Lord Mayors Parade - final nights work

We spent the night before the parade constructing the floats. Helpfully, it was really windy and poured with rain for most of the night. By 4am in the morning we were gaffa taping foil to our legs to keep the cold out. The photos are taken as dawn approaches (so a bit dark - like our mood) as we were still feverishly sliding around on the wet floats and up ladders applying ruffles of net and shiny things. We finished at about 5.30 - just in time to get an hour and a halfs sleep before the parade.

If it sits still, give it a ruffle! This is Oscar in the workshop - he used to live in a circus so he's unphased by a bit of frou-frou.

Burnett & Catt - we've been busy, carnival 2009

We make costumes and floats for the Parade but we're also in it. Duncan will be 'Miss' Milky Way this year - this is him testing out the chopper / wide brimmed flying saucer hat configuration.If you look through the telescope you can see the Earth bobbing around on a bit of wire - just like the real thing...




I'll be navigating the Sun costume through the parade. With its backpack it's about 10 ft tall & has a good 'wingspan' with its cloak rods outstretched so I'm hoping for low winds.

The moon costume is also rodded in the cloak, originally the wearer was going to carry the large moon on a stick seen in an earlier post but it's too difficult to negotiate the cloak rods and the pole so now she'll have a bearer to carry it in front of her.
The 'smash' alien will sit in the moon balloon float, I've given him a potato masher, think the other claw needs a fork and a potato.

Miss Milky Ways dress had to be more minimal cos 'she' has to navigate down the parade route on the telescope bike. We still went to town on the embroidery though.


First and second incarnations of milky ways head dress. We preferred the space ship with the sparkly alien look to the crusty comet above it.