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.

My weekend

It’s hard to believe the year is almost half over already! WOW! By this time on Saturday, I’ll be (hopefully) making my final descent into Cancun. Originally, we were scheduled for an early morning something on Tuesday evening, so we were going to have 3 nights and 3½ days, roughly. Once we’d paid our final, nonrefundable payment for our “subject to change until final payment is made” scheduled trip, we were given our schedule. It changed. Now we arrive around 5 pm, and have to leave the hotel for the airport at 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, so we have 2 and less than ½ days, for the money we paid. But that’s another blog. This has been a great spring for my music collection…. I’ve already talked about American Highlander, the latest offering from The Rogues. I’ve also added the latest offering from Clandestine, ReD. If you’ve seen them live in the last year, you’ve already heard some of the awesome new stuff. From the first time I heard it, I’ve loved Wobbly Wheel Set, Sexy An Dros, and The Ewe & the Sound. The harmonizing of Emily, EJ & Al, is great. Overall, it’s a toe-tapping, dancing in your seat (or jumping up and dancing), fun and interesting disc to listen to. Early last week, I went to the post office to discover my Box O’ Swag, from my pre-adoption of Marc Gunn’s latest 2, Whiskers in the Jar and Going for Brogue. My swag included not just copies of the cds but also a handful of other discs to share, some bumper stickers and a new t-shirt. I think I’ve still got a copy of Going for Brogue to share, as well as an Irish Drinking Songs: The Cat Lover’s Companion, and a couple of his first cat CD Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers. If you’re interested, let me know, or head on over to CD Baby and pick up a copy. Whiskers in the Jar is another fun collection of traditional Irish tunes to which Marc & others have rewritten the words, honoring, playing with, or expressing the loving frustration we cat lovers feel for our feline babies. I SOOO understand Danny Boy… as I have my own obnoxious brat, sweet baby who finds it quite amusing to attack my toes when I am asleep, so as to wake me from deep and blissful slumber. What Shall We Do With a Catnipped Kitty pretty much ensures that I’ll be mixing up the words to Drunken Sailor forever… An absolute must for the cat lover in your world! Going for Brogue is Marc’s offering of traditional Irish songs and sea shanties done with wonderful accents. There’s something for the Irishman in you, something for the pirate in you. At first listen, several of the sea shanties sounded odd to my ear, since I’d really only heard them done in 4 or 5 part harmony by the Corsairs, but by the time the song was over, I was backing up to listen again to Marc’s wonderful rendition. Once again, Marc’s love of music and making music shines through in his voice and music. Order a copy for your pirate, or your irish! In the grand scheme of things, I probably should have spent yesterday doing something totally constructive, like getting laundry done so I could pack for the trip, or cleaning the house because it needs it, or working on the pool, because again, it needs it. The problem with all of those , is that none of those would have distracted me sufficiently to forget that I’ve embarked on what could be a pretty long stretch between live bagpipe shows. I may make it to the Killdares show Friday night, but that’s still very up in the air. Instead of the constructive stuff, I went with Emilee down to Austin so we could make an appearance at Marc Gunn’s CD release party at Things Celtic. Probably 25 or so people were there… got to see a handful of faire folke when Queen Bonnie & Var Grayshadow made it. Marc had a sore throat, but did a great job! Having never been in the shop before, I quite enjoyed looking around and seeing what I could find. Emilee, Marc & I took baby Claire and had an early dinner at a cute little café, Kerbey Lane. I gotta say the French toast was good, and I don’t remember the last time I had bacon cooked just the way I like it… without me even asking! I love it when I have the opportunity to have a nice quiet meal with friends! Marc offered us an opportunity to grow our celtic music libraries that sounds great, and as my library is still fairly small, I’m looking forward to adding new artists to those I already enjoy! On the way home (and down, if we’re going to be honest about it) we stopped in West at the Czech Stop. On the way down we’d stopped for gas and breakfast, and I saw Dr. Pepper cake, but didn’t want to have it sit in the car for who knew how long in the heat. I’ve had a bite or two of it, and it’s definitely yummy, and tastes sort of Dr. Peppery, but also kind of chocolatey. The beer bread I brought home is great too!!! That’s about it for now… gotta go move the laundry now.