Playing Catchup Part 2

Let's take a look at my To Do list before Faire starts on April 4th, in no particular order:

• Make a pattern for wrap pants off the pair I borrowed from a friend 10 months ago
• Sew 2 pairs of wrap pants using above-mentioned pattern
• Make favors using my new stamp and fimo clay
• Sort out the tote full of accessories
• Pack the garb tote for opening weekend after narrowing down what to wear to 3 or 4 outfits to choose from
• Charge camera batteries
• Get the toiletry bag packed for the season

Now, that doesn't even include the sewing I need to do before 3rd weekend, and then that for Final weekend (Memorial Day).

So the weekend after NTIF, when I *should* have been home sewing, or making favors, or sorting garb & accessories, I went to Midland. If you are at all familiar with Texas, you're probably thinking MIDLAND???? Why on earth would anyone go to Midland voluntarily? My best buddy lives about an hour and a half south of there, and one of my favorite pipers' EJ was performing with his band Clandestine at the Scottish-Irish Festival out there, so we decided it would be a grand time for us to get together, giggle, shop, and hear some rockin' Celtic music. I flew out to Midland and Darla & her boyfriend (who shall henceforth be referred to as SFB, I'll let you decide what it means) picked me up at the airport on Friday afternoon and we headed directly to my favorite candle shop The Candle Cafe. I was quite restrained, as I was flying home and didn't have a lot of extra space in the suitcase for candles. I came home with her newest cherry scent, amaretto, and and aspen woods.

We stayed at a motel that I'd booked (and prepaid) online.

Yeah, note to self, NEVER THERE AGAIN. It was a "Suite" yeah, this is the bedroom. There was an 18 inch or so space between the beds. Note the lack of a nightstand... yeah that was in the corner near the foot of the bed on the left. The space between each bed and the wall it was up against was about 3 inches, at best. The closet, which clearly should have had a door, did not, simply because there isn't space for it to open , or if it was open, to close, so they just took it off completely, apparently, it doesn't show in the photo because it's to the right of the bed on the right. These next 2 shots are from the bathroom, which DID have a door, with a locking knob to boot!

Love the peeling wallpaper and water damaged ceiling... scary, when you consider we were on the 2nd floor of a 3 story motel. Clearly they are "remodeling" or something. Especially lovely is the use of MASKING TAPE to tape the seam at the wall & ceiling in the BATHROOM

Yeah, pretty isn't it??

The coffee pot didn't work, which doesn't matter to me, since my coffee is Dr Pepper, but SFB was cranky on Saturday morning. The festival itself was fun. Smaller than NTIF, really probably less than 25% the size of NTIF and maybe half the size of Texas Scottish Festival, but hey, Go Permian Basin for having a Celtic festival! Probably 90% of the vendors I'd seen the previous weekend, but they are awesome vendors, and I found stuff that I either didn't see at NTIF, or caught a glimpse in passing but didn't stop to look, or I looked but left behind for whatever reason. I made some awesome purchases that I'll get a lot of enjoyment and use out of.

We won't go into SFB making a complete ass of himself at dinner at a little Mexican restaurant trying to show off his Spanish skills by talking to the obviously ASIAN waitress in Spanish, and then deciding to publicly proclaim that all of his relationship problems are my fault. Whatfreakingever. Yeah, there's a reason he's SFB!

I flew home Sunday afternoon in time to get to Burleson for dinner with friends after their Pirate Invasion at Weston Gardens, and was still home by 6 to do laundry and start getting ready for the week.

This past weekend I had lunch and time to hang with my friend Erin wandering through Joann's looking for fabrics for later in the season sewing projects. Sunday I went to Benbrook with some Faire Folke for rat pucking practice and visiting. Sunblock Nazi (that would be me) FAILED and I wound up with a bit of sunburn around the top of my forehead and on my arms. Poor Isa's face is peeling already from her burn. Sad thing is, we BOTH had SPF 70 sunblock with us, and just didn't use it! Yeah, epic FAIL for me!

