Steampunk, Jousting, and Football

Occasionally, life simply gets in the way of blogging, and this has been one of those weeks! Sewing, designing some new craft projects, a fun day trip and house hunting have all kept me going this week-never mind the day to day time spent relaxing on the patio, my book immersion and so on.

This past week included a trip to the Colorado Renaissance Fair's opening weekend.  This trip was a maybe up until the last minute, due to the Colorado wildfires that have been brewing right and left.  We've had two days when the smoke could be seen and smelled here in downtown Denver . Fortunately the fair was out of harms way, and a good time was had by all.

Throughout our day, we saw a "parade" of the King's court, jousting, singing, and more entertainment than I can mention. Our tickets were two for one, and entertainment was all free. My spending was on the glass mentioned below, sugared walnuts and lots of lemonade.

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 The food consisted of huge turkey legs, corn, spiced nuts, ale and too many others to mention.  One could have gone crazy shopping, from blown glass to jewelry to walking sticks, to period clothing. I only purchased one item, but it was a biggie.  In the past my sister had given me a lovely glass blown gourd with gold highlights (shown in the poor picture below). I've been wanting to add to the collection and this year I ordered a hand blown pumpkin-requiring me of course, to return to the fair to retrieve said item .A lovely day all in all, although I was certainly happy for my "clod-hopping" shoes and walking stick.

  



I've spent two days looking at houses. You certainly do have to kiss some frogs along the way.  That said, with every house we are closer to being able to fine tune our needs and requirements.  We're now taking a break and in July will begin intensive searching every weekend.  That ten thousand foot yard sounded great-until we looked at it, and I have yet to figure out the entering and exiting of the left part of the garage shown with the patio immediately in front.  Onward and forward as they say.  Yesterday was spent digging through the storage unit to find some items-there is no other way to express it. I miss my stuff, I need my stuff!!

I've been asked to make some altered and themed paper mache houses, similar to the ones below.

 My first client is a bit into "steam punk" and I'm having fun planning her Halloween house.  My first step was to quickly paint the box inside and out-I wasn't concerned about the original color showing through, drops or spots. It's just a base to work on.  My next step is to decoupage fun and funky Halloween papers on the house, and then cut out the windows and attack with sandpaper to even out and make it look funky and aged. On this particular house I'm thinking small glass or ceramic pumpkins outside, some bats, a fence all around and a little haunted tree on the side.  I'm already liking this so much I am seeing myself do one or two a week. I'll have a post shortly with the semi finished project and a pile of photos of before, during and after! Unfortunately I cannot seem to find things like little black birds or pumpkin charms in the craft stores yet, so I may be hunting them down online.

Meanwhile, this afternoon my large project is to attempt to pin this huge quilt on a small dining table.  A client asked for a quilt that looked like a football field, with yardage lines and markers and football designs quilted on the quilt. We work with what we have as my two large quilting tables are of course, still in storage.  While I don't expect to have difficulty with the actual quilting, getting this baby ready to quilt could certainly take an hour or so of effort, to say the least.

It's Friday again and I am looking to weekend with family and perhaps a day trip.  We'll barbecue Saturday night, hit the movies Sunday to see World War Z, and probably drive at least half of the Lariat Loop for a relaxing Saturday afternoon.

Just another relaxing week in retirement!