AROW got us back into the swing of things again, from refreshing our memories as to how tents go up and furniture goes together (better to stuff about at AROW than when setting up for a major show LOL), and once we were home again (and everything was washed and mended and so forth) the push was on to have gear finished and the encampment looking as speccy as possible.
I'll note here that we do have a lot of gear, even for 12 people; but we're portraying travelling nobles and there's plenty of indication that some of them travelled with even more gear than we do (!), and considerably more frequently. I think part of it is also that Rob and I have been doing this for 30-odd years and found fairly early on that medieval-style camping can be bloody inefficient if you don't bring the right gear; for a long time I tended to bring spares of a lot of things (blankets, belts, clothing, bowls, cups, spoons, etc.), because there was always someone who'd 'forgotten' theirs and needed to borrow... then I watched them pack down their rather minimalist encampment and head home in the space of a couple of hours, while we were taking half the damn day and I decided that I needed to triage the packing list and just bring what we needed - and felt rather selfish and un-caring of my fellow man but got over it.
By and large we had pretty much everything we needed for Festival, but I had to make a pair of tongs for the charcoal brick which needed lighting in the fire (as opposed to the usual sort, which we ran out of and couldn't find, which light with a lighter); a spectacular throw rug appeared so Sam swapped out a drab wall hanging for it; and I discovered my straw broom (essential encampment kit when I'm holding workshops in my tent and expect people to sit on the floor) had been disintegrated by borers - I initially bought another one, then decided to pull the old one apart and remake it and didn't botch it too badly... and it's quite an advantage to have one living in my tent and the other in the kitchen ;-)
We put the finishing touched to Nat's Scribe display and uploaded pictures to the Blogger site so people could scan a QR cade and then find out more about all the bits and pieces;
and I made my eldest grand-daughter a limp-bound book of medieval fairytales and stories so she had something to read at events as she's getting s little old for more of the toys in the Kids' tent ;-)
A few adjustments to clothing, preparation of a menu for the event to feed 12 people (and then buying it) and we were pretty much ready to go :-)
