I Told You I Wasn’t Dead!

A lot happens in nearly two years and some information needs updated.

First, the post “Bye Bye Blacksmith?” In this post I vented about “getting fired” from the Colorado blacksmith booth. What actually happened was a supposed “misunderstanding.” See, I was the first of the shop workers to arrive at the faire that year and when Paradise, the faire owner, cornered me about the whereabouts of the blacksmith team. In order for the guys to not get into trouble, I went ahead and started setting up and quickly made some phone calls to get everyone on the pass list. Come to find out, the “new apprentice” was actually one of the guy’s wives; no one recognized her real name. This is the same guy that tried to “get me gone” and started the rumor. When he confirmed the pass list with the office gals, he still “forgot” to put me on. I had to triple-check the list, but the girls got me on. Later, I confronted him about it, and he denied ever suggesting such a rumor. Hmmm.

Suspecting some foul play in the future, I got a steady job at the kitchens and wound up becoming a valuable asset and proved myself in front of Paradise himself – as he owned the kitchen. I still worked the weekdays at the shop and sold my products through my master, who earned a 30% commission, as we agreed upon. This was a trial run on the commission and it worked so well that both my master and I profited. Of course, the same fool I mentioned above tried to take credit for the idea and later tried to implement it for his own “apprentice,” and later for the whole shop, but the idea crashed and burned each time. (Mostly because this fool was a lazy fellow who couldn’t clean up after himself, was prone to melodramatic tantrums, refused to take the time to make items that sold and over-charged for his inferior products.)

At that show, I proved I could not only make money for myself, but for the shop as well – without being there to sell on the weekend.

That Colorado was a dramatic one, one that hit me personally when one of the boy’s girlfriend got my own master into serious trouble. My anger was so great that I wanted to do her serious harm, but instead broke my bottom front teeth. After all, a dental bill is cheaper than bail for a physical assault charge.

The blacksmith drama only increased after that. In Pittsburgh of that year I was “banned” for nearly two weeks out of the shop so that the Fool could “work.” Of course, even though he stuffed the forge like aThanksgiving turkey, he mostly played around with his computer or threw tantrums when his poorly maintained equipment broke or he burned up all the propane before getting anything done. I wasn’t worried, because I already had plenty of stock made, and I’m very resourceful about how I get my product made.

One the last weekend, I proved what I could do by out-selling everyone in the booth put together, despite the work ban and by hardly doing any actual selling. In the meantime, in order to make up for his lack of product, the Fool upped the prices on his crappy products three times that weekend, hoping to make a bulk order deal, while everyone else in the faire dramatically slashed prices.

Oh, and not to mention the stress-demon he managed to conjure in his corner of the shop and the day he threatened physical harm to my family for his own baby sitter’s incompetence (of which I had nothing to do other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time). He apologized (sort of), but only after I had a buddy of his tip him off that he was about to get the “local law enforcement” calledon him.

This year I was not on the circuit. My hubby and I went to Texas to help a dear friend, because I promised, and we wound up getting stuck there for the entire season. I later heard the melodrama didn’t stop with me. My master quietly and wisely turned the shop over to the other boys after they brought in the above-mentioned girlfriend as their counter girl in TRF – a move that in my opinion, was downright cruel and disrespectful to my master, a “long time friend” of both of theirs. Without my master, none of those boys would have any of those shops! Later, a big fight broke out between the last two boys to work in Colorado (I am not including the other “apprentice,” who wisely kept himself completely distanced from the drama) and now the only one left whose name is on the contract is the Fool, and recent reports tell me he’s just as abusive and lazy as ever. Without the others to pay his way, I doubt he’ll make it into TRF, the big, money-making show.

My only hope is that the Fool will fall in his own puddle of deceit, laziness and dirty politics and that his “apprentice” will soar up out of the ashes. I hope that, if that happens, I can come back to reclaim the Pittsburgh booth, which has happy memories for me, despite the later drama. In the meantime, I’m glad all of THAT is behind me.

