Wooo hooo!!!  18 days and counting until the beginning of the 2007 faire season! 

Mayfaire was the first faire that I ever vended at and I'm glad it's still the one that starts off the season.  You lose so much of the family & community atmosphere with the larger faires and it's really sad.  The bigger the faire gets, the more you have to deal with politics and back stabbing, and that's not the way it should be.  Faires should be there to support each other, because you know what - each one depends on the success of the others.  If someone who had never been to a ren faire before attends Mayfaire and has a magical time, they're going to seek out other faires to go to.  They're not going to just stand around and twiddle their thumbs waiting for the event to come around again.  But if they were to attend and have an awful time, it's going to turn them of too all the faires in general.  And I'm not talking about the regular rennies.  I'm talking about the everyday people who attend.  The atmosphere of a faire depends not just on the setting, but the attitudes of those working there - staff, volunteers, performers, and vendors.  If you have coordinators arguing with vendors in site of patrons, that just looks bad all the way around and the faire loses any magic it had over the people.  

But anyway...  :)

John and I are excited about faire starting.  Derbyshire 2006 was the first faire he ever attended and he got hooked.  I brought him to Michigan with me for a weekend last fall and we had a great time despite the not so great weather.  He's been eager to get back ever since.  He's already bought two kilts, a sporran, and belts.  I gave him leather boots last week, and this past weekend, I started teaching him the basics of how to make some of his own ren garb.  On Saturday, we went to JoAnn's and he helped pick out his patterns and fabrics.  We started cutting out the patterns on Saturday night.  We made one pair of pants on Sunday and they turned out really good for his first pair, but I have to go back and fix them because of something I screwed up on (nothing major... it'll take me 10 min to fix).  We should be able to do the other pair and probably a shirt this weekend.  

There is so much we still have to do yet.  I have to finish getting all my stock inventoried and packed in the totes.  I have to drive to Toledo to grab all of Jessica Galbreth's stock.  I need to order what I don't have.   Still lots to do and less then 2 1/2 weeks to do it in...

I haven't even worked out the sleeping arrangements yet (and really who has time to sleep?...lol)