Adventures at the Ren Fest 2019: 2nd Weekend

Second weekend is usually the roughest one. It’s hot and everyone’s excited about football starting. So attendance is usually pretty slim for the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. As far as second weekends go, this one wasn’t too bad. It was slow, to be sure, but I still got to see plenty of interesting things like:

• Deadpool riding a blow-up unicorn
• A teenager who in the same breath told me spinning was “so cool. I could never do that over and over and over”
• The salamander that decided the best place to hang out was under the spinning wheel
• A man who called me “one of those people.” When I told him I worked for a fiber arts vendor, he said “I’m sure you do”
• A couple, where the man suggested his partner should try on a hat. The woman started yelling at him that it would ruin her hair, and he yelled back “I KNOW. IT WAS A JOKE”
• Another couple, where the man tried on a beer mitt, told me it was so cool, and then asked his partner to “try it on. It feels weird”
• Finally, a woman, who stated her lanolin allergy as she walked in the booth, thanked me for spinning because human civilization is going to regress, and people need to know how to do it

I’m no further on the case of the appearing felt yarn sign, but a couple of other mysterious things happened this week.

These little sheep just appeared on the table when Marci went out to the booth on Friday. She was there to the bitter end on Sunday, so someone got in after the booth was locked up for the week and left them there. We suspect it might be the same person as the sign, no one has come forward to claim the act yet.

Then this bit of blue fiber appeared. What got us was that neither Marci or I have been working on a blue project out there this year, so we have no idea where that came from. ‘Tis a season of mysteries!

We also had a very special guest visit our booth! Aurora, Sleeping Beauty herself! We told her to stay away from the spinning wheel, but it’s like she couldn’t hear us.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled fiber programming: I got a big ol’ bag of alpaca from the guild for competing on the Tour de Fleece team, and without really examining it, I took it out to spin for the demos. On Saturday, I had a hard time pulling a piece out of the bag. I dumped it, and we found out it’s an industrial-sized batt! I have a lot of spinning to do this season!

What would you make out of that much alpaca? Let me know in the comments!