As for the rest of the chapter in this book of missing pages, while in Texas I learned to wield a chainsaw to make art, adopted two lovely Rott-mix puppies (that I sorely hope I can still keep), and am now awaiting the arrival of my first child, who is due in November of this year. I’m back at home near my folks, John just found employment, and we’re looking for a place to call home.

For now, the cross-country journey is over, but definitely not for long. As I’ve said to many of my “stable” friends – Once you get a taste of true mobility, it’s hard to let it go.

Peace, my dear friends and devoted readers!

A Break in the Storm – One Good Weekend

And, no, I’m not talking about Wall Street or anything like that. I mean that we finally had a good weekend at Sherwood where people actually came in and we actually made some real money. Yay, we can pay the insurance now!!!

Just in time, too. We had a three-day weekend; Spring Break, St. Pattie’s Day combo kinda thing. Well, it turned out sunny and when the weekend turns out sunny the patrons turn out at faire and the sunnier it is, the more money they spend helping us survive. Hooray!

John and I actually made money. Friday I worked the flute cart (a job I’ll probably have for the next faire, too, which so far is Scarborough) and actually sold some product.

Only four people showed up to run feast, which very nearly ran late. We pulled it off – John and myself, another girl and Mom, our boss. Since Mom doesn’t take the tips, that means we only had to split between five people (the three feast servers and the two “bar wenches” serving the alcohol). So that put some extra cash in our pockets.

Honestly, I think that feast ran way better with fewer people. Less confusion, less commotion, less people to get lost, we all stayed busy and somehow managed to clear the plates off the tables and get all cleaned up and ready to go before the feast officially ended. I’m so proud of us!! We rock that feast – even Mom’s said so herself.

All kinds of shenanigans with relationships happening around us, all kinds of drama. I like being a semi-normal, happily exclusive married woman out here in the Rennie world. It means that John and I wind up hearing about everything (we’re apparently the “stable couple,” so we’ve been called at this show) without ever actually becoming involved.

John and I are allergic to confrontation. When things get too crazy in the crowd you might look up and notice we’ve suddenly disappeared.

Anyway, so Saturday and Sunday was good for us. I made an actual wage working between the kitchen and the flute cart and John made tips. Sunday it wound up raining on the faire, so I had absolutely no work, so what do you think I did? I got drunk. Totally sloshed in the middle of the day, wandering around treating the faire site like my personal back yard.

God, I had fun! Up until someone handed me half a mugful (and by mug I mean the traditional Rennie tankard that can hold almost an entire 40 oz) of this sticky-sweet, syrupy honey liqueur. Since it tasted just like mead, my already Kraken/Mead/Wine-laden brain drank it instead of sipped it.

I managed to make it to the van and actually got my glasses off before passing out. I awoke a couple hours later to the WORST hangover I’ve ever had in my life. Took me the rest of the evening and a whole lot of water to work it off.

Today is sunshine and sprinkles. Last night it stormed like crazy. Rumors of tornadoes flew all over the community, but nothing like that ever came close to us. It didn’t even hail, just rained cats and dogs and blew like a muther.

I’ve discovered the flaw in our tarping strategy. Right now we have the tarp anchored on one end between two trees. Well, the other end of the tarp is slung over the top of the van and tied to the runner board and the doors on the other side. It makes a great little lean-to, ghetto-style tarp house. The tarps are old and worn, but even so, it’s angled just right (with some help from a bamboo pole) so that most of the rain slides off before soaking through. What does manage to come through merely falls on the tarps layered over the storage totes currently housed on our porch. Everything stays dry.

We love this setup, but the only down fall is that when the wind picks up, like it did last night, then a really good gust will catch the tarp and billow it up so fiercely that the tarp actually pulls on the van and rocks it like a boat with a sail. If I rigged that tarp to a mast bolted to our roof, I could have sailed the van all the way to the Whoop Stop on neutral, haha!

