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Australia's Red Centre is awash with a record number of head accessory enthusiasts for the annual Beanie Festival, now in its 21st year.
'Chief beanieologist' Jo Nixon presides over the four-day festival that showcases colourful beanies made in Aboriginal communities around Central Australia and overseas.
"We've got about 500 beanie makers from around the world who send in their beanies, making Alice Springs the beanie capital of the world," Ms Nixon said.
So far this year's festival has sold more than $40,000 worth of beanies, and sales are up $4,000 compared to last year.
Seventy per cent of the profits go directly back to the beanie makers, with the other 30 per cent going towards workshops and the festival.
This year's theme is 'wearing the magic'.
"My stand-out is a beanie that's made from a beard, from a gentleman who went to Titjikala (a remote Indigenous community about 140 kilometres south of Alice Springs) with his very long beard," Ms Nixon said.
"The artists of Titjikala said 'you should shave that off and we're going to turn that into a beanie', so they did."
The beanie features traditional bush tucker from the Titjikala area in a handmade felt basket.
"They've felted all the food from that area in the basket, so there's felted goannas, witchetty grubs and honey ants," Ms Nixon said.
A beanie for Cathy Freeman
This year's festival is also a workshop for knitters hoping to make the world's longest beanie.
Ms Nixon says the project has been in the works for while.
"We've been working on this project for a number of years, people have been sending me metre lengths of beanies, it's an enormous big ball now," she said.
The knitters are aiming to break the current record in honour of Indigenous Australian Olympian Cathy Freeman.
"We picked 400 metres because that was Cathy Freeman's winning distance in the Sydney Olympics and we were all so proud of Cathy," Ms Nixon said.
'We don't want to learn about numbers, we want to learn how to make beanies'
The idea for the festival came about 20 years ago. Ms Nixon's aunt was teaching numeracy and literacy to women in the remote indigenous community of Yuendumu, about 300 kilometres' north west of Alice Springs, when the lesson suddenly changed direction.
"I've got this mad aunt, Aunty Dunlop, and she was crocheting beanies on her lunch break and the ladies said, 'we don't want to learn about numbers we want to learn how to make beanies'," Ms Nixon said.
Ms Nixon's 'mad aunt' returned to Alice Springs with about 100 beanies and asked her what to do with them.
Ms Nixon made pumpkin soup, hired a room at the Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs and hung the beanies from the roof.
"We had a little honesty box in the corner, $20 a beanie, heaps of people came and we sold out of beanies in 20 minutes," she said.
"Everyone said 'this is fantastic you've got to do it again next year', and 6,500 beanies later we're still pumping them out."
To be exact, there's 6,521 beanies at this year's festival and they've all been painstakingly hand crafted using a process known as 'needle-felting'.
Teaching the craft in remote communities
Passionate craftswomen like Julie Kitson from the remote community of Willowra are passing on their skills, encouraging more people to get involved.
Ms Kitson not only makes beanies for the festival, but teaches needle-felting to people in Central Australia's remote communities.
'I spent a week teaching other Indigenous ladies at the art centre in Santa Teresa... Yuendumu and Titjikala'," she said.
Ms Kitson is also a finalist in this year's festival for her beanie featuring budgerigars and bush tomato.
The festival was buzzing with a mixture of curious visitors and regular fixtures.
Dina has just moved to Alice Springs and this is her first beanie festival.
"Who would've thought of having a Beanie Festival? It's just so Alice Springs," she said.
Topics: wool, design, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-multicultural-festivals, alice-springs-0870
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