What an absolutely lovely weekend!

Thursday night I stayed up too late picking and choosing the best/most likely to be requested books from my Viking, Anglo-Saxon, and costuming collections to take to the Border Downs Project Day. I know what books I have, but sometimes it is a lovely thing just to indulge in a little pride over the collection and lovingly pat all the pretty books. Even better, the selected tomes were all going on a library roadshow again, so I knew they would get the chance to be fondled by other loving hands soon. I really should put together a standard roadshow list some time - I'm always worried about forgetting a key book - but that would spoil a chunk of the fun!

Friday, I got up reasonably early and hit the road for Border Downs. It's about a six hour drive and, other than a tiny bit of construction, it went quite smoothly. This was my first long solo road trip in some time and the freedom and quiet were welcome in an odd but pleasing way. Once in Sioux Falls, I met up with my host for the weekend, zarhooie  and ingus  came over, and we all had a really scrummy dinner before heading out to the fiber geekage night. Over the course of the night, we had eight folks show up for socialization and/or fiber fun. I distributed the tasty library samplings to the folks who had requested them (and a few "bonuses" I had suspected would be found droolworthy, if not directly requested) and then helped with a variety of patterning tasks. At about midnight, we packed up the library and crafty goodness and went out for a nice middle-of-the-night breakfast. It was a truly delightful day of projects and socialization with friends new and old.

Note to self: Even when you tell yourself that you do not need to be to site until noon, disappearing nearly a full bottle of whisk(e)y between two people and staying up chatting past 6AM is not advisable. Fun. Good work. Still not really advisable... At least not on a regular basis. ;)

After a lovely Indian lunch, we finally rolled into site around 3PM on Saturday. The population was on the low end, but everyone had a project and there was some bardic-y goodness going on. Since everyone was already doing their own thing and the ceilings were not really conducive for whipcording, I just started in on some illuminations for the scroll drive. I whiled away the day with painting and some very bad work with a drop spindle, plus some time out to deal fiber-crack, of course. (Not all my painting was on paper, though - I added some graffiti to the "grafiti" in the college's Back Alley, a room where they had a faux alley with painted-on buildings and other "urban" things. I decided the flowers in the windowbox needed a ladybug. So now there is a ladybug. And a tiny Viking helmet for the lady bug. I, sadly, did not take pictures. ;P) In the later evening, we started up a Bardic circle, but that ended reasonably early since most of the attendees had either been up far too late the night before, had worked during the day, or both. There was an entirely more reasonable bedtime and volume of Scotch on Saturday night. Again, I cannot say that the day was anything other than lovely. There is great merit to the little bitty events and although I think there were a grand total of thirteen people in attendance, it was full worth the trip.

Sunday started lazily... An expected delivery did not show up by the time I left but there will be other opportunities for delivery, I'm sure. The delayed departure was advantageous, though, as I missed out on the snow that hit Albert Lea, MN. I saw the evidence as I drove through, but by then the highway was clear and dry. I had to contend with some Wizard-of-Oz-level wind on the way, though. While largely benign, the gusty winds will be making me seek out some car paint repairs tomorrow. When I stopped for gas at one point, the winds seemed to have abated, and I had opened the car door a crack when the "your lights are on stupid" chime went off. Unfortunately, as I reached to turn off the lights, a gust of wind came up and flung the car door all the way open and smashed it into the metal part of the handle of the gas pump. :/ The damage is just on the very edge of the door so it won't be hard to fix nor noticeable once done, but annoying nonetheless. The rest of the trip home went quickly, with an odd soundtrack of Hedningarna and The Beatles.

I had expected this to be a very fun weekend, and it exceeded my expectations in every way. I am home now, relaxed and pleased. Just a lovely weekend altogether.

****************************************************************************************

EDIT: Per zarhooie 's request:
The exemplar:


The illuminated initial, with miniature from the exemplar, finished size 2.5 inches x 3 inches
(I hope They use it for a crwth, since it is a musical theme and done at a Bardic event)


And since zarhooie demanded polka-dots, I did a quickie of the beasties in the bottom right rondelle.
Finished size - just a tad bigger than a 20 oz soda cap, since I did not have a compass. :P