It was a rough and tumble sort of night, but we came out great. Nothing really got wet and – oddly enough – no leaks happened in the van.

Now it’s a gorgeous bright sunny day out! A friend of ours is over visiting, playing Zombie Flux and Magic and Guillotine, and all sorts of other things at the “krack” (that’s what we jokingly call Magic) tent. I’m currently at the Whoop Stop – the closest gas station to the faire – writing this.

I’m trying to apply for Texas SNAP benefits so we don’t go hungry next month, but so far this is my second trip to the internet and I’m yet still missing information to complete the form. ARGH! I would have finished it all yesterday, but right in the middle of the application the power goes out at the gas station. Completely ka-put! Flipping the breakers weren’t working and the employees were calling bosses trying to get it sorted out. We decided not to wait, so we went home.

I’m fixin’ to write a story again, just like I used to. I’ve got the urge and a good idea that I’m not fighting too hard to get on the screen. Maybe I’ll finish it?????? We’ll see. Every now and again, I have the need to re-visit some old friends and write another chapter in their histories.

I’ve got to publish all these stories someday…

Peace!

Feaux Feast #1

Written on Monday, Jan. 30th, 2012. Texas.

John and I got jobs with a lady who runs the feasts here at Sherwood. We’re both servers. It’s a part-time weekend job, only about 4 hours a week. Because of that, we’re not paid in cash, but we’re working off our passes to the faire. We also get all the free food we can eat after the feasts. It’s not a bad gig, because I just found out today that I can make money by selling my steel products at the faire’s consignment booth, which is run by my boss. John’s fixin’ to either get a steadier job, or be a runner around the feasts, which actually pays pretty good here, according to what we heard.

This weekend we had a mock-feast for the cast. Since we didn’t have to show up to work in garb until 3pm, we spent the morning crackin’ out on Magic (No Drama is the very first house rule) with the boys in the green army tent. Actually, only John played. I couldn’t hold still long enough to get into a game. That, and we were all distracted for a couple of hours watching the neighbor first bury his RV, then the two trucks, then about five hippies in sugar sand. They finally managed to pull and push the RV out of the sand pit they’d dug. Manually.

Seriously, I need to get a cheap digital camera and keep it on me at all times, I swear.

I wandered off to charge my computer and write. Squatch and his girl were gone to a gun show in Austin and their puppy squeezed out of their yurt and was out runnin’ around off leash. So I coral him back to his house and put him on a leash. I would have put him back in the yurt – it wasn’t locked – but I knew the old dog, Kiwi, was in there guarding the house. No way was I going in there. Squatch gives her a command in Apache and she’ll go into the house and sit with her nose to the door. She’ll shred anyone who isn’t Squatch who walks through that door. She may be an old dog, but she’s an old dog with a history of toppling bulls and ripping out the throats of coyotes.

So I put the puppy on his lead and went to walk back to my house. He whimpered after me and next thing I new he come runnin’ up to me, off his lead and no collar on. So I lead him back and find that his collar came unbuckled. I put him back on, made him lie down, calm down, and told him to stay. After a minute of squirming, he calmed down, and when I let him up he wandered over to the yurt, sat as close to the door he could get and didn’t make a peep after that.

Once or twice, while charging my computer and writing on the other side of the fence, I caught him attempting to squeeze through the wall into the yurt and I made him knock that nonsense off. He’s a quick dog, it didn’t take more than me getting between him and the yurt and scolding him, “You KNOW you’re not supposed to do that!” He knew and he quit that game.

Around 2pm I grabbed John and we took our first showers here. The showers are nice, certainly roomy enough for two folks to shower at the same time. There’s three narrow stalls with a bench in each. There’s no roof, and the walls are open eighteen inches from the ground, so it’s cold when one is awaiting one’s turn at the water and a breeze comes through. The water is hot, though, and the pressure is touchy, but decent. We had to take a quick shower, so I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I’d’ve liked.

