wandering around

Maze pictures!
Because of the new campsite for Living History Week, I was able to place the labyrinth much closer to the tents and make it easier to spot. Because of some great help bringing up stones, I got it finished on the first full day, and later on tweaked it a little to make the 'walls' more curved and natural looking, though I don't know whether that really shows up on the photos.
It annoys me that apparently there's no way to zoom or enlarge a photo once it's posted on Blogger. Argh.
Anyways ....

 The maze in early morning, uninhabited.

 The maze in full use by the young and spry.

The maze for contemplation by the more sedate.

The ghost of the maze, all its bones removed.  (photo credit Joan Kew)

All symbolical this is for me, because tomorrow, right after midnight, the 3-Day Novel Contest begins--though I will not myself begin until something like 6 am, because I am old and need my sleep--and I am less prepared for it than I have ever been.
Seriously. I have less of an idea than ever, no outline, no characters. I might have a setting, in that my brother suggested I write about our childhood running about in the woods and lake and so on, specifically this passage from my website bio:

"The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings taught me that forests were full of magic, and my brother and I spent most of one summer looking for the secret door to other worlds. We thought we'd found it once, where a huge tree had broken above our head-height, and toppled to land on another, making a rough gate. We walked between the trunks as many ways as we could think of, with different things in our pockets or hands, but never got through into the other world."

Will anything come of this? We shall see. 

random Pennsic pics

A small selection of the cool stuff at the war. First, labyrinths of various designs appeared by the barn, in the food market, and along the paved pathways. Every morning they were drawn fresh. You can imagine how happy I was to discover them on my early morning walks, and to take the time to walk or run them on my way.



Another new thing: parchment makers in the market. The Meyer family has been making parchment since the 1500s, reportedly, but this is the first time they've come to Pennsic. Next year they hope to have a proper tent, but I suspect no one really noticed anything past the OMG PARCHMENT!!!eleventy.



Another thing that might almost have been chosen to make me personally happy: Alexander, apprentice to Arab Boy, is making Aldrovani-style enamelled beakers. These are the very objects that caused me to fall in love with enamelled glassware in the first place, and to work on faking them up with thriftshop glassware and low-fire enamels. Alexander is doing them for real. When I found out there would be a demo of the process on Saturday, I was all bouncy.



By the food market we met the labyrinth maker, who had just finished a gnomen sundial nearby, and was adding another classic labyrinth to the path.

I wanted to add a video of Dru and Osprey playing cigar-box and cookie-tin banjo, but there isn't room on this post, so it will have to wait.

maze of mazey words

Since today I am kind of achey and grumpy, I will think happy thoughts.
First being that I had a lovely weekend, with a Saturday trip to Oldfield Road farms and nurseries, though I restrained myself and did not buy another fruit tree. This time. Or another old rose. The greengage plum tree I bought last visit is planted in the front lawn, and doing all right so far.
Sunday Anna and I visited Damali Lavender farm for a fundraiser for the Cowichan Valley hospice. A low-key, relaxed event, with tables of rummage-sale goodies and baskets, musicians and storytellers.
The site is gorgeous, an older house with pillared veranda at the top of a rolling slope planted with lavender (more kinds than you could guess, all neatly labelled) and rows of trellised grape vines, as they've moved into winemaking. The slope runs off into a meadow (or hayfield, depending on time of year I suppose) where visitors' cars are parked. We arrived a bit early, and were the first car directed into the field. One of those moments where you're not quite sure you're in the right place, or whether you're being set up for some sitcom moment of mistaken identity ("Ah, you must be here to apply for the position of governess!")
We visited the lavender shop, where I bought a copy of Labyrinths of British Columbia and a little gauze bag of lavender. As a child I bought my mother a lavender sachet each summer, so the smell is a sentimental one for me. Though I have to say, after a few minutes in the shop I couldn't smell the lavender at all, it was so pervasive.
At the bottom of the hill is a simple Cretan labyrinth, as shown in the pic above. I trotted down the hill to walk it, while Anna listened to the harpist up above. The pattern is one I've seen before, and I will have to get my mazes books out and identify it before it drives me mad. A pleasant meditative walk, though I never get any particular insights or enlightenment walking a maze. (I can't meditate worth a damn either.)
Back up the hill to hear local author Carol Matthews speak about mazes and memoirs, using Ariadne and her thread as a metaphor for choosing a path through all the memories and possible beginnings.
Then a drive to Cowichan Bay for lunch and some shopping. Bread, and cheese, and crafts at Spinning Ninny boutique, where we both loved the needle felt dolls by Anne Fulton - I wish I had pictures to show you how cheerful and comic they are. Plump roguish angels, chubby ballerinas who embody 'dance like nobody's watching', all so happy in themselves.

Writey stuff, also happy. Well sort of. I mean, it made me happy to have it work out. As you know Bob, I've been expanding The Cost of Silver, and that means I've been tossing plot threads out like fishing lines, unsure which ones would catch. (possibly more like grappling hooks, the sort that will pull free when you haul on them, and fall onto your foot in a slapstick fashion.)
A scene added in the fenland draining sequence brought in crook-backed Nell, who taught Griffin how to cast his spirit into a bird's body and 'ride' it, which they did together to fly over the dykes and discover something creepy and plot-relevant.
That meant Nell would be one of the witches hanged in the witch-hunt sequence, hitherto unnamed. But, I thought, what if...
What if Griffin called a bird, and 'rode' it to the gallows, and snatched Nell's spirit from her body?

