Horsing Around Again

While Gordon was away at his Western Desert Society get together, I helped with the local Medieval Faire by providing a couple of horses and myself for the equestrian events. Gordon's jousting buddy Bevin supervised and did the enormous favor of trailering said horses back and forth from the fair. She also let me ride her big boy, Jaran (see photo), after Taxi had had enough (poor old guy).

Woody only broke two of my toes by jumping stepping out of the trailer and onto my foot last night. I guess I should get out of the way in the future.

Wake up, it's time to dye!

(A little obscure sci-fi humour, there). A few months ago we attended a "rummage sale" held by a couple of SCA costumers and picked up, among other things, a nice Medieval wool hood. Unfortunately, the color was sort of "My Little Pony Violet": gag. Today I finally bit the bullet and tried the Kool-Aid dye method, with 50% Lemon Lime (green) and 50% Black Cherry (raspberry red), hoping for a muddy ochre color. The cherry totally overpowered the lime! I ended up with a dark, rusty raspberry color...not quite medium burgundy. Ick. I added coffee and tea and onion skins, then had a sanity attack and dumped the dye bath.

A little research on local plants turned up the fact that the noxious weed that grows in our pasture (and the horses refuse to eat) is "curly dock" and that its root makes a great brown to greenish brown (depending on the mordant) dye. A bit of digging, washing, and chopping later, and I now have a big batch of dye going on the stove. The hood is sitting in an alum/cream of tartar mordant, and I think I'll do some touch up henna on my hair while I wait for it all to percolate. Might as well make a big mess as a little one (especially since I JUST cleaned the bathroom...o well).

Willamette Valley Warning

Haven't been posting here lately because my computer's been on the fritz. However, this just crossed my desk and, whatever your opinion on prophecy or dream interpretation, I think this bears looking into.

The pastor of Beth Tefilah Messianic Congregation in Salem, OR is oncerned enough about a dream he had last Fall that he's placed it and his interpretation of it on their web site.

Just so you know, I am convinced that God speaks to us through dreams. However...I am usually very skeptical of so-called prophecies that show up in my in-box. Usually they are about as pertinent and pithy as fortune cookies or newspaper horoscopes, and as helpful. Often they are just attention-grabbing devices of self-proclaimed prophets and televangelists looking for lucrative speaking engagements, and I toss them in the round file where they belong. This one feels different to me, and here's the response I sent to the close friend who brought it to my attention:

Well, my initial take on this is that, whether or not this is a direct precognitive prophecy, this guy really had this dream and it had a huge impact on him. The plot and details of the dream are so non-surreal that I'm leaning toward his interpretation.

I will not be surprised at all if this actually does happen. Some of my reasons for agreeing with this warning:

1. The linear, non-surreal aspect of especially the first dream.
2. The matter of fact style of his "warning" (no hyper-religious mumbo jumbo or randomly quoted, out of context scripture.)
3. The symbolism of the second dream backs up his interpretation of the first dream.

4. The non-sensationalist style of this congregation's web page.
5. The fact that we're hearing about this before the fact, and not *after* (like so many popular "prophets" out there).

All five of those points are usually violated by guys like, say, KimClement, who really raises my hackles. I think folks in the Willamette valley should be warned. Like he says, if he's wrong, then it's a nice day out. If he's right, then you're in good shape!

It will be interesting to see what happens. If this is a case of misinterpretation of a dream meant to have only a personal meaning/message for the dreamer, then that's fine. I just as soon NOT see Portland dumped on. However, if I lived down there, I think I'd find somewhere else to be on June 18.

Decompression

The big belly dance show opened and closed on Sunday, after months of agonizing pre-production and production and agony. I knew I would crash and burn imediately, and right on schedule I have a raging head cold (my first in over a year!).

Now, on with our regularly scheduled life.

My Knight is Home

The School of the Renaissance Soldier is over: yay! Never again is Gordon going to head this shindig up...in California. From now on we're doing events a little closer to home. Two days driving each way, with horses, is nuts, not to mention the months of prep ahead of time. All long distance. He was putting in an average of four hours a day on this thing in addition to working full-time. Now it's a happy memory!

It's Always Something

...and then, the night before Gordon headed out for his two-day (each way) haul (with horses) to do his Renaissance Cavalry weekend thing in California, the pump for the pressure tank in the well house fried itself. We knew it was coming, because that pump was old and sounded like the bearings were about to burst into flames, but... TIMING, people! To make a looooong story short: after buying a new pump and watching three people try to hook it up (of course our neighbor Frank is the one who finally made it all come together) I now have running water again.

Water tower. That's what I want for Christmas. Gravity is free and doesn't take a break when the electricity is out.

Happy news: my wounded chicken, a week and three days after being mauled, is doing great. She's living in a wire dog crate on the kitchen table and is mending nicely. She has a broken toe, but I don't know what I can do about it since it's been over a week (I didn't notice it until I had her in the crate where I could really watch her move around) and she'd just pick off a splint, anyway. Her bites are healing up with no perceptible infection, and new feathers are coming out to the tune of about 1/4 to 1/2" already! Amazing.