My Dragons
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Well, I had an amazingly non-kinetic War, due in large part to the fact that I'm still getting used to my new medication--I find it vastly annoying that the meds which are supposed to help with my chronic fatigue are causing, basically, chronic fatigue. I kept doing this thing where I decided to sit down, only to discover that sitting wasn't really down enough.
Nonetheless I managed to make it to three 9 am classes, all on the subject of rigid heddle weaving. The first one was essentially, "Do a piece of tabby weave", and the instructor was inexplicably impressed by how fast I got mine done. It's tabby. Kids with potholder looms do tabby, it's not impressive. Second class was all about the warp manipulations and suchlike, which produce nifty effects that are not, on the whole, nifty enough to be worth the extra time and effort. But the third class was how to warp your rigid heddle loom so it can effectively pretend to be a four-harness loom, and that was totally worth it. The only problem I had there was the fact that she taught us to use only three heddles, leaving the fourth shed to be a natural one and therefore a pain in the ass to weave around for some things and tough to keep track of. If I do this for any serious production weaving, I'm totally using a fourth heddle; the warping principles should expand neatly.
Other than that...I had a camp cot, which was fabulous as it meant none of my bedding got wet when the sky opened up on us Tuesday morning. It rained on and off for the next three days, usually going from "grey and incredibly muggy" to "raining buckets" in a matter of less than a minute. Of course this coming week's supposed to be beautiful, so instead of having a first week of rain and a second week of nice weather, we had a first week of muggy and warm and a second week of everything being slightly damp at all times. Gotta love schedule changes.
Saw Vissevald, who was only up for a few days; he's in the middle of treatment for cancer, and seems to be doing nicely though there's rather less of him than there was the last time I saw him. Arianna (not the BMDL one) was not there, as she's got a new man and wanted to spend time with him.
Ajax's camp put up a temple. Seriously. It has an inner sanctum and everything, though not yet any guardian sphynges--it's tough to find resin sphynx statues, especially when you want a Greek sphynx. Thora Sharptooth brought them myrtle to burn at the dedication.
I did very little knitting, mostly accomplishing the foot of one of a pair of socks for Liam. So much for my good intentions. And I did not buy a Mongolian horse bow, realizing at the last minute that if I drop several hundred dollars on it I then have to practice with it. But it was terribly tempting. I did get one of the Dancing Pig's green bowls with the white vines, and it's so pretty I intend to use it mundanely.
Other than those highlights, mostly it was Pennsic. I agree with Guillaume (he writes a column for the Independent) that it's nice to be in a place where "locking up the house" consists of tying the door closed so rain doesn't get in, where adult males can talk to small children without being taken for potential child molesters, where seeing a person with a weapon makes one feel more safe, and where it's considered normal to know a whole lot about some obscure subject or other.