We showed up to work in our garb a little bit early. Ma (that’s what everybody calls the cute old lady that’s our boss) was running about almost like a chicken with its head cut off managing everything. Her cooks had food coming out right and left that needed to be prepared to ship up to the feast hall.

She first sent us up to the feasting pavilion to help out the guys put up a big gazebo for serving the food. Well, we misunderstood and went to the wrong pavilion. The folks putting the tent up at this place told us they had it, so we went and hung out at the kitchen and help there. I cut some cheese and made us some black forest and cheddar sandwiches – we’d barely eaten a thing all day).

Finally she sent us back up to the pavilion to deliver something and that’s when we found out that we were completely at the wrong pavilion. We found the right one, where they were just finishing up with the gazebo. Oops! We helped them finish and apologized for getting lost, heh. Everything happened fast after that. We loaded up a truck with our supplies and drove up to the Feast just as the cast showed up and started up their entertainment routine.

We served hummus and chips, cheese and grapes for the appetizer and followed with a course of this tomato bisque in a bread bowl, which hit off very well. I forgot a couple of the patrons spoons – oops! again! – but they had just an easy time eating the soup with their forks or bits of the bread bowl (that’s howl they did it back in the day, anyhow). Next came grilled sausages, grilled vegetable medley, corn on the cob. Then came the coup de gras, the roasted cornish game hens, roast beef, and classic ratatoui and roasted portabella mushroom caps for the vegans in the bunch. We offered dark bread between courses. For desert, we served a delicious banana custard pudding with vanilla wafers, served in a waffle bowl. The chef made the pudding with “yard eggs” (free-range hobby birds) so it came out tinged a tiny bit green, but not, however, in an unappetizing shade.

Normally, this is where we end the feast, but we had a birthday cake course for a birthday girl. Unfortunately, by the time the fifth course came around, everyone was full beyond belief and only three folks partook of that delicious pineapple cake. That meant that all the employees got to take home a bit of cake (I ate mine for breakfast, yum!)

It all ran so smoothly. All that was required of us was to serve the food, thanks to the feast coordinator who announced each dish as it came out so we didn’t have to explain each dish to each patron ourselves. The food stayed hot, we received nothing but the highest praise for the food and service, and the entertainment was cute (they actually had a magic show with white doves, and one of the doves kept trying to either escape, or, as one of us put it, “Incite the others to riot!” Yar!). Afterward there was plenty enough for all of us to engorge ourselves on. After cleaning up we hung out in the kitchen smoking in celebration, drinking and eating and laughing and having a really good fun time.

I brought home enough leftovers to eat myself into a coma the next morning!

All in all, this feasting business is going to be lovely. I already adore my co-workers. I was a tad nervous, as I am always when dealing with customers face-to-face at a new job, but I’ll get used to that once I understand what is expected of me, and how much I can get away with, heheh. I have to remind myself that this is a Rennie food establishment, and I’m not dealing with a stuck-up, self-centered, asinine corporation. It’s so nice!

Peace!

The Sherwood Forest Faire

They say this is the faire for Rennies. Started by Rennies, owned and operated by Rennies, and so far I’m inclined to believe it.

First off, as one turns into the participant entrance to the faire, there is a yellow triangular sign with “Welcome Home” painted in multiple colors. “That is a great idea,” John said, pointing. “I like that a lot.” It made us feel welcome and wanted.

Camping is free. The campground is spacious and open and we have a lovely little spot picked out for our home beneath a couple of young birch. Cute little red mushrooms are growing under my trees.

As per faire request, we are supposed to be sure that no part of our homes be visible over the fence from inside faire site, and that includes lights. This is to ensure the Renaissance feeling for our patrons. The more fun they have in our make-believe land, the more money they spend, and the more we eat. Har, har.

Once we picked a site out and parked our van, we crawled into the wood pile and drug out part of an old fence and a discarded piece of plywood and that became our deck. Next we dragged a couple of large logs over that stood approximately waist height, found a long rough-cut board and that became our table. We dug a fire-pit and I raked all the acorns and leaves and sticks out of the campground. We moved several more logs to use as extra seats at our fire. We’re in the middle of no-where, away from the partiers, which is where we want to be.