Over roofs of tile and thatch, over the fallen stone of the Abbey lying like a mason's sketch beneath, the swallow's wings resolute, swift as its heart.
May be thou shalt die when thy mortal frame hangs, Griffin said, and she knew him beset more by curiosity than grief.
May be I shall turn bird and forget woman, she answered. But my end shall come winged and not choking.
She forgot her companion a while in the joy of air, riding the buffet of gust and pull of wind. A hawk cried somewhere behind and the swallow's unthinking craft dropped her low among alder, darting and fleeting between branches.
Griffin's body lay in bracken, sprawled long-legged and awkward. She fell from the air onto the broad hat that lay across his face, feet scratching and sliding before she found their workings.
I am sorry, she said within herself. I grieve for Nan and would have given myself for her an I could.
Aye. He withdrew, pulling himself from the bird as a man thrusts off a rain-soaked coat. Dost forgive me, Nell, that I leave thee bird-shaped? 'Tis a poor rescue.
Have done with regret, she said. What shall I do with wings but fly?
He loosed her and fell away into his body. The swallow-woman sprang onto an alder twig and waited for the man to stir and roll over.

#

Griffin lay on bracken, wearied to the marrow. He tipped his hat back to watch a swallow dip and swing in the air, higher and smaller until his eyes watered and he lost the black speck into the blue.

#

In Bury's market place, one of the condemned witches had fallen into so deep a swoon that she could not be made to climb the ladder and stand for the noose to be tightened about her neck.
At last the hangman lowered the rope, two men held the woman upright between them, and he fixed the noose there upon the ground. With a haul and a grunt, he dragged her up. She did not kick nor thrash, only swung neat as a bell-rope to and fro.

my tattoos

Brand new and still healing.



This is the labyrinth pattern I build with stones each year at Fort Rodd Hill. I wanted a human figure in the centre, like the female figure in the Sibbo wall-painting, but it wouldn't have been legible without making the labyrinth huge. So a dot, standing for me being midway (a labyrinth is a two-way journey, there and back)
Also, if I forget the pattern next year at Fort Rodd Hill, I can just ask someone to look at the back of my neck.



A jellyfish, on my right shoulder, for the phosphorescent ctenophora at Martha's Vineyard during Viable Paradise (yes I know this isn't a ctenophore, it's a moon jelly) and for my first pro-rate sale, which features flying jellyfish.
And VPX, for Viable Paradise Ten, my year and my tribe.

a week under canvas

The week of Canada Day saw us, as usual, camped out at Fort Rodd Hill, a medieval village under canvas. Fewer than last year, with the changed date of the Pennsic War making scheduling awkward, but still a lovely time away from the present.

Building the maze was the easiest it's ever been. Tess and Rowan, Effie, Brandy and Brianna did all the heavy work, bringing the barrows of stones over to a spot near the tents, and leaving only the layout to me. Even with that I had help from Brenda and passing children.
The system of laying out the maze is:
First, lay out 7 (or howevermany) rings of stones. The width of each passage should be a long stride (of mine - if you have longer legs, you'll have wider passages and more stones needed).
My trick is to make the innermost ring a comfortable size to stand in, take an apronful of stones, choose a direction, and pace out the next 6 rings, laying a small pile of stones at each stride. Do this for 4 quarters, then the eighths between.
The best way I've found of keeping the passages even is to work outwards from the innermost ring, walking backwards with one foot in each passage, and laying the stones as you go. Sort of like planting in furrows.
Once I had all 7 rings, Tess and Rowan were running around them as best they could, somewhat tricky when the rings don't join. As I marked off the switchbacks, they ran back and forth, and by the time I picked up the stones that had barred the entrance, the whole maze had been test-run.
I'm not using quite the classic Cretan labyrinth, because I find that one a bit boring. The design I've been using has several switchbacks to add challenge, but one long run around the outermost ring, where the young and active can get their speed up.

Tess and Rowan are 5 and old enough to stay overnight, which they insisted on whenever possible. Even sleeping with the chickens didn't deter them.

The chickens laid us an egg a day, though the 21-gun salute on Canada Day stopped eggs for some time, even though their box was covered with straw bolsters during the firing.




Here's our dining tent, the table laid for breaking one's fast. Bread and cheese, sausage, boiled eggs, apples, dried apples and prunes, butter, dripping, honey and jam. Water and small beer (which has less alcohol than ginger ale and is quite refreshing on a warm day).

Brandy and Brianna, with help from the small children, churned butter every day, and later in the week made cheese.



I tried a different layout for my atelier this year, since Mark wasn't going to be working in the other half of the tent, and I'd been finding it a bit crowded now that I've got more paintings stretched out.
The feathers are to cut quill pens from, and the little 3-legged pot has size-glue in it--gelatin made from soaking and simmering parchment scrapings and clippings. On the left corner of the tabletop is a slab and muller for grinding pigments, and a little jar of red ochre.


The weavers' village at the entrance to our camp is well established now, with two looms flanking the path, and people carding and combing wool as well as spinning with both drop-spindle and wheel.
This year Maria had her new baby with her, and yes, visitors did ask whether she was a real baby, as well as whether the chickens were real, and the perennial question of whether we were really going to eat that food.
Yes. Because it's very good food indeed.
And yes, we are sleeping here, on a good straw tick with a featherbed on top, and wool blankets.
And yes, it's a real fire. If you put your hand in, it will give you a real burn.

It was a good week. Takedown on Sunday was sad, even though it goes so much faster than setup.
Brenda and I took the straw ticks home to mulch for the gardens. Brandy, Brianna, Tess and Rowan picked up the stones from the labyrinth, leaving nothing but tracks worn into the grass.