OK that's enough rambling for one night... Gardening posts start tomorrow or Friday....

Time to Play Catch Up, Part 1

I'd tell ya that I'm going to try to give you the short version, but well, I don't know how to do a short version of much of anything, so bear with me. My festival season has officially started. NTIF is held every year the first full weekend of March and many of the local rennies consider it sort of a kickoff for the Faire season, because it's one of those situations where we can dress up in garb, or our kilts and be out in public without garnering much negative attention. This year marked the return of The Rogues to the festival after a much too long absence. As a result, my favorite Canadian, his wife, and a fiddler came down and stayed with me. It was a long and busy weekend, and I feared that my sweet Leo would be stressed to the max. Then, about 6 on Friday night, Randy said, as he was leaving to go meet other friends for dinner, "I'll see you about 10 in the morning." Puzzled, I said "Oh, you're coming over to the house? Ok, that's fine" To which he responded "Oh yeah, didn't we tell you, we've got to rehearse, and we are planning to do it at your house. Is that ok?" "Umm, noo, you didn't tell me, but sure, I'm game for it." Before I left for the airport, I did manage to visit with my friends Mary & Sakeeta at their Estelril Enterprises booth and get more lotion and salves, as well as catching the Clandestine show (yeah those pictures aren't all edited yet), and a wee glimpse of a wee new Ameri-Scot, Max Kean, who was a whole 3 1/2 weeks old. By the time that I got home from the airport with the Canadians, I had learned that in my media room there would be 2 sets of bagpipes, a fiddle (actually 2 different ones, but played separately by the same guy), acoustic guitar, probably bass & electric guitar. Yeah, that was going to be interesting. Since we didn't get home until almost 12:30 and the Canadians' were at 1:30 a.m. after being up since early the day before, a text was sent telling Randy not to show before noon! Bow fell in love with Nelson's wife, and commandeered his guitar case for her morning nap. She's such a rotten thing. She learned from the master, the late, great Mr. Moro, who was absolute the King of sweet kitties, thus she believes that the only reason that guitar case came to TX was to provide her with a new and interesting bed for awhile. For DAYS after they left she kept going into the guest bedroom looking for them and wailing her head off when there weren't there! I got a couple of shots of the rehearsal as well: Doug's back, Lyric on chanter, Nelvis, Randy beating on the wall, and Corey on fiddle Doug & Lyric both on chanter, and Nelson's back Apparently years of listening to bagpipes blare through the house on the CD player/Ipod has mellowed Leo somehow, because he slept through the whole thing. By the time we got to the festival on Saturday there wasn't much shopping time, and I didn't get many decent shots because I was at the sale table instead of sitting on the front row.

Sunday was a better photo op for me, and I got some great shots, but haven't gotten them all edited to upload, so you'll just have to wait. We got out there a little earlier, and I got to spend some time with Erin, Tony & Tom, and later with Mark and sweet baby Claire, who, OMG is almost a year old! And isn't she absolutely darling? She LOVES her Auntie Rae and the camera!

Probably wasn't my best decision, leaving the festival to take the Canadians back to D/FW, then going back to the festival for a few more hours, because I was definitely POOPED by the time I got home that night, but I had fun and made some awesome purchases that I'll eventually add photos of as well. Yeah, I suck at getting photos done in a timely manner most of the time, so sue me. Note to self, schedule a vacation day for March 7th next year to recover from NTIF.

And well, I'm tired, so you'll just have to wait for Part 2, I guess, cuz I'm too tired to keep typing and 5 a.m. comes early tomorrow.

