25th Annual Texas Scottish Festival

[Morris at Heathfield]

The Houston Highlanders practicing for the competition. I love the Caledonia tartan, so I was rooting for them to win. This is why I can never be a judge.



The Houston Highlanders performing their set in the Heritage Dance Tent.



The North Texas Caledonian Pipes & Drums performing their set.



The Bayou City Pipes and Drums decided to make a grand entrance onto the stage.



Performing their set on the stage.



And performing yet another set while exiting the stage.



They come to a halt, and the performance is over.

[Morris at Heathfield]

The judges are busy tallying the points. Will the Houston Highlanders' tartan affect Bob Richardson's decision?



Now they're conferring to determine the winner. At least, I assume that's what they're doing.



Congratulating each other after the awards are given. The results were:

3rd: Houston Highlanders
2nd: North Texas Caledonian Pipes & Drums
1st: Bayou City Pipes and Drums

The Houston Highlanders came in second place for drumming, however. If I overheard correctly, they also got high marks for their uniforms.

I asked one of the Houston Highlanders what tunes they performed. (Because the Caledonians performed one of the same tunes in their set, I mistakenly assumed they all performed the exact same set.) I wrote them down on a piece of paper—the same piece of paper I noted down the Breadalbane Fencibles tartan thread count on.

[Morris at Heathfield]

After the Gaelic class I noticed this woman lining up for whisky tasting. In particular I noticed the lovely tartan she was wearing. Later on I saw her standing in line near a brewery booth. Finally, when I saw her just walking along, I had to ask her if I could take her picture. I told her I had ancestors from Angus, but I didn't think to ask her why she was wearing the Angus tartan. (Although "because it's pretty" would suffice for me.)

[Morris at Heathfield]

Having splurged on lunch, dinner was a bit more stressful. There was an ATM on the grounds. I tried to withdraw $10, but was only allowed to withdraw in multiples of $20. Unfortunately, things were a bit tight, and $20 plus the service charge for using the ATM would have put me under. I gave up and spent the rest of my cash on what I could afford: a Scottish meat pie. I didn't have enough money left over for a lemonade, so I just dropped most of my remaining cash into the tip jar for the wee lassie minding the store.



I sat by a family at a crowded table. They were amused when they saw me take a picture of my dinner. I told them I like to take pictures of food that I haven't eaten before, which is true, but not strictly relevant in this case, as I have had the same dinner on a previous occasion.



And this is what it looks like inside. Mostly just ground beef, but also oatmeal.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Whenever I had nothing else to do, I went to the St. Kilda booth to look through their swatch books.



Stewart of Atholl, Strathmore's T7 (light weight) tartan.



Crawford ancient, Lochcarron Reiver (light weight).



Inverness modern, also Lochcarron Reiver. I recently began to wonder if my kilt wasn't in 11 oz. tartan, as I'm not really an expert in tartan weight, and Lochcarron Reiver seems to be the only cloth in which the Inverness modern tartan is available. However, after examining Lochcarron's Inverness modern Reiver tartan, I'm once again fairly confident that my kilt is in a heavy weight tartan.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Scottish Country Dancing. You may notice that one of the dancers is a fair bit shorter than the rest.



At one point the dance instructors invited all the wee bairns on stage for a dance. Apparently there had been a whole passel of wee lassies wanting to dance, but by this point few remained. The wee lassie in pink was determined to have her dance, though.



Mostly adults again. The wee lassie in yellow decided to ask her brother to dance.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Lassies galore! And a couple of token laddies on guitar: Hawaiian shirt guy and salmon shirt guy.



One of the lassies sang a song, inspired by the Tulsa games, on the proper sitting posture for kilted gentlemen.



"Will Ye Go, Lassie Go?" Emily of Clandestine used her phone as a makeshift autocue for her verse.

[Morris at Heathfield]

No children on stage at this hour. Two gentlemen wearing black kilts have joined the group.

[Spartan Tartan]

Now THIS is a picture thread!!! Absolutely wonderful. I feel like I was there. Thank you for taking the time to post and explain all those pictures. I really enjoyed reading this.

[Morris at Heathfield]

I was only trying to take a picture of this guy taking down his pool, but the stadium lights kind of stole the show.



The clan tent area is now deserted.



MacDonald's awa' to his bed.



The Campbells have gone, Oho! Oho!