Alles Fair in Love and War

...and the business Did Not Suck (in the "Fuzz and Denise" sense).

I-95 North from Baltimore never really broke loose after the Baltimore Beltway, so we bailed at Bel Air road (24) instead of pressing on a bit farther. I heard that I-95 was also backed up from the Delaware line to I-495. Yuck, but not in my way...

Set up was mostly unremarkable, but we were able to arrange to have the tent open on three sides, one of them overlooking the list field. Sweet!

The weather was (aside from being a mite warm -- 90 in the shade) not shabby. The clouds cleared off and there was an occasional breeze that was very nice. We didn't expect a swarm of shoppers, and we weren't disappointed, but business moved along.

Elspeth McBain had sent us some more of her gorgeous hand-woven fabric on consignment, including a nearly 14 yard bolt of blue wool goose-eye twill that was the blue version of the red goose-eye wool we've had. We were morally obliged to bring these to the attention of the Hungarian twins... There were three people oogling the blue... One of them ended up putting money down to snag that piece of blue on the layaway plan. It will be interesting to see the A&S project that comes out of that, both as an A&S project, and then on said person.

I got in an heraldic consultation with a gentleman who was attending his fifth event (having started playing five weeks ago). He had an idea for arms that were registerable, but not really mediaval. After making sure to point out that his proposed design was registerable, I talked about ways to say what he wanted to say in a more medieval design.

"Argent, three dogs rampant incensed sable, a trimount vert." I was reliably informed that that consultation "made his weekend".

Sunday featured the wedding of Penelope and Jasper, who, it turns out, live in Sudentor where she teaches high school. That brought a number of mundane family members to the event. It worked out well, and the wedding feast was quite excellent.

Later, Mr. Devil Dogs (did I mention that he is one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children? :)) wondered about weaving his design. That sparked an extended discussion of the matter. He opined that he was interested in tablet weaving. One thing led to another, and he ended up getting a quick course in double-turn double-face tablet weaving. He was a quick study, picking up the mechanics pretty easily. I'm hoping to see at least his first band at War Camp at the Ukranian Homestead.

Monday morning, we packed up Dry Canvas! and headed home, tired but happy.

It was good to see cariola and Mike, Scholastica and John, Marti and Julia (and make their mother's acquaintance) and Arpad, dr_zrfq, Carawyn and Corwyn, Alison, to name a few.

Especially cool was seeing Samantha whom we me when she was a high school student back in 2001 or so. We went to "String Thing and Gem Jam" up in Silver Rylle and had a wonderful time. One particularly neat thing was introducing three students to inkle weaving. We sold them Megan's battered loom for $10, and each of them had woven a band while they were there. Samantha ended up with the loom that she uses for other people to play on and has one of her own. That was way cool!

All in all, we had a wonderful weekend, relaxing and schmoozing and doing more business that we had ever done at Sapphire Joust.