent...probably the worst lager in the world! Nice and unnatural. Still, we did catch a glimpse of some maypole dancing (we missed the ferret racing though) and enjoyed watching the alfresco ballroom in full swing to the tune of Cut A Shine.
There was also this brilliant paper Forest - nicely branded by The Guardian :)

It was, in the best English tradition, a grand day out.

Craig