What? It only took me a month.  It was a month that included an earthquake and a hurricane and some ludicrous flooding.  Ludicrous.  We’re fine, our house is fine, most of my garden survived.  I’m giddy with excitement about the things I’m working on in my studio, but that will wait until I fulfill that promise to post camp pictures.  La.

So, we went. We camped. We had a blast. I took fewer pictures than I intended.  I felt guilty for doing less than I meant to. Such is life.  I showed up with a basket of presents, a new song, a new poem story thing (it’s a hard one to explain), and clothing for friends.  Oh, and the food was ridiculous.  Drac and I have been plotting for years about cooking an Italian feast together the first night of our meal  plan. It would be huge, and we would call it Dago Day and get in trouble but get back out of trouble by feeding the angry people, and we would make people beg us to let them eat with us, and we would teach people who only know about pizza and meatballs that there’s so much more the Italian cuisine, and we would make everyone eat too much.  We finally got on the stick, and we worked magic, my friends.  We had canoli.  We had gorgeous roasted pork with goat cheese and caramelized onions.  We had vegetables with bagna caôda.  We had my great-grandmother’s excellent cannelloni in cream sauce and Drac’s astoundingly good homemade salad dressing for the greens.  We had stomach aches.  It was excellent.

We like rituals and traditions, and we tend to build new ones every once in a blue moon. One long-standing tradition circles Preachain’s Clanne Champion.  Each new champion makes new items for the Champion’s regalia, and the subsequent Champions have to tend and carry those relics around while they serve in that post.  The Standard has some of those glorious relics on it, in the form of crow’s head finials and a gorgeous repoussé plate on the spear-point’s sheathe.  I’m pretty sure Madach cast the finials, and he may have made the plate as well.  We didn’t have him with us this year, but we had his work.

Have I mentioned that I run with amazing artists and artisans?   Metal work fascinates me, in part because I just try to help people who do it and steer clear of it myself.  I am ready to help folks with clothing and weaving and repairs and cooking and first aid and and and, but once the fire is made, I leave the metal folks to deal with the metal.  This year, Etaine mentioned that her striker was no longer throwing a good spark.  In a matter of minutes, Treon and the guys got out some blow tubes, made our little fire very very hot, and reforged it so it would be a good tool again.

Bing bang boom, problem solved in less time than it would take me to darn a sock.

As usual, I spent as much time as I could with friends who live too too far away.  Scot and Maggie live an ocean away, and I can’t get enough of them.  I haunt their booth, because it’s rare than we can get them away from work.  We did get them out of the shop to see some fighting one day, which was good.

Adon managed to shatter his spear, like you do.  It’s a thing that happens.  No one was injured.

Joyner came back after many many years away and fit right in with our older, wiser, better fed tribe.  I think he’ll stay.

In general, we hung around, we tried not to get sun-burned, we sang and told stories and possibly over-indulged once or twice, and we had the sort of dorky conversations about history and archaeology only big nerds like us can stand.  I can’t wait to see everyone again.

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