Holly,
Well, what to tell about the Renaissance Faire (and try keeping it somewhat fiber-related, too!). Most of my non-Faire friends think I'm slightly crazy, giving up seven weekends in a row to go work twelve hours on Saturday and eight on Sunday (I leave before closing on Sunday in order to get home and start the week reasonably alive) in the heat, dust, cold, dust, sun, dust, full costume, no sunglasses (because of full costume), etc., etc. And did I mention the dust? But there's something very real and very wonderful about Faire for those of us who love it. It's a real community - there are people there I see only during these two months, but I love them and I have a great time with them. And it's an amazing vacation every week: when I'm there, I'm THERE, in a way that going away for a weekend doesn't usually provide. It's probably because of the other-worldliness of it (costumes, outside all day, no computer, and so forth). Fortunately, I'm a mere shop assistant versus a member of the Royal Court, so I (fiber content! yay!) get to wear cotton and linen instead of brocades and velvets and wool. Since we're more often hot than cold, that's a very good thing. We do have a number of guilds there who demonstrate weaving and spinning. And there's one woman who walks through the Faire - I'm pretty sure she's a member of one of the guilds, but I've never spoken to her - with what I would have thought was a linen distaff, but she's got it loaded with wool roving and she spins on a drop spindle as she walks. Me, I'm almost always working on socks, and when I leave the booth and walk around I'm usually knitting as I walk. That gets, as I'm sure you can imagine, some startled looks from many of the patrons! Does that answer your question, more or less? Grace It's not magic. It's just positive workplace politics. http://www.svahaconcepts.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
