PARTY TRAIN: The Deptford Project, a 1960s train carriage redesigned by Studio Myerscough into an organic restaurant, is a permanent installation at the annual Deptford Design Festival in London.

AUGUST

Melbourne Stencil Festival, Australia It’s ten days of street art and stencil celebration. Events include live spraying demos and an auction of festival-created pieces. stencilfest.net

Buskerfest, Toronto

See crafty aerialists, body painters, and offbeat artisans, such as the sculptor who transforms candy into fish shapes. The lack of scheduling promotes spontaneity, but you can likely count on some type of flame show as well. torontobuskerfest.com

SEPTEMBER
Mid-Autumn Festival, Singapore
This harvest festival honors the moon god with
ornamental dragons nibbling on mooncakes,
and a celebration that combines Chinese lanterns
with those resembling pop-culture icons.
2008lanternfestival.com.sg

along the runway amid an awesome display of performance art. worldofwearableart.com

4 Weeks of FreeDesigndom, Netherlands Last year’s event featured the Sunday Adventure Club, an ode to urban pioneers that included an inner-city garden recreated as an outdoor beauty parlor, and Urban Play, a showcase for innovative ideas like movable parks and a carousel-themed traffic roundabout. freedesigndom.com

OCTOBER

Annual Pumpkin Regatta, Nova Scotia Sure, there’s the pumpkin weigh-off, pumpkin carving, and pumpkin painting, but the real crafty highlight is the regatta where humongous, hollowed-out gourds are made into human-powered, floatable works of art, then raced along Windsor’s Lake Pesaquid. worldsbiggestpumpkins.com

Deptford Design Festival, London DECEMBER

This fair showcases artistic talents with events like Noche de los Rábanos, Oaxaca, Mexico
24-Hour Design and Make, where teams of furniture Local artisans craft mariachi figures, flamenco
makers, graphic artists, and textile designers create dancers, and Christmas nativity scenes out of rad-
before a live audience. deptforddesign.co.uk ishes at this Mexican vacation spot. Dried flower
and cornhusk crafting competitions are all part of
the century-old event. craftzine.com/go/radish

World of WearableArt Awards Show, New Zealand More than 150 of the world’s most inventive fashions — ranging from propeller-equipped bras to Lego-formed tutus to clothing made from human hair and Tchaikovsky sheet music — are worked

Laura Kiniry is a San Francisco-based freelance writer who’s busy snapping photos and learning design when she’s not writing articles and guidebooks.

Photograph by Rebecca Molina