The long-awaited update

Long time - no see!

So... it's almost the end of the season and things are starting to settle down. My guild and I have one last performance to wrap up the season - Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire in Oregon, and then we put a lid on it for a few months before starting anew for next season in October (it never really stops).

2006 Recap & Project Update

Honest! I'm not wasted, I have pneumonia!

The jerkin is complete. I managed that much before the faire preparations turned my project-time topsy-turvy. The little pucker across the back of the neck ceased to be a real bother once the thing was washed and I began wearing it. The stretch of the fabric and the changing positions as I moved and stretched more or less mitigated the problem.

Nevertheless, I've re-drafted that part of the pattern for the next doublet because 'more-or-less' isn't really good enough for me.

Calabash leads the morning meeting - The lunatic now runs the asylum

My plans to give up Calabash the Fool in favor of a Sheriff character sort of fell apart under the fierce winds of a vocal opposition. Not to me playing the sheriff, but to me abandoning the madcap antics of Calabash. Vox populi - Vox dei I relented and put the mask back on.

A fool in a tree

My capering was somewhat stilted due to the fact that my oxygen was in short supply (pneumonia and all that) but I still managed to have a lot of fun, and even summoned the energy to get arrested by the Queen's Guard once for using Lord Darnley's codpiece as a hatrack!

I had to boil that hat afterwards...

It turned out that the sheriff character was a much more tiring character to play anyway. Arresting people, soliciting bribes, writing tickets for "Insufficient Bodice Ogling" and the like is much more arduous that it sounds. All the same, I still managed to get it all together to have a good solid go at it the final weekend of our three-weekend run of faire.

"If you all snuggle in together, the line will be shorter and you might make a friend!"

I think the hardest part of this costume was maintaining that curly mustache! I never realized that the villains in those old movies were always playing with their mustaches because if they didn't the damn thing would droop! Lots and lots and lots of mustache wax went into this character!!!

"You have the right to remain silly!"

The thing in my hand is my ticket book! One of the guys I was bouncing ideas off of gave me the idea of having a prop ticket book filled with silly things I could accuse patrons of. I wrote it up so that there was no way the patron could get out of the conversation without being guilty of something! "Bribing the sheriff" is followed by "Failing to bribe the sheriff" and "Ogling bodices" is countered by "Insufficient ogling of bodices" and "Impeding the ogling of bodices"! In all, there's about twenty things on the list, result of which is that no one gets away without a souvenier ticket for their day at faire.

Something else happened to me at faire this year which had never happened before. A lovely young woman with an accent walked up to me - while I was in my mask - and asked if I was Scott! I've always known in sort of a general way that this Blog is out there in cyberspace and it's being read by people I don't know, but this was the first time I've had a stranger walk up to me and say that they'd read the blog and liked it.

What could I say? I apologized for letting it languish for so long without an update.
If you're reading this, I am so sorry if I came off stilted. I didn't even get your name! You were very gracious withal.

More soon(ish).
-Scott

All Photos by Kristin Perkins