Clan tents abounded at the Dunedin Highland Games! This is what we are planning for our Clan Wardlaw! Plans are now in the works to be at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games coming up July 10-13, 2008!!

We will have a booth and tent, banners and flags a'flyin'!!! Come and join us there, we'll have a great time!

Wear your Wardlaw Tartan, bring your bagpipes and join the parade!! Write us and let us know what you want to do!

"Ancestral Earth - Part Two" is On Sale for a limited time for $40 to members of the Clan Wardlaw Association! Not a member? Go to the application page at this CWA website

In 2005, for the first time ever, the Wardlaws got a tartan of their own to wear, this designed by Diane Wardlaw with assistance from the House of Tartan (http://houseoftartan.co.uk/) located in the Scottish Highland village of Comrie. Discussion has been on-going since with Blair Urquhart of that company to have available on their website items in the Wardlaw Tartan to purchase.

Tartans for larger clans - hence bigger potential markets - are woven in anticipation of sales, and termed in the trade as 'regular' tartans. Tartans for smaller clans are usually considered as 'specials' requiring a specific order to weave and generally costing more.

We will now be considered a 'regular' tartan. This is to weave, produce and have in stock the items in the medium and light weights, also enough to begin the heavy weight for kilts.

Three main potential categories of Wardlaw Tartan are as follows:

1. Heavy weight, suitable for men's kilts (and e.g. upholstery also). This weight would be in subdued and darker shades more becoming and desirable to men.

2. Light weight, suitable for ties, shawls, stoles, baseball caps, tams, golf caps, bow ties, cummerbunds, scarves, head squares, wool ribbon strips, table runners, and such like.

House of Tartan is now prepared to guarantee to keep items of Wardlaw Tartan 'in stock', to be sold by them not as 'specials' but instead at the same price as equivalents for the larger clans (i.e. treating Wardlaw as a 'regular' tartan). This is now happening thanks to our special member donors. (See article next page.)

3. Medium weight, suitable for skirts, tartan trousers, trews, slacks, heavier scarves, and the like. These garments (due to requiring people's measurements) would be manufactured on request.

In light of the foregoing and as an investment to our Association's future, the Board has now put the money in as a one-time outlay towards setting up this arrangement with House of Tartan as detailed above. There are several reasons this project will be good:

Credibility: Our tartan will be treated by House of Tartan on a par with all of the other clans - no matter how big - thereby encouraging our members to acquire, wear and show it off with pride, and to persuade their Wardlaw relatives to do likewise. We will be considered by everyone as a mainstream clan.

Convenience: We will be able to buy many garments from House of Tartan 'by return' mail, and to order others (i.e. requiring made-to-measure) awaiting only their manufacture, not the weaving of the cloth.

Cost: Savings in purchase price of items should encourage wider usage. House of Tartan uses PayPal, so this would mean even greater convenience not having to go to the trouble and expense of currency exchange.

Confidence: Perhaps of yore the most tangible and emotive display of a clan's identity and its members' fraternity was in the wearing of their tartan. It is now no less so in clan associations like ours. One day, hopefully, we will have a Wardlaw Clan Gathering or perhaps attend an International Clan Gathering where all of the clans will be present with clansfolk each dressed in their tartans. Think on it, with our members amongst them - and attired in our own tartan, then, we will truly proclaim 'Wardlaw Ivermair'!