The faire site itself is gorgeously laid out. Seen from above it’s kinda shaped like New Mexico, with the gate being on top and a large lane leading directly across the middle of the faire to the jousting arena. The rest is big and open, with a center cluster of shops. The fences are made from rough-cut juniper and pine timbers, most likely timbers cut out from the camp ground. Several shops are made with these timbers, giving the entire faire a solid, unified field.

Beautiful junipers, oaks and pines pepper the faire and tall, crisp green grass coats the ground. Sunlight filters through the green canopy, giving the entire site a peaceful, whimsical, fairy-tale sort of feel. It is a pleasure to walk around the faire, watching all the booths and shops rise from the ground, paint their walls and hang their signs. Within the next couple of weeks this place will look like a medieval festival village.

There’s everything coming in here. Pony, camel and elephant rides, probably some war horse rides, too, and rickshaws to ferry patrons around in. There’s a stage around every corner, including a mud stage (complete with a mud show, a rare treat for faires). Most of the stages are placed around the outer rim of the park and the shops are sandwiched between them. Games and small stages, platforms and pavilions, rides, and yet more shops are all spread out in the middle of the grounds. The huge blacksmith shop (I will be smithing, but not in the shop on faire days) is placed right near the front gate, where folks can flood around them.

The site is set up so that patrons come in, walk down the center lane and disperse in every direction. The joust is strategically placed near the opposite end of the faire, since it is the main show at any fair, and so patrons will flock to the opposite side of the faire, and when the show is over they will meander through the rest of the faire on their way out.

The best part of the faire, in my opinion, is the huge fire-pit smack in the center of the faire. The pit itself is some ten or fifteen feet wide, surrounded by huge stones. Around that is a blackened chain looping through sturdy metal posts crafted by a blacksmith with heavy, yet intricate twists. Another ten – fifteen feet beyond the fire stands seven huge yellow granite stones called “The Seven Sisters.” It reminds you of Stonehenge. The Seven Sisters were imported from a former pagan festival site, and during the rest of the year, becomes the center of all the action at a small pagan festival hosted by Sherwood. It is the site of the coolest Rennie fire gatherings and drum circles I’ve been to yet.

I will detail more on The Seven Sisters fire circle when I learn more about it. I’ve been told it’s a story worth hearing.

Clearly, Sherwood Forest is set up with the Rennies in mind, by someone with the acute understanding that the more money that reaches us, the more the faire makes. By the tidbits I’ve heard about the social circles, his show makes it’s money on booth sales commissions over straight booth fees. Booth fees are not that expensive, and electricity for a booth is cheap.

There are several kitchens that feature actual authentic period food. Some courts have a menu I’ve seen nowhere else (what I’ve seen so far of the menus so far). I have yet to find a turkey leg court; either they have none or I don’t know about it yet. (Turkey legs are so over-done at Ren Faires… Did you know turkey didn’t exits in 16th century Europe? No, they had mutton back then. Dry, chewy, stringy, mutton. Some Faires do feature mutton – at least one – and they make it in such a way as to be palatable. Turkey is an all-American bird, not discovered until the Conquistadors… or maybe later when Columbus arrived.)

John and I are working with the kitchen that directs the Feasts here at Sherwood. We will be working about four hours a weekend serving at the Feast. Training starts today. We are not going to be paid in cash, but instead we are working in trade for passes (which means free camping, automatically), free food (we can even eat the steak and shrimp!), and any other benefits are assuredly generous boss can kick us down. Like high-dollar garb. If she has a position, and she’s thinking she might, she’ll hire me on as a counter girl at her kitchen. That’s cool. That’s what I did in Louisiana. I will work for tips, which doesn’t seem like a deal until one is informed that the counter makes a couple hundred in tips a day, we don’t split them with the kitchen staff, and there will perhaps be one maybe two other girls working with me. It has the potential to be a sweet gig.

