My Trip to California

Last weekend I flew out to Los Angeles to attend the Scandinavian Festival at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA. I had never attended this festival - wow - what a great event! Lots of entertainment, activities, and good food. I was actually invited to come and help demonstrate hardanger for anyone who was interested in learning more about this Norwegian form of embroidery!

Here are some of the sights at the festival. These first five pictures are from the opening day parade to kick off the festival. Note the colorful folk costumes.







After the parade around the festival grounds there was an opening ceremony and the national anthems were sung for the U.S. and each of the Scandinavian countries.

There was a large tent in the middle of the grounds; this is where several different demonstrations were located, including bobbin lace, knitting, spinning, weaving, rosemaling, wood carving, and bunad making. Oh, and hardanger too!

Here's one of the lace displays (sorry for the reflection):



And here's a woman making lace (note the spool of lace at the
top of her board!):



And some weaving:



And spinning:



Here's a collection of Rosemaling pieces:


These last two pictures are from the bunad or folk costume making demonstration; note the beautiful embroidery on the collar and the cuffs of this blouse:




The only sad thing -- I didn't take a picture of my hardanger display! But I enjoyed meeting with many people who were interested in how a piece of hardanger is created. I had taken a number of finished pieces with me, but also had several doilies that were in various stages of completion. A couple of people even tried their hand at trying to stitch some kloster blocks!

Here's one more fun photo of the musicians and others leading the May Pole procession. It was a fun weekend!