Too Busy!

I have way too much to do! I have to finish these sewing projects by July 2nd (for Bristol dress rehearsal):
Two shirts
Two pairs of pants
One Doublet
And I have an entire set of female garb that I need to finish ASAP, it doesn't have to be done by July 2nd, but it would be nice! And It would be nice to finish Jeremy's garb too, but he may have to borrow some for the first weekend. It seems like I should have enough time for all that, but on Wednesday I'm going on a church trip to MN, and I'll be gone until Sunday, and then hopefully I'll be going down to Illinois the next day, the 28th, to see my grandma and to get our camping stuff out of storage!
Oy. I better get sewing...

An end of the week update (what a wonderous title).

Well, I finished "Jane Eyre" when I wanted too. It was very good. I really enjoyed it! After that I decided to read "Sarah's Key", which I'm already finished with. I'm not sure what I'll read next. I need to get back to reading my Harvard Classics books (eventually I'd like to have read them all, cover to cover). I'm also wanting to read "Much Ado About Nothing", and I have the SparkNotes "No Fear Shakespeare" version. It's neat because it has the entire original play, along with a modern day translation, so if there's anything you don't quite understand you can check and see what it is. I don't use the modern translation much, but I'm glad to have it if I need it.

I probably won't do too much reading today (other than schoolwork), because I should draft my doublet bodice pattern today. I've been debating between two patterns, and finally decided which to go with. I'm still hoping to have it done for Stronghold, but I still don't have a sewing machine. I may ask my cousin if I can borrow hers again for a few days. Otherwise I'll be brushing up on my hand sewing skills!

And in other news, I seem to have caught a cold. It's annoying since I just had one last month. I've had a terrible runny, sneezy, stuffy nose, and I woke up with a headache this morning, which was very unpleasant. Due to the headache, I stayed in bed longer than usual, and realized that's the latest I've slept on a Friday in months. And tomorrow I can sleep later than usual, too. That's the one plus to no Bristol: I don't have to wake up at 6:45 on weekends!

September?

It's really September? Already? I can't believe it. What happened to this summer? I don't think I've ever had a faster summer!
This weekend is the last weekend of Bristol, so it's the three day weekend. There's BAPA graduation on Saturday night. Luke went through BAPA this year, so he'll be doing a graduation skit with the other new Ducklings.
Sunday night the Suitcase Shakespeare Company will be performing (I can't recall what they'll be performing), and Monday night is the cast party. We're not planning on going to the cast party: Instead we'll get as much out of our tent as possible (we take the tent down the following weekend), and then we'll probably go out to dinner.

Now, our next faire will be Stronghold, on October 2nd and 3rd. I hope to finally have my new garb done by then (yeah, the garb that was supposed to be done for Bristol). As of yet, I do not have a working sewing machine. I'll probably go over to my aunt's house to use her sewing machine, and towards the end of this month the Schmitts will be giving me a sewing machine. It's an older, used sewing machine, but they took it in to a sewing machine shop to have it serviced and cleaned, so it should work!

My Texan Surprise

After making my last post that this was going to be the best birthday ever, I never bothered to update my blog. The week after my birthday I was just too busy, and the week after that I was sick, so I just didn't get around to it.

For my big birthday surprise my parents arranged to have my best friend, Taylor Castle, come up from Texas! It was amazing. We had so much fun. She was able to come for two full weekends of Bristol, and she loved it! I had two sets of garb that fit her, so she was able to dress up!
She loved working there more than she liked being a patron. And she was fantastic at it! She of course joined the Ducks, and she learned quickly! She was great; I'll miss her as a Duck!
We spent the week in Janesville at the Muetz home (we figured it would be more entertaining to be at their house instead of here in Custer Park, the middle of nowhere, and they have more space for guests that we do). I don't think there was any night we went to bed before 1:00 AM! We stayed up late all the time.
Of course Taylor had to be introduced to cheese curds, so Laura Muetz kindly bought some for her to try. Then Mindi decided she needed to be introduced to Culvers and deep fried cheese curds, so she treated Taylor, Jeremy, Lizzy, and me to some. She got every type of sauce (including horseradish, which was nasty) and chocolate custard to dip the cheese curds in. It was great!
On Wednesday a bunch of the Amoeba (Lizzy's group of friends) came over and we had a day of being 7 year olds. We watched old Disney movies all day, and then we went to McDonald's at about 9:00 PM and ordered Happy Meals just for the toys (and we all got the guys' toys which were Superheroes. The girl toys were little pink cats and dogs). It was great!
After walking home (which was a very interesting walk) we were all really warm and decided to get in the pool. We cracked a bunch of glowsticks and tossed them in, which was really cool. Eventually everyone got out and started going to bed, but Taylor, Justin Lukas (who is not a Muetz, but lives at their home much of the time) and I stayed up until almost 3:00 AM. We decorated the living room with the glowsticks, and it looked so neat! Justin broke a glowstick on the rug, but it didn't leave a stain.

