Hill End markets open tomorrow at the Royal Hall. Once again we have a stall selling hand made stuff.
You will have to excuse some rather dodgy photos here because I can't find my card reader so I can't get anything off my camera. I'm left with just my phone camera.
I hope to get photos of everything with the camera anyway so I can share them later.
Our stall at the market. We've actually got a table covering this year. I sewed letters on to a sheet we got from the Op Shop. I can't believe how perfectly it fits the table. Some of the letters are a little dark though so I'll embroider around them before the next market.
The gap over on the right is for the adult hats that we're still pricing and sorting out labels for. They will be there by the time the market opens tomorrow.
It's coming in to Autumn now so we have plenty of hand knitted hats and fingerless mitts. It was really warm today but tomorrow isn't meant to get above 20c and it's getting down to 5c tonight and tomorrow night so hopefully that will have people thinking about winter woolens.
Last market was in October but it was in the middle of the cold snap and we sold out of adult hats pretty early on.
We also got prints of my photography done. We got them printed through moo.com and weren't sure if they would get here in time but they have and they look fantastic. They have the printfinity option so you can get many designs in the same pack. I have around 60 different images but only one of each design so if they sell out that's it until I re-order. I will definitely be re-ordering because I want some of these on my wall.
What doesn't sell at the markets will make it's way in to our
Etsy Shop soon after.
I'll take proper product photos of what's left before putting them up on Etsy.
Excuse
the dog hair covered carpet the vacuum doesn't get it up and when you
have so little energy there are better things to use it on than scraping
the carpet with your shoes (the only thing we've found to get rid of
it)
Some photos taken around Hill End in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
More photos of foliage from around the village and the tree and windmill photos were taken on the Turondale road in to Bathurst.
Sky and foliage taken in the village, two black and white shots from a trip to Sydney and two ocean shots taken in Taree.
A couple of shots of Old Man Roo from across the road, a few shots of our dogs and a couple of Elvis the King Parrot who comes to visit. He's really friendly and will even eat out of your hand if you stand still long enough.
We borrowed a badge maker from a friend a while ago and in a bid to make some cheaper items to sell at the market I busted it out last week. It's a bit hit and miss and you waste a lot of components when it doesn't work but I ended up with a bunch of badges I liked.
Here's where the phone camera starts to fall down. These are hand drawn badges I made. I drew the pictures and coloured them in with coloured pencil. Then came the hard part of cutting them out. Unfortunately the cutter that came with the badge machine is rather blunt now. It made it rather difficult to get the circles right.
Because I'm drawing them all by hand they're all one of a kind artworks. I will get around to making some repeatable ones on the computer at some point but we don't have a working printer at home right now so there wasn't much point this time.
These are made from some Origami Paper a friend brought us back from Japan. I was really happy with the way these came out. Once again the cutting was difficult and there's a fair bit of work involved in making the badges but I think the result works well. They look a lot better in real life. I was having a lot of trouble taking a photo without glare on the plastic.
I also made up a set of note cards before I knew if the photography prints would get here in time.
These are all hand drawn in graphite on a cream card stock. Quite thick and sturdy.
You get some idea of the scale here.
These are Hill End cards. The first is the Presbyterian Church, the second is a stamper battery, then a mining poppet head and lastly Northey's Store.
I like drawing trees and mushrooms
More mushrooms and an Australian Magpie
Galahs on a branch, lavender and a bee, a house on a hill and a tree with owls.
Hill End markets are on Saturday and Sunday of the Easter Long Weekend and the October Long Weekend.
They are open from 10am to 3pm and held at the Royal Hall on Beyers Avenue, Hill End. Right next door to the pub and opposite the general store and take away shop.
Hill End is about an hours drive from either Bathurst or Mudgee and it's a beautiful, scenic drive. If you come from Bathurst through Turondale it is now sealed the whole way and so is the road from Mudgee. They haven't changed the sign yet so it still says there's dirt road but it's been tarred.
If you are okay with driving on a gravel road then you can come from Bathurst through Sofala. Sofala is another gorgeous old Gold Town.
The pub and the General Store do food and so does Hosie's Cafe. Hosie's even has gluten free stuff available. We wont have gluten free cakes at our stall this time, we just didn't have time. The museum at the Visitor's Centre is great and there is an audio/visual display at the old Great Western Store that shows a lot of the Beufoy Merlin photos (taken in the 1870s) that are part of the Holterman collection.You can also pan for gold and there are tours running from the Discovery Centre (next to the General Store) including a Ghost Tour at night and an Easter Egg hunt for the kids.
If you have a mobile with either Optus or Telstra you'll be able to get some signal in the village.
Accessibility isn't great for people in wheelchairs. Most buildings have steps because they were built in the 1870s. The Visitor's Centre has a sign on the door saying they have a ramp available but to get to the front desk to ask about it you need to get down 3 steps in the path and up the step in to the front desk.
Come out for a visit. There are a bunch of trash and treasure stalls as well. I'll have my spinning wheel and will be spinning most of the weekend.
