Dragon's Mist Champions Court 2013

We adjourned to Angela's house, our feast steward. The event provided a full roast pig for the event. I had ordered it through Uwajimaya's. They did all the cooking and it came out great! We had lots of sides brought for the pot luck and everyone had lots to eat! Some of us had stopped at home to put on cleaner-drier clothes before showing up at Lorraine's/Angela's house.

After we were all full, we tried waiting for Baroness Svava to get off of work and get there to have court, but finally made the decision to proceed. We had been busting our butts in the scribal group to get charters painted in time for the event, so it was nice to see them go out.

We received a Household award from the Barony for the House of the Golden Bees to thank us for our service to the Barony. Currently we are a small household with me as House Steward, Ignatius, Millicent, Larissa, and Eadowain. Aemelia has been part of the household, but suspect that her involvement with us will be greatly reduced. 

Dragon's Mist Champion Tourney and Boar's Head Hunt 2013

I was the event steward for this event. It was my own personal challenge and learning experience. It was the same weekend once again as Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. I tried really really hard to get it moved off of this weekend. Normally this weekend is sunny, warm-hot and one time a Thunderstorm on Sunday afternoon. This year?  This year we got the after effects of a Chinese Typhoon.

We arrived in the rain Saturday morning and tried setting up the Baronial Pavilion. After Istvan slid in the mud and landed hard on his knee I called a stop to that. We made one of the covered shelters the baronial area.

So by noon we had a whole bunch of people who were stuff and two people who were participants. We were getting more rain and expecting more winds. My feast steward had offered up the use of her house for Court and the pig potluck feast.

About the time I confirmed with Andronikus that I had the ability to cancel/close down the rest of the event, we had a car of three - William Drake, his lady Serena and Bea came down from the Barony of Glymm Mere to support our event. Bea was also going to become an apprentice to Baron Refr, but I didn't find out about that until later.

I called a group meeting and since we only had two fighters, but we had people that were willing to try their hand at archery and thrown weapons. So we said that we would close the site at 3pm. We did get a few other people, but still not enough to have the heavy championship. We were expected to get more rains and high winds for Sunday, so the heavy championship was cancelled.

It was fun hearing Her Grace Hlutwige giggle to hear that she could try her hand at Thrown Weapons.

We ended up with Lord Nicolai Rabenis von Tachov won the Archery Championship, with Lord Earc as the runner up. Lord Gerard de Bayonne, our current Heavy Champion won the Thrown Weapons Championship.

World Wide Spin in Public 2013

This year I didn't organize the event. I let Duffy and she did a fantastic job!  She got us in to the lobby area, because we were due for a pretty good downpour, or we would have been outside, at the Oregon History Museum. We were also given passes, and I really should have taken the time to look at more than the shop. ;-)

I did get to catch up with people I hadn't seen for awhile - Sari, Duffy, and Melissa. Stacey and Rachel were there with Sharon and Rebecca. Kathleen came with her daughter and drop spindled for awhile. Duffy had gotten lots of lovely stuff donated for the event so we had drawings. In the first one, I picked a lovely little drop spindle. With the last one a bag that had a batt created by Stacey of Thoroughly Thwacked. Duffy had knit up little oil bottle holders and made some pretty orifice hooks. Pearl Fiber Arts donated samples of a Lo Lo Bar.

 The pretty spindle

 The spindle with what I was spinning, some violet alpaca-silk from Abstract Fibers

 Sari making use of the tools at hand, her feet to wind off her bobbin on to her niddy-noddy

 The contents of the bag

 Lots of rust and inside lots of BRIGHT pink and some angelina for sparkle

The oil sock, orifice hook, lo-lo bar sample and a baggie of cedar chips, oh and $5 of drum carder time at Black Sheep at Orenco.

I finished the alpaca silk and gave it to Friday, it came out really nice a lace-light fingering weight of 356.5 yards from four ounces of fiber:

 Purple is one of her favorite colors.

This is how the batt ended up coming out:

It's 178.5 yards and bounced thick and thin. It's very furry, I think it might have alpaca? I divided in half and the first half I spun from the batt with just hand mixing. The second half of the batt I used the hand cards and carded-blended the colors together as best I could. Strongly pink with rust and sparkles.

Farm Day!

I got to go up to Nettie's house outside of Woodland and learn how she makes her Dilly Beans. I got to try them from Lisa a couple years ago at June Faire.

I helped with picking all the ripe things in the garden. Seeing the chicks and the ducklings. Turning around to find that I was being stalked by the young turkeys, they're curious birds. Meeting the sheep and the goats.

Then we worked on the dilly beans! Once you fill up the jars with the beans and onions and garlic and spices, you put them jars in the sink that has been filled with hot water. That way when you add the hot brine it doesn't break the jars. We ended up having to make a second batch of brine to fill all the jars. You pop the lids on as soon as the jar is filled with brine and you don't have to process the jars.

While the jars were cooling down we tried to go pick blackberries but where she thought they were plentiful, they turned out to be gone. The deer probably enjoyed them. ;-)

It was a lovely day spent talking and working together. I look forward to going up and visiting again. She was so generous that she sent me home with a bag of frozen blackberries so I can still make jam. I had brought a few jars of canned stuff, one of them some duck broth. There were some jams and some canned soups - turkey and chicken.

First - Brandon's birthday socks. I likes them and wears them to keep his feet warm. They're house socks.

He's shy of the camera, but has some incredible bat wing ears

I turn around and the turkey is just there!

Nettie feeding some of the goats and sheep

Can you find the four chicks in the photo?

He likes having his photo taken

This is his girlfriend, she doesn't mind either

She's preggers

He's all alone and used to having the other chicks with him. So he started calling for them. 

There are the Yoda ears!

Everybody out of the pool! The young ducklings