Long Week

I skipped last week's exercise class. It was step class and my knees were hurting; not a good combination. I missed yesterday's class for much the same reason. It's a bit of a catch 22; my knees hurt enough to interfere with going to exercise class, but I need to go to exercise class to build up muscle, strengthen sinews and bones.

Saturday was the demo at Oakview Historic Park Heritage Day. We were behind the house this time; which equaled less traffic, but also better shade. It was moderately cool but massively humid. It was just the 3 of us this time. K had car trouble and it was G's birthday. G and her mom came by so w could meet her mom and socialize a bit.

We shared a tent with the American Wildlife Refuge. One of the birds was a new education bird and wasn't settling well; Steve Stone took her home and brought back a more experienced bird. They had Princess, a kestrel; Speedy, an eastern screech owl; Forest, a great horned owl; and Scowl, a barred owl. Princess was quite chatty throughout the day.

CK brought some flat, plastic shuttle she had made. I had my size 10 thread associated with my bottle holder so I used that to demo. I did talk briefly to the lye soap maker and to some people from the Joel Lane House.

The director invited us to consider doing a demo there in early December. It would require using their loaner 18th century outfits. That's early than the tatting era, but still would be cool. And it's possible someone was tatting that early, we just don't have any evidence of it. Tatting does require a certain standard of thread, and we don't know if the thread that early had the requisite smoothness for the knots to slide.

Mostly, I worked on my beanile necklace. I was 3 chains and 1 ring away from completion when the rain started. It cut the day short by only half an hour. It came down in buckets. And then by the time we had packed up our stuff and ready to move cars and pack them? The rain had slowed and then stopped.

I went back with A and contacted CD. We met for supper and when I got home, I finished the necklace. I also found out part of my other State Fair entry was missing.

Sunday morning, I got started on filling in the missing piece. I finally got it done in the afternoon and hurried to get dressed, off to Michael's for display items, and then to the Fairgrounds. I got both pieces into the Fair (I was unable to complete my 3rd piece because of needing to redo the 1st one) and submitted with 10 minutes to spare. Whew.

The weather has been very un-autumnal the past couple days. Yesterday it started in the high 70s and rain. It stayed humid and warm all day. This morning was 77F with a 76F dewpoint. Ugh.

Sorry I don't have pictures. There's something wrong with my iPad/laptop connection and I haven't been able to download them.