Ebony's Pearls

The snow and ice we were supposed to be coated with today? Is rain.

It's warm enough there is no ice, no icy spots. So I am going out to Hancock's in a few minutes to look at fabric. It's time and past time to start considering medieval clothes for Shika so she can accompany Itzl. I think I'll also build a small cart for Shika to ride and sleep in; it will comfort her to have a familiar place. That means checking out flea markets for wagons or baby strollers I can take apart and rebuild into something nicely medievalish once draped in fancy fabrics and cushions.

It will also have to have a canopy and netting to keep Shika in because while she considers us her family now, at a Fair, she's likely to run away. She's so small and the crowds so dense and the site so close to a busy street she's likely to get seriously hurt if she spooked and ran off, so we'll make sure she can't do that.

Itzl's an old hat at Faires and large events. He knows to stay in his dawgie bag and he will accept a harness and leash so he can be pulled quickly out of dangerous situations should I ever let him on the ground.

I'll have to find or make a harness that will fit Shika under her medieval clothes to further increase her safety.

She'll need between three convertible outfits, that can be warmed up or cooled down according to the time of day and temperature. Unlike Itzl, she'll wear hats. He doesn't like them because they often interfere with his hearing - and since his job is to hear things, I can understand why he doesn't want his hearing obscured by a hat or earflaps.

But Shika will wear hats. I can make her a Yorkshire Roundgown with a steeple hennin, a nice heraldic cotehardie with a double truncated hennin headdress, and an Tudor gown with the crowned cap. With all three of those, I can add under chemises for additional warmth or remove them to keep her cool. I can use a warm veil or replace it with a sheer veil. And they can all be color coordinated to go with a nice warm cloak.

I'll bring towels to dry off wet feet. Itzl was fine using my cloak last year, but my cloak went walk-about. I'll have to make a new one this year - another reason for going to Hancock's. This year, since my new cloak probably won't be as absorbent as my old one became, bringing towels makes sense.

As for weather at Medfaire this year, the patterns are pretty discombobulated, so I can't say for absolute certain. I'm thinking we may get a final freeze that weekend. I'm hoping it's a dry one, not a wet, muddy one. Last year was wet because of a broken watermain and that was pretty miserable. We had to move several booths that were literally under water. The rain only muddied things up, that main flooded out half a row of vendors.

In any case, I plan to come prepared with scraps of old carpet, drop cloths, and boards to solidify things in case of rain or water main breakage.

And if those things don't materialize, it will give the booth a fancier feel.