Festival-ness!

Wogan and I kept busy on some of the last weekends of summer by attending some of the local annual Seattle events…of which there seem to be MANY! 

Hemp Fest – August!

One of the big ones was Hemp Fest – celebrated in Seattle for many a year now – it is a pro-marijuana legalisation festival and very popular here. There is live music all weekend, along with a lot of art, craft and food stalls. There are also pro-legalisation talks on stage happening as well – if your into it!

The food stores sold a variety of hemp oil infused products to try and taste…hemp burger anyone? There were also quite a few novelty style smoking accessories stores along with some artistic glass pipes and things. I expected a Hemp clothing line somewhere – but didn’t spot it!

Wogan and I attended to catch up with a friend while she was shooting the event. I have to say – overall the festival wasn’t really my cup of tea, but it was worth a look. Wogan  enjoyed making fun of all the “hippies” as he puts it..even though with long hair and a face full of beard he blended into the crowd in quite well 😉

Bumbershoot – September

A week later we attended Bumbershoot – a big music festival weekend in Seattle. I went 100 percent to catch the awesome Missy Higgins play live – it was great! I love her work and am glad she is back playing again! There were heaps of bands on all weekend – but a lot of them I’d never heard of! The festival was held just near the Space Needle and the tickets were pretty reasonable. You could wander around some art and craft stalls as well!

Missy Higgins played at least a full hour and it was a great mix of her old and new songs – I think I knew them all! She has a casual stage presence and a good rapport with crowd and band! I could have stayed after to get a signed cd – but I got nervous at the idea! Gotye was on after her and he has a very techy set going on. Lots of graphics to go with his music. He let the crowd sing the female part of his main hit which I found a little dissapointing.

Had we planned better Wogan may have enjoyed some of the terrible heavy metal music he enjoys so much – there was a pavillion devoted to it! As it was, we caught the main acts we were after then strolled around and sampled some of the food. Wogan enjoyed his first deep fried chocolate bar as I watched in horror.. ok ok – I totally had a little bit of the end!

Fremont Oktoberfest … in late September

This weekend just past we went to Oktoberfest in Fremont (which is a suburb just down the road from us) – $35 dollar tickets included 10 free tastings. There was a huge variety of beers available – mostly local American brews, but a few legit Belgian and English beers as well.

It was understandably a very popular event, but pretty well run despite the crowds! A ticketing system buys you your samples, so it makes line movements very quick. Wogan and our mates with us enjoyed tasting a lot of the seasonal pumpkin brews – which nearly every local brewer seemed to have going. (I was a sober sister that night). There were a few ciders and dark beers on tap, but not many. That being said, there was still a LOT of beer to taste – several main beer tents and a host of other little ones scattered around.

The only other beer festival I have attended was an expensive and poorly planned event in Perth, Western Australia. This was refreshing in comparision!

We haven’t been out much in the last month or so – winter is coming to Seattle and us poor Australians are not prepared! It is frosty here people!