Everything at the Pirongia Craft Day is New Zealand made and always pulls a crowd. Photo / Supplied
Everything at the Pirongia Craft Day is New Zealand made and always pulls a crowd. Photo / Supplied
The quiet settlement of Pirongia is set to burst into life during one of New Zealand's biggest home-grown craft days.
The annual Pirongia Craft Day, now in its 41st year, attracts around 12,000 people to Franklin Street, the Waipā town's attractive main thoroughfare.
Beginning early each year the event isorganised by a team of volunteers and is firmly focused on home-made and home-grown crafts, food and entertainment.
The first Pirongia Cottage Crafts Festival Day was held in 1978 by a group of local crafts people keen to restore and preserve the original school building.
Over the years the craft day has become the major fundraiser for a range of local non-profit community groups and organisations.
Organiser Susan Ransfield said the event was a major community effort and would host about 200 stall-holders with another 50 on the waiting list.
Food outlets would be handled by 10 local groups and entertainment includes stilt walkers, bands, Viking re-enactors and a human gnome statue.
Two of the organisers Susan Ransfield (left) and Robyn Peters are expecting more than 12,000 at the Pirongia Craft Day on Sunday. Photo / Supplied
Fellow organising committee member Robyn Peters said the thing that made Pirongia special was its commitment to locally made and grown products including arts, crafts, plants, pottery, jewellery, clothing, painting and photography.
