Creative Oak King

5 April 2008

Opening Day of Scarborough Renaissance Festival

Thousands of fun photographs must have been taken at Scarborough today—hundreds of which are likely visible somewhere online.  None of them were taken with my camera! 

I managed to use my camera twice—once to photograph a fabric up close so I could find out its availability and once to snap a photo of this doublet.  The customer wearing it, says he repainted it himself (they come brand new in a pretty basic green) and added the metal acorn pins for special interest.  I was quite impressed.  I’m always interested to see how people go about making their Pendragon Costumes purchases more unique—and this guy did a great job.

Our opening day was fabulous.  The weather was in our favour—a sunny, gently breezy, mid-seventies sort of spring day.  The patrons were in a great mood.  And we rocked and rolled all day long!  Pendragon Costumes had a great day and so did East Wind Games.  Even A Wardrobe in Time did well with its consignment sales through Pendragon.  It was a happy day. 

We did our best to make it even happier, with the beginning of Ginger’s birthday celebration.  Kelly and Stephanie and I had conspired to make sure that Ginger got to celebrate her natal day while Kelly was still in town.  That meant Saturday night!  So, we spread the word about dinner to everyone but Ginger.  Ginger found out about the celebration when she deciphered the little game we organized for her.  I spelled out the message:  “Happy Birthday” and “Johnny Carino’s 8:30″ (don’t forget the apostrophe!), one letter at a time, on 4 x 6 lavendar index cards, and we had them delivered to Ginger throughout the day—one card at a time!  They didn’t necessarily arrive in order—and “p” and “d” are surprisingly similar-looking when you aren’t sure which end is up!  But, Ginger’s a smart cookie, and she wisely deduced not only the plan, but the sneaky loved ones behind it!  We had a group of about twenty to honour our dear Ginger, and we said our goodbyes to Miss Kelly.  By the time we returned to the faire site, we were beyond tired, and most of us crashed.  I had all I could do to stay awake and input all my credit card sales from the day (that’s another story altogether!)

Also special about the day:  special friends who came to visit!  David came to see us from Colorado.  Stephen came out and spent the day.  Desiree F.was there with her kids.  Betty and Darrell D., Theresa S., Michael S., Kevin T., John and Chris B., Jim H., Our playtron friends, John and Kim G. brought us the amazing pineapple upside-down cake that Kim makes.  And there were  dozens of other friendly faces that I am always delighted to see after so many months away from faire folks.  I stayed so busy all day that many of them I didn’t even get to speak to, but hopefully in the coming weeks, I’ll fix that!

It was a good day.  Scarborough has begun!

~MB