Crafts and tea at the Hamilton Fringe Festival

Not everyone was downing Guinness at the pub on St Patrick’s Day.

Some creative Hamiltonians were participating in the Tea, Craft and Vinyl event as a part of the Hamilton Fringe Festival.

The free event, based at the Meteor Theatre, aimed to provide a creative spot for people to get their craft on while enjoying a cup of tea and listening to old school vinyl records.

The idea of the event was to ditch the social media, mingle with one another, work on craft-in-progress and snack on home-made baking.

Samuel Abbort, 23, was DJ for a night, playing everything  from Edith Piaf to Pink Ployd and Cat Power.

“Wish I  brought more records,” he said.

Tea enthusiast Lily Hooker, 20, came along to the event with nine different teas, and a knitting set.

“This is such a cute little space where people are sharing what they are passionate about creatively,” Hooker said.

Hooker recounted her experience as she sat next to an older expert bunch of knitters who called themselves “Stitch and Bitch.”

The group is made up of 10 ladies who have been holding  knitting get-together for 20 years.

Six members of the group were at the event, and said they thoroughly enjoyed the night.

“Most of people here enjoyed themselves, and will be more than happy to come back again,” said Elizabeth Edgecombe, 71.

Another small knitting group sat at a different table.

“We are mums that wanted to get away,” said one.

One of the mums, Kate Woodcock, said: “I didn’t think Hamilton had all these people.”

One of the event organisers, Chelsee Woollaston, 29, said the event turned out differently from what she expected.

Some men attended, and there was a range of ages, showing how diverse Fringe Festival audience is, Woolaston  said.

“All we had to do was bring some tea pots and buy some tea bags. And people brought their own records.”