Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Components to a bad day:

• Finding out information too late to save time for yourself and others. Twice.
• Having to force people to answer your questions directly rather than deflect. Twice.
• Getting stuck on an annoying, soul-sapping conference call without much hope for extraction.
• Not having any tasty pudding-yogurt left for lunch.
• Needing to go grocery shopping desperately.
• Being exhausted and fearing the grocery store and therefore procrastinating it. (good and bad really)

Bonus round that almost makes up for the day:
I put in the deposit for our new yurt. It’ll be ready in a couple weeks! Sadly, we’re only getting it in time for Pennsic because someone else had to drop out of the yurt queue… but at least we can give their yurt a happy home!

tags: bad day, communication, meetings, tired, work, yurt

I don’t quite have a “Somewhere Safe” but I do have a little box where I put little things that I don’t want to lose but don’t have immediate usefulness or relevance to my world. It is my little box of awesome. This is where I put the Spectrum Scientifics business card the Fop handed me. It’s also where the business cards of people like our accountant, mortgage dude and various doctors end up. Merchant cards from Pennsic and quilt shows? In the little box of awesome. Card for the random 60-something man dating a a 20-something guy my coworker tried to hit on in a bar in Mystic? Tempus’ card? Charles the potter’s card? Colleen’s card? All in the little box of awesome. I also keep the various membership cards and expired ID in this box.

But, most awesomely… I thought to put the pinnacle of handy things in the little box of awesome. Instructions, hastily written in metric units on two 3×5″ pieces of paper torn from a little notebook by a lovely woman (with a lovely accent) at Pennsic whom I accosted*** from the line for the ATM two or three Pennsics ago, to make a viking apron dress. I was terribly clever to put these 2 bits of paper in the little box of awesome. They would have been lost long ago if it weren’t for the little box of awesome.

I have transcribed them to one of my notebooks and ordered linen. I need crappy, ugly, horrible fabric for a mock-up. I might actually have an apron dress by Pennsic!

Of note, I apparently can translate metric to English but I fail at converting feet to yards. For a good 10 minutes I thought I was going to need 8 yards of fabric when in fact I only need 8 feet. I should sleep more. Now perhaps…

***To say I accosted her is a terrible exaggeration. Really, I remarked to lisaf that I needed to make an awesome apron dress like that fabulous one on the woman walking by. The lovely woman stopped, chatted a bit, and drew up a quick pattern which she then thrust upon me. She apologized for being in such a hurry - she was late for court preparations or something.

tags: little box of awesome, random, sewing, unit conversion, viking apron dress

I went to an SCA event this weekend - Ducal Challenge over in Baron Sands. I know, this was rather shocking since I hardly ever go to events. It was a lovely, gray, cool and breezy day. We arrived late, but there was still fencing to be had for the Fop and fighting for me to watch and snap a few photos of. The problem with riding to an event with the King’s Rapier Champion is that you have to stay for Court. I did finish stringing a green garnet/carnelian/amber necklace during Court - now I just need to add the clasp.

After the event we headed to Casa di Thomas & Marion for some food, socializing and a viewing of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings with RiffTrax commentary. The silliness of MST3K + the extended storyline of Tolkien = highly amusing movie. (It was still amusing despite my need to sleep.) All in all a good day.

Sunday was absorbed by making brunch, calling mothers, running errands and such. I made bacon and I think the smell has only just now, 2 days later, disappeared. There’s nothing like walking down the stairs or coming back into the house and thinking, “Mmmmm, bacon!” I got a pair of rosebushes at BJ’s that I need to get in the ground today too. The basil plants I started from seed look ready to be planted al fresco but the peppers need another week before they go outside I think. Hurray for another week of impending puttering in the dirt!

Yesterday was a busy day of work and grocery shopping. There’s nothing like needing to be very productive on a Monday that is already filled with meetings!

tags: ducal challenge, gardening, lord of the rings, rifftrax, sca, weekend

Itty Bitty Kitty Committee is back with new cuteness of doom!!!

Mini donkeys are possibly the most adorable pack animals ever. (I blame Sparrow for this.)

If you’re on Ravelry, I’m greenness there. I promise pics of stuff soon. I remembered how to knit Saturday night (well, I confirmed that I haven’t forgotten how to knit) so I actually have a project in process.

A relatively tiny box, a complete apartment worth of furniture.

And Revival Clothing is having a store-wide 20% off sale (orders > $50).

tags: donkeys, furniture, kittens, links, random, ravelry, revival clothing

Highlights collected! Click on your preferred violent activity below for more photos.

I plan to put up a full series including all the photos that aren’t duplicates or out of focus… later in the week probably. That way all you fabulous fencers can study all the photos in order and until your eyes bleed. In my uneducated opinion, there are some great looking parries not to mention even more poses in the full set.

• Fencing Highlights (and perhaps a few other random shots)
• Heavy Weapons Highlights

tags: fencing, heavy weapons, kingdom crusades, photographs, photography, sca

Last week’s trip to Connecticut was productive as well as a time-suck in that I never get as much done in New London as I do at home. All in all it was a good if tiring work week. I go back at the end of the month for a bunch of training and more meetings. Whee… I really need to mail some expense reports.