The Sherwood Forest Faire is located about 45 minutes from Austin, TX. It starts Jan 11th and runs through to the first weekend of April. If you can, come visit us! Click the link to find the address on their website.

Come see us at the Rennies’ Faire!

Peace.

Steel Not All Here

The following took place on Thursday, Jan. 19th, 2012. Toon Town, TX.

So the plan today is to go up and get some steel. At least that’s what we decided on yesterday after a huge meal of cornbread and chicken and potatoes, while hanging around the fire drinking beer and watching “Monty Python’s the Holy Grail.”  I’m all sorts of excited about getting some stock in, finally, but there is one small problem; we need a pair of square-stock tongs, like the ones Ryan busted. They’re an absolute necessity in order to punch out our sporks with any sense of efficiency. Yesterday we called the farrier’s supply company and they said they had a pair – for $68.

Ryan has no money to get these tongs. I have exactly $100 to spend on steel stock, and nothing more. If I bought the tongs, I could only perhaps buy one stick of the steel I need for my dice, or a couple of sticks of something cheaper, or about a half-dozen sticks of 3/8″ rebar. Now, I saved that money back to buy MY steel stock for the beginning of the year. Part of the agreement we made when I started this blacksmithing gig, was that I would sell what I made as my pay. That means I buy or find my own steel.

We do have quite a bit of stock to work with, but that’s really Ryan’s spork stock, and now he’s talking all kinds of crazy about dividing it up and making it into this, that, and the other product, which in my mind is wasting our time. We won’t be selling a thing until Colorado, so we have a good four months or so to make product in bulk. Personally, I’d rather go down the product list and make everything in bulk, one thing at a time. Or at least acquire and pre-cut all the stock we need.

Then again, Ryan may be thinking of internet sales as an option, to help keep us all floating and fed until we make it to our shows. There’s already a very good prospect for me to sell some dice. If that’s the case, I can see why having a little bit of everything on hand would be profitable.

Still, that doesn’t mean I want to spend the majority of my jealously coveted stock money on a pair of tongs that Ryan will use and abuse more often than I. Squatch would guide me in making a pair of tongs exactly like Ryan’s old ones and I could do it for the price of a couple hours labor and propane. Alas, Ryan’s got it in his head that tongs absolutely must be made of high-grade tool steel or spring steel and yadda yadda, blah, blah. If that’s the case, then how did the smiths of old make tools when all THEY had was pig iron of inconsistent quality?

Hell, if he wants to have tongs made of tool steel, I can afford one stick of that for a third of the price of the tongs themselves. And, hey, if I learn to make good tongs, at least I know I can sell them for around $70 a pop. Heh, heh. ^.^

I want to learn to make tongs and tools, anyway, more so than I want to make knives or swords or tomahawks. Weapons are just toys, I like to think that there is more skill and artistry involved in designing and making good tools. I’m not afraid to get in there and make things I need and use, and there’s a guy here to teach me how.

Time to go wake Ryan up with some intimate pounding – on the anvil! Heehee.

Peace.

Pineapple Twist

Today (Wed, Sept. 7th) is the first day the rain’s let up in two and a half days. A long storm system moving striaght up along the Appalachians ruined what should have been a great 3-day weekend. Instead, we had two okay days and one really crappy Labor Day. We showed up at the blacksmiths’ shop really only hoping to complete a bit of inventory and hopefully make enough to buy something warm to eat.

We wound up making a little bit of money – just enough to make the day worth it. I stayed nice and damp, despite the heat from the forge. Then, a bleak day turned into a really awesome day when a master blacksmith from the area (who, incidentally, used to be the blacksmith of the faire back in ’03) showed up, saw the patterns on our war hammers and figured out what we were actually trying to do.

You see, for some time we’ve been trying to make something called a “pineapple twist,” a complicated-looking twist that, when done correctly, comes out looking like a closed pinecone. It looks something like this: (Pic.)

