Pageant Season

During office drinks on Friday, my coworkers told me that Saturday was Pageant Day in Adelaide. They warned me not to head downtown as it would be a hot mess of people. As often happens, there was a bit of a cultural disconnect. I pictured hundreds of beauty queens with bouffant hair running around town giving a polite queen's waves. I pictured long, pastel party dresses with big bows on the rear. I completely missed the mark.

Pageant Day is the moniker given to Adelaide's holiday parade which apparently takes place in mid-November. It's akin to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with less floats and no balloons. The fest ends with the arrival of Father Christmas. From that moment on, it's apparently acceptable to hang up your holiday decorations in South Australia. Being mid-November, I hadn't considered bring Christmas decorations with me. It's only November 15th! Not to let my new hometown down, I set to work with the sewing machine today and whipped up my annual stocking. For the last few years, I made a stocking or three each holiday season. It's about the only time I sew with red fabric and it's a great way to use up a year's worth of batting scraps.

I don't remember where I originally got the pattern. I think I traced a thrift shop stocking and made it up. I've been making them for quite a few years now - the ones with Suzuko prints, the one where Craig wanted fish in bags so I used the very last of my Heather Ross and a few others lost in a sea of blog posts. This year, I paired Cotton&Steel with Cinderberries. Melody Miller's Ant March is the perfect festive red for Australia's summer Christmas.

In the end, I missed the parade. In exchange, my caravan is ready for the jolly, fat man to visit.