Ukrainian Festival

Last week, Rich and I read about a Ukrainian festival that was happening in Wellington. It was pretty close to our apartment - in fact it was in the church only five minutes away, quite literally across the road.

We both love festivals and markets and I have always wanted to visit a lot of countries in Eastern Europe (sadly I haven't made it there - yet) so we decided to check it out.There was a room set up dedicated to selling Ukrainian goods like books, toys, yarn and clothing. I especially liked this little basket of goodies - if you read my blog you'll know I have a soft spot for matryoshka dolls and now I have a set of my own which I bought from this wee basket. I've added the dolls to our random collection of toys - they are sharing a shelf with some toys from Korea and Taiwan.

One of the things I love most about travelling and fairs like this is checking out food from different parts of the world - even if I don't buy a thing. Its all about the packaging and the language and the way the goods are presented. I have to say that the box of chocolates with the squirrel on it is pretty much the cutest box of chocolates I've ever seen.Here's the menu from the kitchen at the church - we did try a couple of things and to be honest I didn't enjoy the food too much. It's the first time I've tried Ukrainian food so maybe it wasn't the best quality, but to us it just tasted kind of bland. Sorry Ukraine! I'm sure there is some delicious Ukrainian food - I just haven't tasted it yet.Also on the topic of food - there were a few loaves of bread around (at least I think they were bread, I could be totally wrong!) with these delicate little flowers on them. I thought they were amazing. I also liked this cake a whole lot.

Here's a photo of the table where the plates were laid out - I thought it was really striking.I thought I'd finish off this post with one of my favourite things from the festival - some AMAZING cross-stitch. I love folk art and I am a cross-stitcher myself and I can't even begin to imagine the number of hours that would have gone into making both of these amazing pieces.

I assume the man at the top is some important Ukrainian spiritual or religious leader? I really don't know enough about the Ukraine to say - but I do know he must be fairly important and fairly loved for someone to spend HOURS cross-stitching his portrait for a wall hanging.

The second piece of cross-stitch is a photo of a much larger table runner which was just beautiful. So many hours of hard work and sore finger tips would have gone into making it.