After the second weekend of Bristol (which was when Taylor and I had a patron day. So boring!), we stayed at the Dowell's house Sunday night. We all stayed up until past 3:00 AM, and then woke up before 7:00 so that we could be at the Milwaukee airport for Taylor's flight back to Texas. It seemed like she wasn't here for very long, but there's only a couple things we wanted to do that didn't get done. And now that she knows how much she's missing out on (Bristol!) she'll have to come more often!

Chris Muetz agreed to take pictures of Taylor and I together. Conveniently, I had two of the same style dresses in different colors, and the shirts in the above picture match as well. I'd bought one for myself and one for Taylor sometime last year.

This Weekend

It looks like this weekend should be a nice one for faire. It seems we'll have a dry weekend: no rain! Yay!

I have my garb ready. I don't have any new garb ready, but that's okay.
I believe Luke (or at least I hope) has his garb ready. And Jeremy... well, it would be ready if he hadn't lost a bunch of it. At one point he only knew where his venetians and socks were. He found his shirt, though, so now all he's missing is his jerkin, flat cap, and his left shoe. Silly Jeremy.

Updating with my cell phone

I just made the discovery that I can update my blog using my cell phone.
So, if I have anything really interesting to post over the weekend I'll be able do so, despite the fact that I'll be at Bristol.

Speaking of Bristol, I should probably go pack. We'll be heading that way in a few short hours. I'll be taking several electives tomorrow, and I'll probably join some of the regular BAPA classes too, like dialect and history. Oh, and I'm going to take some of my sewing stuff with me because Alyssa (the costumer) has given me permission to use the costume shop sewing machines. Oh, and any of the patterns in the costume shop, which is pretty nifty. Although I don't know if I'll need any of the patterns.

Another post about another weekend.

I had lots of fun being a fairy at the Medieval Midsummer Fayre this past Saturday (which I had written a post about and then the computer freaked out and erased it. Sad.), even though I got really sunburned (and I was wearing sun lotion!), and there weren't a lot of kids, and some of the kids that were there were afraid of me. I was told that it was the purple tights. Apparently purple tights are scary. Who knew?
Anyway, it was a fundraiser for the Beaver Dam YMCA, and the goal was to have 200 patrons. We surpassed that number (I don't have official word, but I hear it was around 250) so the YMCA wants it repeated next year! Next year it will be held in late September so as to not interfere with Bristol.
Oh, and I met a five year old girl Milana. She told me lots of jokes. These are three of my favorite, even though they don't make sense.
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Diamonds!
Diamonds who?
Diamonds are pretty!

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Pretty!
Pretty who?
Pretty diamonds!

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Flowers!
Flowers who?
Flowers are pretty with diamonds in the middle!

There was a terrible storm we got stuck in on the way up to Beaver Dam. We were stuck on a road that was closed down to one lane for 25 miles, and the storm was awful! I checked the weather on my phone and it said the storm was about 7 miles north of Paw Paw. Where do you think we were? About 7 miles north of Paw Paw! Joy. They were predicting 70 MPH winds, which was really knocking us around, along with a a lot of rain, lighting all around us, a green sky, some serious cloud rotations, and lines in the sky (anyone who knows our Texas tornado story knows why lines in the sky would be frightening to us). Jeremy took some pictures on his phone and he posted them on Facebook if anyone is interested in looking. The pictures are good, but they still don't do the storm justice. We were really, really happy to get out of it! Oh yeah, and the temperature dropped 29 degrees in less than 10 minutes.

And of course we had Bristol rehearsals on Sunday. Us Ducks started our morning off dancing with Bristol Buskin Frolic, which was fun. I believe we plan on repeating it this coming weekend.
We got a lot done this weekend, including getting our canvas over some of our workspace. We're really hoping the faire will give us a roof someday, but at least we got new canvas tarps for this year!