This weekend was Kingdom Crusades down in Maryland. Saturday I discovered the rapid fire setting on my camera. Many, many photos were taken of fencing and heavy list fighting, where “many, many” is equal to 754. I got them all downloaded to the computer yesterday. I’ll pick through them and get some of the highlights up on Flickr soon.

The weekend was too hot - it was almost Pennsic weather, which is unacceptable for the first weekend of October. Saturday morning was lovely - overcast and foggy - but quickly turned soupy with heat and humidity. By the time we were leaving on Sunday, the commentary sounded like Pennsic too as we all started to look forward to the air conditioning in our cars, long showers and comfortable beds. The right side of my body is still stiff and angry from sleeping on those silly beds. The heat and sun really sapped my energy too, which helpfully prevented me from completely borking my sleep schedule. The sunburn on my face is still sensitive to the touch.

It’s been unseasonably warm… okay, it’s been really bloody hot. It’s over 80° F right now and was warmer than that all weekend. The forecast looks good for a cooler weekend, but that’s daaaaaays away. Days!!!

tags: kingdom crusades, sca, travel, weather, weekend, work

There is a short set of photos from the Rapier Champions battle up on Flickr. By short I mean 59 photos. For those of you interested in paging through bout after bout, I exported a much larger set (259) and put it up on its own pages for your view pleasure. These photos haven’t been cropped or edited at all - something I will eventually get to with the shots I really like. But not now.

I want to thank everyone who wore sashes, capes, ribbons and other swooshy things - the photos are much more interesting when you can see that there was movement going on. Next tournament can I tie ribbons to all the fencers to make the photos even more fun? Pretty please?

Duncan’s bouts with Falling Down Woman start here. She drops her first sword here. Her dagger starts to fly here. If you start from the beginning and step through the whole set of bouts, it’s pretty entertaining. To me it looks like she’s always got her weight on the wrong foot (hence spending so much time on the ground). She does get one good shot in, but ultimately Duncan is victorious.

• Rapier Champions - full set
• Rapier champions - short set
• Other Pennsic XXXVI shots




• Ducan’s expressive fencing eyebrows
• Griffith chases that cute butt around the field - they were totally flirting…
• The Queen smooches Andre
• Um… are they dancing? - Pascual and Connor

tags: fencing, pennsic, pennsic xxxvi, photographs, photography, rapier champions, sca

I’ve posted the first round of my Pennsic photos. The second round will come later and include more of the fencing photos. I took a lot of photos at the Champions Tourney. Enough that I was tempted to go offsite for another 2gb memory card for the camera…

The shots behind the link (clicky the photo) are mostly of people in camp and up at that tournament. There is, of course, the gratuitous “drying our boots by the fire pit” photo as well. Hurray for the Stargate!

The heat, wet and lack of space on my memory card gave me excellent excuses not to go up to the field battle. I get really paranoid about getting the new camera wet. Funny that. Oh, not to mention the mud… goodness there was a lot of mud. This was definitely one of those years when I didn’t feel like I needed to stay at War past Midnight Madness on Wednesday and I probably could have skipped that as well. It’s best we stayed — the canvas dried out a bit making it lighter to pack up and move — but the volume of rain really made it tiresome there for a while.

tags: pennsic, pennsic xxxvi, photographs, photography

Pennsic was hot, humid, wet, damp, and great. I have a cold now, but I think the happy chinese medicine nisaa gave me held it off an extra day (so I could help unpack yesterday) and in general lessened its impact on my life. Hurray! Of course, that still means I’m rundown and congested today, but that’s better than having it hit me Saturday or Sunday.

So here’s the quick rundown of things I want to remember for next year while I can still remember it.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced at Pennsic this year:

• I need another large memory card for my camera.
• We need to level our bed next year.
• Acupuncture is amazing.
• Heat and humidity of mighty oppressiveness make it easy to skip Pennsic classes.
• Rain and mud of mighty quantities make it easy to skip Pennsic classes.
• More linen and silk.
• Viking apron dresses are key and I should make some.
• Food at the food court is boring and fattening. We should bring some food to grill in camp next year.
• On the topic of food, it’s such a pity to watch an amazing bed of coals go to waste in the Stargate (our amazing firepit) each night… I should put together some interesting things to bake in the coals for breakfast. (Either in foil or a dutch oven or both…)

I’ve imported all the photos from my camera’s card. Most of them are of the Rapier Champions Tournament, unsurprisingly. Most of the sunburn I got was from that Tournament too. Hopefully I’ll get some of them up this week. I’ll probably throw the whole series from the Champions tourney somewhere other than Flickr for you fencer types.

After 2 showers and a loooooong bath, my toenails are still dirty but the rest of me feels clean. I should start to tackle the laundry next. Eek. Laundry.

tags: heat, pennsic, pennsic xxxvi, rain, sca, sick, travel, weather