Friday, June 29, 2007

The best laid plans...

I just called the cattery I use and cancelled the booking I'd made for next weekend. Sadly, due to lack of confirmed bookings we've had to postpone the Strangehaven event we had planned until September, hence the cancellation. Fortunately, the cattery lady was happy enough as she has a queue of people waiting for cancellations, meaning my cats' space will be reallocated within the next hour. This is good as I like to keep the cattery on side in case I ever need to make an emergency or unplanned dash to the South West for family related matters.

With the cattery all squared away and my time my own again for next weekend, I was briefly wondering what to get up to but fear not, my time has been refilled. It looks like we'll head down to Tewkesbury for the Medieval Fayre and battle instead. Tewkesbury is free to get in, but you have to pay a small donation to park and I believe the organisers make most of their costs back from traders. The Fayre is a great place to buy fabric and see the more crafty end of stalls as well as traditional, historical kit suppliers. In other words there will be many opportunities in which I shall be sorely tempted to part with money. It will also be an opportunity to catch up with some friends from Plymouth I suspect, as I'll no doubt see a few familiar faces lurking around the market. In other words, all good... and it should go a good way to making up for the disappointment of a missed event.

In the meantime, I'm hoping for some dry weather this weekend - although I understand I'm unlikely to get it. I have tents to dry! Admittedly, they're not too bad but they still need to be aired and then folded, so they can re-emerge ready to use in a few weeks time.

With the Sweetpea Shawl finished, I'm contenting myself with knitting some ribbon scarves using a drop stitch pattern. This is the first time I've had a go at drop stitch, but it seems to be working out OK. The ribbon yarn I'm using is not disimilar to those I made last autumn, but then I crocheted them. The main difference in working it is that this time, it is behaving itself and having the ribbon on two sticks seems to be keeping it under control. Less twisting by far and much less of a nightmare to keep the loops open.

Other than that, this weekend marks the return to the bump since I think it's time we saw an increase in size. I have two of these physreps, so the plan is to take one of them, take it apart and then start adding layers until it is huge!

3 comments:

Frizbe said...

So if you flyer Tewkesbury, and we flyer Lichfield (another mid fest!) then we may get it covered?

RichT said...

Not sure about flyering Tewksbury, those medieval reenacter types can be real snooty about LRP but you never know and if any event could have few larpers present it would be Tewksbury, since very relaxed about costume and is great for shopping.

Anyway looking forward to Tewksbury without the hassle of being a participant, last time I was there I had 5 stitches in the forehead and had to walk along the full length of the battlefield with blood dripping down my face. I was fine until I needed an anaesthetic injection and started to go woozy so they put be on oxygen until I got colour back so they could do the stitching. The drive back was fun especially when the wound re-opened on the motorway.

Julie Spriddle said...

I'm with Richard on the Flyers. If you can get some to us, we can take them along and see how we go but I know that Re-enactors can be very stuffy about that sort of thing. Anne Laverick's re-enactor market in March had notices up explicitly forbidding the passing out of leaflets for example.

My thought would be that we'd be better off hunting down LARP specific traders and politely asking if we can canvas their customers for a short while. But I will talk to Dave as he is much better at thinking along these lines than me.

I've only ever experienced Tewkesbury as a visitor, although as a friend of the participants, I tend to end up in the re-enactor's area, esp after the battle when its often all hands to the armour to get it off before the person inside cooks.