My weekend

My weekend was very, very fun. We arrived in Kenosha at about noon on Friday and went straight to the Dowell's house. It was pretty crazy in there, but the fun kind of crazy. The kids (Stefanie & Charlie have 3: William, Joshua, and Sherry) were noisily (but pleasantly) playing there video games, Stefanie was getting lunch ready and cleaning up, and Charlie was in some sort of meeting. After lunch Stefanie and I got ready to head to Milwaukee for the bead show.
We got there around 5, and we were astounded by the amounts of beads. It was an absolutely humongous room full of hundreds booths, full of beads. Plastic beads, shell beads, pearl beads, glass beads, wooden beads, shiny beads, dull beads, crackly beads, rock beads, gems, you name it and it was there. We decided to start at the back left and work our way forward. We stopped at some point to have dinner, which was good. There was someone else sitting at our table. She introduced herself as Caroline. We complimented some of her jewelry and she told it that she bought the pack of pendants for about $260. We only talked with Caroline for a few minutes, but she managed to fit in a lot about herself in those 10ish minutes!
After dinner we continued on our way, and we found some fantastic deals! We found these crazy colored pearls (various shapes; not all round) and we had to get some. They were amazing! We joked about buying the strand of crazy colored skulls to go with them, but we never actually did.
We kept seeing aquamarine, which is sooo pretty, but all strands were priced well over $200, so we weren't expecting to get any. However, Stefanie found a strand of faceted aquamarine at one of the last booths we went to, and she asked the man in charge how much they were (not expecting to buy them), he answered that they were $25, which absolutely stunned Stefanie and I. She had to restrain herself from buying all five strands that were there!
I checked my phone at one point to see the time, and it was 7:20. The bead show was going to end at 8:00, and we had things we knew we wanted to buy that were clear at the other side of the room, so we spent the rest of our time making a mad dash to find everything we wanted (and more!). It was really, really great. We got so many beads, and for such good prices! Next year we want to take some classes during the week and then go to the bead show earlier in the day to get more shopping done. Stefanie is hoping that we can make lots of jewelry and Beadmarks together and sell them at a Christmas show she hopes to do, and she also has an Etsy website that we want to get up and running. We just need to create some inventory and take some pictures!
While the two of us were at the bead show, my Mom and brothers went to Bristol to try to do a little clean up from the rain last weekend, and then they went to Goodwill, and after that they found Lake Michigan.

The rest of the weekend was mostly at Bristol. We stayed at Stefanie's Friday and Saturday night to avoid the rain (it was pretty rainy again, and we still needed to clean up our tent from last week, so it was easier to stay elsewhere), and had BAPA classes on Saturday ( I took two electives: Gypsies, Tramps and Theives & Improv, Improv, Iprov) and rehearsals on Sunday.

So, it was a really fun weekend! I'm already looking forward to a similar one next year.

Beads, Bristol, and fun!

It's Friday, which means it's once again time to leave for Bristol!
However, we are leaving earlier than usual this weekend. Stefanie Dowell is taking me to a bead show for an early birthday present, so she wants to leave from her house by about 11.
It's supposed to be raining at Bristol again (I really wish I'd been able to buy rainboots this week!), so we'll just stay at Stefanie's house on Friday and Saturday night so that we can stay dry.
I have a few electives to take this weekend (yay!) , so I'm excited for those.
I think I'm going to start carrying some of my sewing around with me with a needle and thread. Hand sewing may not be very fast, but if I can work on it for an hour when a sewing machine isn't available then it's farther along than I would have been otherwise!

I'm hoping there's less mosquitoes this weekend. I had far too many bites last week. Oy.

Trained butterflies?

This weekend I was playing with Timothy after rehearsals. He wanted to play in the rows of seating at the Cheshire Chase stage, and he was holding his spoon (all Ducks have a spoon they decorate. The spoons are approximately 31" long) between the seats to pretend it was a gate. I was supposed to go up to the spoon and say "Here's money for today" and pretend to put money on the spoon. Timothy would then move the spoon so that I could walk through, then he'd run to the next benches to block me. Eventually he decided that I didn't need to give money to the spoons, but I'd have to repeat whatever password he told me.
My very favorite was when he made me say "I'm off to join the trained butterflies and the scarf made the spoon fly to the garbage can" (although he later changed it to "Sam's off to join...." and claimed it was based on the song lyrics "Sam's gone away to join the trained bands". I'm pretty sure it's "I'm", though, and not "Sam's").
It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about with the scarf making the spoon fly, but I eventually understood: He has a piece of woven trim tied around his spoon, and it looks like a mini scarf around the spoon. And apparently scarfs can fly....

