Home again. Later than expected; we hung out at Queen’s Champion Equestrian after the GWW meeting, and then went out to Olive Garden (salad! breadsticks! chicken and shrimp limone!) with folks. Now I’m tired. Tired but wanting to be productive. The curse of my life. I did watch “Inside the Actor’s Studio” with Drew Barrymore, and did my nails (toes red, fingers gold), and embroider a bit on…

I can finally reveal The Project That Cannot Be Mentioned! It’s a pair of kneeling cushions for Their Excellencies of Gyldenholt. Blue canvas, gold brocade trees, green embroidered laurel wreath, gold couching around the trees and gold trim around the outside. I finished one, put it in as part of my A&S contest, then we presented it to them at Closing Court. I’m well into the second one—I had to wait until I finished my other A&S entries because of the deadline.

Alas, I didn’t win the contest. I kinda got my hopes up because there were only four entries, but the other ones were really good, and there lots of cool things: calligraphy, lucet braiding, origami (including an actual box—very spiff), handmade paper (I want to learn how!)… The event itself was fun. I went to a Kingdom Embroiderer’s Guild meeting, but many of the folks ended up going on a field trip to the needlework store I go to, and although I was tempted to go just to be a fly on the wall and learn stuff, I decided I might be needed at the event. I got to sit and talk with people I don’t normally, which I appreciated. I embroidered. I bought an Ars Caidis (Kingdom A&S quarterly publication) and plan to write an article on rose beads. I watched Ken fight rapier. I rambled about rose beads to whomever would listen. I sat with Julian while Meg got the car. I took Dana to the potty (which was a trek away, so that took some time). We were the last ones on site, cleaning up.

Then we went to the feast—seven courses, but one dish per course, and it went almost too fast—we weren’t quite done with some courses when the next ones came out. Serving was amusing; it was a small feast and I was in a rather silly mood. It doesn’t help that right before the feast started, a table of Peers called me over to commend me on my husband’s butt. (He was wearing his particoloured tights—one leg green and black, one leg red.) At 9:30, just as we were finishing up dessert, I found out from the Event Steward that we had to be out of the hall at 10. Fuuuuuuuck. I swear I went into fast forward mode. The kitchen was still a disaster area, and nobody had been set in charge of cleanup, and poor Giuseppe, who’d been cooking since noon, was a zombie (I had to ask him every question twice).

Maren came over afterwards, as did Ismay (who was staying with us). We talked about the Solstice for a little bit, but waited for Lasairfhiona (we weren’t sure if she wasn’t coming, and she didn’t call), and eventually I realised I was too wiped out to move, much less call a Circle.

Today we crawled out of bed, showered (yesterday had been unusually muggy for southern California, and I got really hot during fast forward mode after the feast, and headed off to the GWW site for this month’s meeting, which was being held at Queen’s Champion Equestrian. I rode with Ismay; Ken carpooled with Rowen and Ceridwen, the Event Stewards. Comments on all this appear at the beginning of this entry—a nice return to home, don’t you think? Anyway, since then we’ve cleaned things up a bit, and dealt with e-mail, and talked about upcoming stuff. A busy weekend comes to a close.