I am utterly exhausted.  In a very good way.

Today I went to University of West Florida, about an hour away, and participated as a presenter in their Festival on the Green.  This is what I took with me.

• My new sunshade.  Worked great, and kept a quick rain torrent off nicely.
• Spinning wheel with lots of fiber: Midnight’s espresso alpaca with newly refurbished carding paddles.  Raw natural flax.  Raw bleached flax.  Mystery wool from spinning guild.  Last of pink/purple corriedale.  Off-white mohair.
• Niddy-noddy, loaded with Midnight’s espresso alpaca, yarn version.
• Loom, loaded with Midnight’s espresso alpaca and linen, being woven into dress piece.
• Two plain stools.
• Spinning stool.
• Hat – hardly used, mostly blew away.
• Herbal bag – mostly used to tote things.
• Two tv tables – for the loom to sit on.

I wore my plaid kirtle with red embroidered smock, with my hair braided around my head with orange ribbons, and a white coif, which kept blowing off in the strong winds.

I talked all day.  The wheel was a tremendous draw.  People stood around and just tried to figure it out.  One eight-year old girl really understood the gear concepts – I think better than her dad.  I told her to remember that she had a talent for engineering.  I handed out quite a few SCA brochures.

Our demo day at the Valparaiso Heritage Museum will at minimum be exactly the same.  BUT, of course, since I am rarely satisfied to repeat something exactly, I have some thoughts of what would make my presentation better.

• Signage.  I need to identify myself as Greet, and that this is my tent.  I had the funniest idea, to make a pennant that says something like "Come meet Greet…(and then a long list below) spinner…knitter…weaver…embroiderer…tailor…dancer…musician…scribe…  I’m not completely happy with the "Come meet Greet" part – does anyone else have a better idea?
• Visual aids.  People come up mid-spiel, having missed the beginning, and I have to re-explain basic history.  I’ve thought of making up some graphics that are on fabric, which I could then pin to the sunshade, and would be more indestructible than paper-based pictures and illustrations.
  • Picture of alpaca
  • Picture of flax
  • Basic dates/images of typical period wheels, looms, etc.
  • Small sign that says ‘Alpaca’ on a stick, like a veggie sign
  • Small sign that says ‘Flax’
  • Small sign that says ‘Cotton’
• I really want a spindle wheel.  One of my main responses to children had to do with ‘this is not the wheel that Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on’.  So I need an example of what that was.  But in the meantime, a picture will do.