Ryan saw this twist done once before, but since he didn’t do one himself shortly afterwards, couldn’t remember how it was done. We figured we’d have to go online and find a video demonstration. Hallelujah, we didn’t have to! Kurt – a local blacksmith – showed up and heartily offered to show us. Kurt fits the blacksmith stereotype as far as appearances go. Over six feet tall and barrel-chested, he stood tall and relaxed with his thick thumbs hooked into the loops of his shorts. His round, almost boyish face, thick black hair and full beard completed the outfit. I half expected him to put his hands on his hips, throw his head back and let loose with a belly-shaking guffaw.

Thank god he didn’t, because I think I might have freaked out a little…

I’ve noticed working with blacksmiths, that master blacksmiths in particular turn into giddy little children whenever they get a chance to crawl into someone else’s forge to “compare hammerblows,” so to speak. Anyway, I watched in rapt fascination as Kurt instructed and assisted Ryan in making a pineapple twist. He gave us plenty of great tips and reminders; showed me how not to fear the cross-pein hammer. (As a result, I pumped out a handful of throwing spikes today at the forge!)

Kurt was a great guy and we might have to swing by his shop someday to drink beer and swing a hammer. (Because beer and hot metal go together for the same reason pizza and beer and cigarettes and beer go so well together. By the time I left Colorado, I had written recipes for half a dozen “blacksmiths’ drinks.”)

Learning the pineapple twist made that rainy, slow, potentially crappy Labor Day Monday worth getting out of bed and suffering wet garb for. Ryan’s now using the pineapple twist whenever he can, and I’m eager to try it, too, once I get more stock to make throwing spikes.

And, for all the apprentices out there just like me that want to try this twist, too, here are the basic steps in how it’s done:

Steps in making a pineapple twist, labeled Fig. A - Fig. E, from left to right.

1. Mark a deep groove down the center of a piece of heated square stock. Make this mark on all four sides of the stock. (Fig. A)

2. Place in vice and make a 3/4 twist. (Fig. B)

3. Square all four sides on the anvil. (Fig. C)

4. Punch another groove down the center of each four sides, as in step 1. (Fig. D)

5. Untwist in vice 1/4 twist. Watch the twist to see if it looks right. True up on anvil with a wooden mallet. You now have a completed pineapple twist. (Fig. E)

Have fun with that! ❤

Peace.

Texas is Burning Down

Picture Taken 9/6/2011

While we’re over here on the east coast putting up with days on end of rain, Texas is slowly burning down. Recent arrivals from the state reported 115 degree weather and little fires everywhere on the road. Part of Scarborough Faire burnt down – The Junk (where we hung out on site and ordered food, drank beer, and listened to local musicians) is no more, along with severl booths that happened to be near it. One person died in that fire – Will, “The Pickle Guy.” I have yet to hear the details of his death.

Parts of “Toon Town” – a well-known part of the TRF (Texas Rennaisance Faire) campground – are gone, including several semi-permanent houses there. Ryan has a house in Toon Town and he’s been checking regularly on the status of the fires there. So far as I know, his house is fine, along with his home forge.

I heard that already, over one thousand homes have burnt to the ground, leaving one thousand families without a place to return to. Thousands more have evacuated, waiting in angst for the fire to burn out without anymore damages done. I have yet to get ahold of the family we stayed with in Scarborough, to see how they and their ranch are faring. Perhaps they’ve evacuated, too???

And while Texas is burning down, parts of New York are flooding due to the hurricane down south. The hurricane is pushing a huge storm system right up against the side of the Appalachian Mountains, the worst of it headed straight for New York. The Tuxedo Ren Faire shut down and evacuated about a week ago (this being Sept. 9th when this post was actually written), and I’m concerned about my friends who were trying to start a booth up there. Did they actually make it? Did they have to evacuate? Where are they now?

Until I learn more, or all of this crazy weather blows over, I keep my friends and fellow transients in my thoughts and prayers. Stay safe, you guys.

Peace.