After that game we were playing with his spoon pretending it was a gun (we were shooting holes in the clouds, I think). Timothy hung the spoon up and then suddenly said "You have to take the spoon and poke it in your eye and say "ow ow ow ow" until it stings". He then proceeded to demonstrate what he meant, and then told me to try. Although he told me I just had to shove the spoon into my glasses and not my eye.
I'm not really sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it was still funny.

I'm so glad I get to play his nanny this summer! It's going to be an easy job, and he's so much fun!

**Note**
Contrary to what I previously said, Timothy was in fact correct, and the song goes "Sam's gone away....", not "I'm gone away...."

This Weekend

I'm excited-BAPA and rehearsals start this weekend!
I signed up for nine electives (I only have to take three), and I may sign up for a tenth. I'm just waiting to hear back from my director on something.
We'll be leaving tomorrow (about noon), and we'll be pitching our tent. Then classes are on Saturday and rehearsals on Sunday! I'm taking some of my sewing with so that I can ask for help on part of it (the Ducks rehearsals end at approximately 2:30-3:00 and we have sewing time after that until 5:00 PM).

The Story of Scholorpo

I was going through some old documents on WordPad and came across a story I wrote in 2007.
It was for Kids Kingdom, and it had to have the word "shlorpo" in it.

As I was reading it today I edited some of the misspellings, but other than that it's exactly how it was when I first wrote it.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there lived a Prince named Edgar.

Edgar hated being a prince, he found that it was tedious! He hated his duties as a prince, and he hated his school work.

One day, when he felt particularly hateful about being a prince, he took a walk into the woods.

He walked and he walked and he walked. He walked across a tree that had fallen across a creek and he walked through a meadow. At the other side of the meadow he realized how tired he was, he looked around and decided upon a little patch of soft grass. He went over to lie down and take a rest.

He immediately fell asleep.

After a while he woke up to his stomach growling.

"Oh, I'm so hungry" He said as he looked around.

He spotted a berry bush and walked over to get some berries.

As he was picking berries he saw sparkles coming from inside the bush. Wondering what it could possibly be, he parted the branches and looked inside the bush, He saw a lamp sitting on the ground.

"I've heard stories about lamps. Maybe it’s a magic lamp!"

Edgar reached down and picked up the lamp, he very gently rubbed it.

A crescendo of purple smoke came out of the lamp. Edgar looked around in alarm.

"For releasing me from the lamp, you get three wishes" said a deep voice.

Edgar's alarm turned to instant happiness.

"Can they be anything I want?"

"Yeah sure, just have to follow a few rules, No wishing for more wishes, no wishing to rule the world, no wishing for pickles-"

"Pickles?" Said Edgar in confusion.

"Long story, won’t go into it right now. No wishing for your parents to let you eat all the junk food you want, otherwise the tooth fairy will come after me"

"I wish I knew your name" said Edgar, not at all meaning that he wanted to use his wish on that.

"Schlorpo is my name, and you now have only two wishes left to make"

"Oh no! That was so stupid of me! I can’t believe I did that!"

"Yeah well, hurry up and make your last 2 wishes, I have a meeting with some Djinn in India that I have to get to"

"I wish I was smarter! I’m so stupid!" moaned Edgar.

Schlorpo looked at Edgar and shook his head, "tsk tsk tsk. You only have one wish left"

Edgar opened and closed his mouth repeatedly as if he were going to say something, but nothing came out.

Edgar then picked up a stick and wrote in the dirt "I will not talk aloud until I know what I want my last wish to be."

"Very well, Edgar, just hurry it up."

Edgar looked thoughtful for a moment. "I wish I was no longer a Prince"

Schlorpo looked at Edgar, "You should learn to be more specific with your wishes."

Suddenly Edgar found himself as a tree.

"What did you do that for?" He said indignantly.

"You said you wished you were no longer a prince, you did not specify what you wanted to be. I made you into a tree"

"No fair!" yelled Edgar.

"Edgar, always be careful what you wish for, as you have learned, a wish is dangerous. You may wish for something, and once you have it realize that it’s not really what you wanted, but it may be too late to change it.

"I will turn you back into a prince, but remember that not all wishes can be revoked"

With that Schlorpo turned Edgar back into a prince, and from that day on Edgar was always happy to be a Prince, and when he grew up and was King, and his young Prince hated the Princely duties, Edgar told him the story of Schlorpo.

