My Pennsic 35

So soon it's over.  But while it's there, Pennsic is another world - kind of a medieval summer camp for - I was going to say adults, but entire families go there, and there are more children's activities every year.  It's an alternate universe that springs up like puffball mushrooms in the night, swells for two weeks to 10,000 or more happy souls, and then POOF - but it returns next year!

 

I might have plans, some ideas of what I'd like to see and do, and I usually end up doing something else as well.  There are battles (the main excuse for the Pennsic Wars) to watch if one is so inclined, food, entertainment, unusual shopping - where else can you buy a Plague Rat? 

Or a duct tape rose?

 

On the second Wednesday, the merchants stay open late for an event called Midnight Madness that features special sales, entertainment, and, er, madness.  Corey promised to wear a hot pink tunic if I wore... this:

 

THEY dressed me up like this!!

And classes.  Yes, education at a medieval summer camp.  This year I learned How to Make Fire Like a Reasonably Intelligent Saxon: so the flint-and-steel firemaking course was called.  And everybody succeeds!  It's as much fun to watch as to do.  Now I need a set of those tools for my own demo kit... I also saw an excellent demonstration of how to make a small but very efficient gas forge and save $400+ in the process.  Gotta build one!

 

 

And the smith who was doing the demo later had an "open forge" night ("Want to swing a hammer?").  I had an idea for a bottle opener, so he handed me a steel bar and we started scribling ideas on a picnic table.  The design incorporated elements from one of his pieces and part of my personal emblem.  Then he gave me some general instructions (I hadn't seen his opener) for how to shape the metal and I started heating and bashing.  The result was fairly awesome:

 

 

But most important are the people.  I know perhaps 20 people there (other than my extended family) out of TEN THOUSAND and it's so great to see them again.  They are like a family away from... time... We link up on period activities and the like, but mostly we connect because we enjoy being together.  I bond with the kids in the fabric store and their friends, various people associated with the store, some of the merchant folk, blacksmiths, fellow campers.  It's good to be with such warm, affectionate people.

 

And when you first come in the gate, someone in the Troll Booth almost always says, "Welcome Home!"