Coronation and more

We managed to get hanksans bid approved for Kingdom A&S next March! Yay! It will be sponsored by the Shire of Mountain Edge, and will be at Pacific University in Forest Grove.

We arrived on site for Coronation REALLY LATE. But we found a relatively level spot for our tent and had lots of help setting up (THANK YOU EVERYONE!) and even ended up neat Alfric and Leith and Allessandra, so had good neighbors. Well, aside from the  annoying dancing pirates that is.  I will see enough dancing gypsy/pirate next saturday when we go slumming. ;-)

ursuleand I attended the apprentices tea on Saturday Morning. I displayed some of the items I had made for commission, which worked well as the recipiants all found me. I also managed to sell a few extra items and pick up a few new commissions. Not to mention just having fun talking about glass and showing off. :-) I managed to not eat any of the cookies, which made me proud, and saw a lot of people I know and like. All and all a good experiance. I did have to haul the stuff all the way from our ampsite across the road, This has raised my determination to cart train Rasuptin. I am looking at dog carts and found the old TI article on dog carting, which has a lot of good info. I now have a winter project of making a dog cart, unless I can convince Ed to make one for me.

We had some chicken, leek and barley stew that I made from an anglo-saxon recipie in the brittish museum cookbook for lunch. It was quite good, and we have a bunch left ovber that I foze. Yay for pre-cooking medieval foods!

The red pavilion had its first set-up after being waterproofed and with sides on. It was nice, and gives me ideas about how to finish it. I also did the first trial set-up of the not yet finished fire pit. Very useful for design ideas also, though I don't know when I will have time to finish everything. I am now wanting mroe period cooking implements, but they are all expensive, so I may just  have to start making stuff this winter once we have a better blacksmithing area set up. I may also experiment with some copper work. I think dad still has a prewter spoon mold which I will also drag out.

Leith has apparently been practicing five balls in hopes of surpassing Jason and I in numbers juggling. We can't have that. luckily there is a five ball workshop at the International Jugglers Association Festival which is in Portland this week. I am going tomorrow. It should inspire me to practice hard for at least a month or two. I also am going to take a hat manipulation workshop. ursule gave me another couple silly knitted 16th century hats and I think I need to use my silly hats in a performance. It will be entertaining.

Guiseppie (sp?) is pressuring me to enter something in Kingdom Bardic. I did actually think about this before, but was going to wait a year or so because I have some specific ideas about Things To Do which require a lot of practice and some more advanced props. On the other hand, if I can track down some better Diabolo documentataion I may be able to pyt something decent together. I could do a new version of the Magnificent Maurice (espec. if I can juggle fire on site and find a place to set up a slack line), then do a diabolo act to music, and then I just need one more piece really. Does anyone know anything about medieval Chinese music and where I could get a recording of some or someone to play some for me? I would also need garb to prefrom in which could be interesting timing wise.

I am also now oficailly the figure-head autocrat for an equestrian event in November. I hadsort of forgotten about volunteering for this, but luckily I just have to show up and Macca is handling all of the real organization stuff. It should be fun. Being a person who wants to do everything, I am excited about this chance to learn more about equestrian stuff. Maybe I can even get Ailie to show up.

All right, I have written mroe than enough. I could write more but you are all probabaly sick of my ramblings. And I have procrastinated long enough. Must go solder. Sorry, not spell/typo checking because I suck.

More Procrastinating!

I just ordered the other 255 yards of the 57" promotional sunforger from Top Value Fabrics. I kept thinking about it and have ahd a few more people approach me about canvas, so I decided I'd better just do it before it was gone. So, now I will truly have more cloth than god. I WIN! ;-)

I have been thinking more about Kingdom Bardic and I have many ideas. I am now almost determined to enter because of the mixed reaction when I told people about planning to enter this weekend. Any time people don't think my ideas are great I get this horrid urge to prove them wrong. Why do you think I ended up entering Kingdom A&S in the first place? :-) But I do think it could be a lot of fun, and I won't be crushed if I don't win. It would be neat to get enough stuff (and unusual stuff!) together to do a full entry, so I am going to see if I think I can swing it after a few more days of thought.

So if I do enter, I am thinking of doing the European juggling/ object manipulation act with patter, doing the chinese yoyo / diabolo to music, and maybe some puppetry. I was thinking about drama, but puppets are fun and I want to have fun with this, not stress out. And I may be able to get Tamar to help me out since she has this passion for puppets.

I have been having thoughts about the nature of bardic, performances, and physical theater. Juggling shows are sort of difficult in that they are more like an entire concert rather than preforming just one song. The general public clumps all of the juggling together while they differentiate greatly between types of music and songs. I could theoretically do entries that were all "juggling" that would be equivalent to playing five different musical instruments because of the different skills required. But in reality I need to differentiate enough to show a certain amount of breadth even though I am definitely oriented towards the physical arts rather than lyrical. BTW, it is not that I can't sing or haven't played musical instruments, I am just not in practice with any musical instruments, and I get horrid stage fright when I sing in front of people and am not boozed up. :-P

One of the things that will be Interesting to get done in time for bardic are costumes. My Magnificent Maurrice costume was borrowed from Iason the Voracious, who just moved to the West. So I need a doublet and hose, preferably with large codpiece. I will also need to do some research about Chinese garb, about which I am a total dummy, and need something that will work for that performance as well. I would be willing to do a trade for garb if anyone is interested. I make cool stuff...