TEXAS

I live in north Texas, and have come to expect erratic weather patterns. But you know, when I got home today, this is what I saw when I looked out on the patio:

Yes, that is my thermometer, which reads 92 degrees. Yes, 92 degrees in FEBRUARY. This is ridiculous people! Normal this time of year is in the 60's. 30 degrees above normal. Yeah, I think that since I packed up my summer clothes back in November, there has been a total of maybe 10 days that were really too cool to wear my capris and sandals. I LOVE living in Texas, but sometimes the schitzophrenic weather drives me nuts. It's not uncommon to have a 35 degree change in temperatures from the time my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. until I get home in the evening. The moral of this story is, if you are coming to Texas anytime between February and April, you really might want to bring both summer and winter clothes, because not only might you need them, you might need them in one day.

NTIF is in a week, and I am definitely ready for a dose of live celtic music! I'm also hoping to get my photo made for my participant pass at Scarby, as long as I'm out there in garb, might as well, right? I'll have friends in from Canada for the weekend as well, which I'm sure will prove fun, especially since my poor boy cat Leo, is afraid of one of them. I'm hoping that with only the 4 of us in the house he'll be a little less freaked out than he was last summer, when he first met Nelson, as well as 6 other people he'd never seen before, plus a couple that he's met but doesn't see often. Perhaps I should go ahead and break out the Rescue Remedy....

Up & Down

This has been one of those up and down weeks. I used to have them ALL the freaking time, but in the past couple of months, since I've been uterus-free, they've not only gotten less frequent, they seem to have gotten less severe as well. Of course, it may be that they are still as severe as they ever were, but since I am feeling a little more balanced, the little stuff doesn't bother me as much.

On Sunday I got to visit with my sweet little kitty Molly. She lives with my friends Erin & Tony, but has been jointly claimed by another friend and me. She's not squatting or crouching down, she has really short little legs, sort of like me (well, and Erin for that matter). Erin used to breed and sell designer cats, including dwarves, sphynx, bambino, and others. Molly was born deaf, and therefore became a family pet, rather than a breeding cat. As much as I would love to bring her to my house, it just isn't fair to expect her, as a not young cat (I think she's about 5 or 6), to be moved into a strange house with not one, but 2 senior (both over 10 years old) cats that she doesn't know. Our other friend lives in an apartment and can't afford the additional pet deposit either. So we just love her when we are over there. And she loves us! My kids were all over me, trying to identify the white hair all over my red shirt when I got home!

On the down side, I've been frustrated most of the week because I want something that I can't have. At least right now. It's frustrated me off and on for several months, and I've truly learned more patience than I ever thought I had, but for some reason this week has been especially frustrating. There are one or two things that I could do and possibly rectify at least part of the situation, but I'm too big of a chicken to risk losing what I do have in order to POSSIBLY get what I want. Yep, that's me, covered with feathers and squawking bawkbawkbawk bukawk.

On the up side, only 2 weeks until NTIF, the local Irish Festival, which, at least for me, marks the beginning of the festival season. Most of my piping and drumming friends will be there, with their various bands. Some I've not seen since Dickens on the Strand in December, others its been longer, but either way, I'm looking forward to seeing all of them again.

It's also time to start getting busy with my sewing for Scarborough Faire. I've got several pairs of wrap pants to get made, as well as redoing some of my skirts that I made the first year I was making garb. I was going with EASY, at that point, and so not making panel skirts, or circle skirts. Yeah, 5 or 6 yards of fabric at the hemline is great. That same amount up around my waist, notsomuch.

There will also be SOMETHING using this fabric:

Awful isn't it? I think so too, but once a year something totally awful can be funny, and I assure you, once it's done, it's gonna be funny as hell, and I will post the evide-, umm, I mean pictures.

This weekend I'm hoping to get back to doing some cooking, so I can have better food than a frozen pizza for dinner in the evenings. This means I have to clean out the freezers and see what I've got in there to thaw, and what I've got in there that's just plain too freezer burned to salvage... The fridge got cleaned out last night, I need more veggies now. Darn, gonna have to make a trip to Central Market tonite, oh the horrors!