Post-Pennsic Roundup; or, A Holiday in Cambodia

Disclaimer: we did not have elephants

This year's Pennsic was not as vacation-ish as most are for me.  We were blessed (?) with unusually high heat & humidity, to the tune of heat indices over 105 many days, alternating with monsoon downpours.  I'm not at my best (to put it mildly) in hot, sticky weather, and even less so when one has to be continually on the bounce to prevent the camp from floating away on a muddy river of fail.  And, most years there'll be a couple days like that here or there, which is OK and one can cope, but a steady progression of them is taxing.

Another issue--as noted previously, I had cut out a linen kirtle before leaving and I was bound and determined to get it finished in time to wear it for my Elizabethan Working Clothes class.  Now, if I'd been at home with no job to go to, this probably could have happened; but onsite, while managing a camp of 70 people, in a climate that completely nerfed my concentration...yeah. No.  So for the whole first week I was additionally stressed about a) not working on my dress in that moment, b) how slow I was going when I was working on my dress, or both.  Finally during the middle weekend, I let it go and admitted I wasn't going to get it finished, and I was able to actually start having some fun.  So, lesson learned: I will not take any project to war that I "need" to finish on a deadline.  It's vacation, dammit.

My A&S display, complete with very decorative

Baroness Chief of Staff. 

Thus, the down-sides.  On more positive notes, I taught two classes and I think both went well (even though about five times as many people showed up than I was prepared for); I showed The Big Damn Banner and the Flat Cap of Success at the A&S display, and I think I came off tolerably well; I fit the muslin pourpoint pattern to my client; and I paneled the Big Damn Banner at the Athena's Thimble meeting, where my guildmates honored me with a ranking of period competency in appliqué.  Another lesson learned: few people will do more than glance at a flat cap on its own, but if you display it on top of a skull, at least you'll get a second look and a giggle.

So that all happened; now I need to prioritize projects for the next couple of months.  I think it comes out something like this:

1. Make up the linen version of the pourpoint commission; which breaks down
1. make up just the lining, and do another fitting.  Adjust as necessary.
2. Take a pattern of that version.
3. Finish it, padding and all, and see how it fits; record all details for when we do the Real One.
2. Finish the @*$! kirtle.
3. Make up the partlet I cut out at the last minute and didn't do anything with.
4. Complete all the lacing holes, and make lacing cords for, my consort's black linen suit.

I'm putting a tentative target date on these tasks of end of September; I think that's not too ambitious, particularly since only the pourpoint should be thinky work.  Though, if it continues being horribly hot, I may have to swap in making braies, hose, and a coif for Himself, so he can wear his Bocksten tunics to events in September with greater comfort.  I'm not trying to plan ahead any further than that at the moment, for the sake of my sanity. Though I'm really kinda hot-and-bothered to make a couple of drawn-thread napkins for our feast gear.

Oh. And. I, um, may have also committed to help create a small schola in Manhattan for sometime next spring.  Which mostly involves calling a lot of places to beg for space that won't cost the earth.  We'll see what happens.