Our Trip to Wisconsin

The trip to Wisconsin was a fun one, as usual (Wisconsin can't be un-fun, it's impossible).
We helped with a book swap and moved a lot of girl scout cookies! Stefanie, our dear friend and hostess, is a girl scout leader and her cookie shipment came in on Saturday, so we helped organize the cookies and break up the orders.

I had my Duck bake on Saturday, we made approximately 152 meat pies. I forgot to take pictures of them, so I'll have to do so next time. I mostly rolled and sliced dough, and then watched and played with the very rambunctious Timothy.
My character's occupation this year is the nurse/nanny to Timothy. My director and his wife are very pleased with this occupation choice as it will help them quite a bit! Especially since they have a new baby. It will not be a difficult job at all, Timothy is my best friend and it will be fun watching him! At the Duck bake he used pillows to build a fort and then tried to find a blanket for the roof, but there was no blankets that were big enough, so I promised to bring some old sheets and blankets to BAPA (Bristol Academy of Performing Arts) and when I have free time I'll help Timothy build one awesome blanket fort!

After the Duck bake I went back to Stefanie's house and looked over some of the books; I found a few that I picked out. In fact, my Mom found a lot too, so we ended up bringing more books home than we meant to! But that's the way it is with books.
After the book swap we were able to visit with friends for a while and had an all around fun evening. Although I seemed to be getting a cold. I was fine when we left home, but once we were at Stefanie's house I got all sniffly. We thought it might be cat allergies, but on Saturday evening I started having a little cough and a scratchy throat. Now that I'm home I still have a cough, but my stuffy, itchy nose and itchy eyes are all better, so it may have been part cat allergies and part cold. I guess we'll find out the next time I'm around a cat!
Anyway, we got home on Sunday, back to boring ol' Custer Park.

Monster Egg

My faire director and his wife have two completely adorable kids; Timothy (age 4) and Victoria (age 6 weeks).
At the Duck bake Timothy was being a wild child. He wrestled me to the ground, threw pillows at me, completely covered me in pillows, and then stole my socks. It was hilarious, and I had lots of fun with Timothy, but the funniest thing happened not when I was talking to Timothy, but when I was talking to his parents.
I was telling them about a giant egg I found from my chickens, and I described it as follows- "it was huge, it was like a monster egg!". Timothy turned to me and in a very concerned voice asked "What did you do with the monster?". Everyone started laughing at poor Timothy, who was still wondering about the monster. His mom then explained to him that it was just an expression.
It was so cute!

We're Going to Wisconsin

My Mom and I will be going up to Wisconsin this weekend. Unfortunately Jeremy and Luke are too sick.
We're going up tonight to stay at our friend's house, and then tomorrow (Saturday) I have a Duck bake*, and our friend will be having a book swap at her house. We're hoping to get rid of more books than we bring home; we have too many books (not that there's such a thing as too many, but we have more books than we have space for)! We still have a lot less than we had moving from Texas to Wisconsin. I think we had over 50 milk crates of books then! That may have included National Geographic magazines, though. But we have a quite a bit less now. We got rid of a lot when we moved from WI to IL. We donated them to our library.

*The term "Duck bake" may seem odd to some of you, so I will explain.
Bristol has several casts and guildes. I'm in the Guilde of St. Lawrence; members of St. Lawrence are called "ducks" or "ducklings" because we work at the Dirty Duck Inn.
St. Lawrence provides reasonably priced food for the cast of Bristol. We serve soup, bread, hard-boiled eggs, pickles, nuts, fruit, muffins, and pies (but not like apple pie, we have meat pies and peanut butter pies and all sorts of other pies, I'll get pictures later). We make the pies before the Bristol season starts. All the ducks get together and make the pies, rehearse, learn Duck dances, discuss characters and upcoming events, etc. And that is what a Duck bake is!

Juggling

I hadn't juggled in a while, but last night I saw my box of juggling stuff and decided to go ahead and juggle some. I did some three ball tricks for a while, but then I decided to try four balls. I had tried to learn four ball juggling last year, but I wasn't very successful. This time I managed to get several throws! I was very excited. Now I'm hoping to be able to get at least 40 catches by the time Bristol starts. Then I can help my "brother" (as in my faire brother, John/Thomas, not Jeremy or Luke) learn 4 balls, and he can help me learn stilts!
John made a set of stilts for me, but they're currently sitting in the basement and I haven't practiced them. Somehow taking them out on a icy driveway seems like a bad idea... I think I'll wait until the weather is warmer before practicing them!